Cap'n Jazz
Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We've Slipped on and Egg Shells We've Tippy Toed Over

Chicago, 1994: a lightning bolt from a clear sky. A group of very pimply high schoolers (the average age is around eighteen), led by the seminal Kinsella brothers, decided to put their adolescent troubles into music. Illegitimate offspring of the hardcore that had already opened its doors to aMMore (Rites of Spring and Embrace leading the way, with the ghost of Huskers and Descendents always present), but, in step with the times, heavily influenced by the ‘90s indie scene (Pavement and Superchunk above all), they institutionalized what, in the following years, would be called "emo".

The short yet dreamy epic of Cap'n Jazz (they broke up the following year, in '95, after releasing this their only album) is another piece of evidence showing how success is fickle, and even a bit foolish. In fact, the debut here reviewed, with its improbable and lengthy name, more simply known as "Schmap'n Schmazz", originally released in very limited numbers by the tiny Man With Gun Records, is now, after these guys have become almost a cult for teenagers in America and beyond, a collector’s item, while compilations such as "Analphabetapolothology" (1998, Jade Tree Records, not shabby!), containing their entire body of work (including singles and split material), are constantly reissued.

However, their success is not a matter of chance, given the universality of their screaming. With no erudite pretentions (loser types as they were, they were snubbed even by critics), theirs is simply music for teenagers made by teenagers: songs that speak of melancholic trials, platonic loves, fights against an often unfair world, tears and smiles but also more serious matters (in "Yes, I Am Talking to You" there’s a line like i’m dying to tell you I’m dying, to name one), however, always seen through the bitterly helpless eyes of the average high schooler. Disordered noise-making akin to the hormonal storms of any young lad thinking of his boom-boom girlfriend and the (ill)fated voice of seventeen-year-old (!) Tim Kinsella, halfway between lazy chants and cries of impotent rage, somewhat reminiscent of Milo from the good old days: nothing else is needed. Nothing else is indeed needed to offer the world one of the most heavily drawn upon albums of the last ten years of music. Where do you think the new wave of "bands," with literal quotation marks, for teenagers draws from, much to the joy of the major labels? From this album, created by five nerds, which garnered hardly any profit. But, as we know, revolutions are always made by fools.

It only matters that in 1994 four kids like me directly shouted their feelings to the world, in the most genuine, spontaneous, and real way possible. 

It is the album of your teenage years.

Each should give it their own meaning.