There’s a classic trope that says songs are only songs if you can play them on acoustic guitar, and that if you rely on production tricks, feedback, electronics, and other such affrontery, that the song isn’t *real.* (In fact, I remember Jawbox contemporaries Edsel specifically trying to write songs that you couldn’t play on acoustic guitar.)
Can you play a Jawbox song on acoustic guitar? I’m a big enough fan that I can assure you yes, you can, but we’ll find out for sure this coming Friday at our next Story/Stereo event, when J. Robbins himself, joined by cellist Gordon Withers, will play songs spanning his catalog.
We’re thrilled and honored to have J. for the fourth Story/Stereo—it almost feels like a culminating event—and urge you to join us, because this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often.
In point of fact, J. has never done this before.
Get to The Writer’s Center early (before the 8:00 start time if you can swing it), not only to hear readings from authors Marianne Villanueva (*Mayor of Roses*) and Steve Fellner (*All Screwed Up*), but because there are only so many chairs in the place.
—Matthew Byars, The Caribbean, co-curator, Story/Stereo
Per our previous Story/Stereo features, we’ve asked one of the evening’s musicians, cellist Gordon Withers, to reflect upon an epiphany. Of the vinyl variety. —Ed.
Swervedriver – Ejector Seat Reservation (1995, Creation)
The music was like a revelation – like if the Beatles had only listened to Dinosaur Jr – totally different from their first two albums but just as brilliant, if not more so. My roommate, a Long Island native who normally only listened to Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, was captivated (this is a guy who changed his handwriting style to match The Boss’s). I’d come back from class to find the turntable shut off with the needle in the middle of the record – he had been playing it and of course had no idea how to operate a record player.
For two months it was all anyone listened to. I made cassettes of it for friends and mailed them far and wide. It became the soundtrack to that magical time in early college, when one is assaulted from all sides with sensory overload – incredible class workloads, the thrill of being away from home for the first time, the crush and craziness of living with hundreds of fellow students, forging lifelong friendships, exploring a new city, going to shows, staying up all night….
That will likely never be the case with any good piece of music ever again. Gone is the thrill of finding it, of holding something so odd and rare in your hands. Gone is the motivation to play it over and over for weeks and months, soaking up every nuance, getting the absolute most enjoyment possible out of an amazing work. The flood of the digital age has shortened our attention spans – there is so much information and new music out there, that listening to the same thing many times in a row is no longer normal. Taking the time to quietly contemplate a work of art is not easy in 2010 – it is a deliberate, conscious act, requiring effort to block out a flood of distractions.