I DON’T NEED SCHOOL TO CALL IT ART (excerpt)

( Seesaw at Jabberjaw, 1993.)
written by raquel gutierrez for the jabberjaw book

The wait was torturous and worthwhile but hearing the first chords of “Dragnalus,” a collapsed and discordant siren, made the hair on my arm stick straight up like little Watts Towers on fire. We rocked out to a Tumwater death march. This was the Fake Train tour and my first time seeing the trio that had the biggest ‘hood fame that night—the redwood, the woman, and the misanthrope. A fine bill it was with one of those line-ups that reflected the founding of a brotherhood of dysfunction, an anxious intimacy that didn’t require boys kissing each other to call it love. It was the end of summer, 1993, and Unwound’s penultimate show on tour before heading back home to Oly. Although, they were already home.

Unwound. Floodgate. Seesaw—Richard and Joey had just graduated high school. I was there with those two Downey boys that so desperately wanted to be from Olympia. Seesaw had just came back from their first West Coast tour, including a show at the Red House on Vern Rumsey’s invitation. Lucky bastards. Oh well, Richard was jealous of me for being granted access to Riot Grrl-L.A. meetings thanks to my Kunta Kinte.

This was the new macho. It was awkward cock rock. It was the invitation to smoke your older brother’s secret stash. The kind of stash that floats boat dreams from a hill. The same guys that ignored me for not catching their Jawbreaker references yet always kindly let me go in front of the stage for the seasonal Schwarzenbach-lash. When it pains it roars. Even though I didn’t like dick I still loved these guys the way a masochist loves a narcissist for letting me into the clubhouse.

I was already inaugurated into the scene with my first cappuccino in a root beer mug served by Wrecks Carrs of KXLU at the Nation of Ulysses show. He was the guy with the mushroom cloud for hair that just kept getting skinnier and snottier until his trust fund ran out. Nevertheless, he was still a kingmaker and we knew it. Maybe you knew him? He was one of many characters that the same dozen people introduced me to in a hundred different ways and he never looked me in the eye or remembered my name. That type of underground snobbery could only transpire in a place like Jabberjaw, yet it never really bothered me. Few were of that ilk. Many were there because they loved being there with the bands, the fans, the experts, the geeks, the next-in-line’s and each other. No one was ever already over it nor had we begun to take it all for granted.

Everyone that had a hand in making Jabberjaw what it was were all very nice to this nerdy stocky girl from Bell Gardens, California. Randy Kaye was a gentleman but definitely and understandably too cool for me. I didn’t know what a pin-up was until I saw Michelle. Gary was cool and inspired me to wear brown pants and black shirts and white socks as my daily uniform, Jessie always had a smile and I remember them all, along with Brian and Maureen, always being in good spirits when Godheadsilo were in town. It was definitely like a really cool family that did drugs together but would never get all Helter Skelter on you.

(Kicking Giant, year? No idea!)

Jabberjaw was still the place you came to be a jerk because you owned Steelpole Bathtub 7-inches, toasted your cinnamon raisin bread at Ships, and Steve from Slug knew your name. All of this credibility often entitled you to stand behind the counter a few feet away from Michelle. You couldn’t just be a dick in your regular everyday life to people who had no sense of the nomenclature of cool you measured your life by. You have to give it up to a place that served no alcohol yet inspired that kind of attention-seeking behavior. Maybe it was my age but all of it was just lost on me, went over my head or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough to ask—but, why pop tarts? At 30 I might have felt the slightest twinge of irony eating a pop tart. At 16, I was just fat and didn’t care because I ate chocolate pop tarts before going to school. It was my cheap ambrosia during those noisy nights. Trenchmouth, Canopy, Beekeeper, Today Is The Day, Unsane and Kicking Giant. God knows we needed the refined sugar to keep us going straight into the morning.