A few years ago, my cousin complained to me. Following my advice, he had went to see Cap’n Jazz on their reunion tour and told me they were awful. According to him, they had a minimal grasp of rhythm, and their screams were out of tune. Worse of all, the audience was yelling along with them. Not singing along. Yelling.
Cap’n Jazz, fronted by brothers Tim and Mike Kinsella, played avant-garde music for the broken-hearted and the perpetually nostalgic, people who treasured Catcher in the Rye from the very first page. Yes, we all know the word “emo,” but Cap’n Jazz went beyond the screams and power chords; they made music that was as tangled and knotty as their emotions. It embodied their rage and sadness in an explosive, responsive way. To me, they were the wimpy, dorky Stooges of that generation, except they knew that was bullshit and rejected themselves as such; they knew that nobody then needed someone to tell them that it was another year with nothing to do.
Their take on emotionally-charged experimentation can be heard on “In The Clear,” a song that flows in furious passages that you can sing along to, yet the most powerful moment comes when someone screams half the alphabet and concludes it with “lost!” It’s ostentatious, funny and yet incredibly earnest.
This is what I grew up with, what I get and what gets me (or got me back then); even if I didn’t have direct contact with the actual music, I instinctively responded to it. I bet the members of the band don’t mind not being understood, but I think that’s part of their appeal. It’s all heart and neurosis.
