Description
Why is this so awkward? Hi this is Ethan Swan I run the label JABS and also I wrote this book. The book contains writing I did about music from 2000 – 2018. One of the original ideas for this book was to have it be EVERYTHING I wrote ever in chronological order but after awhile we pared it down to something more readable and agile, and instead of making it run oldest to newest, I broke the texts into several categories:
1. DISCOVERY (pieces that talk specifically of the process of learning about a band or scene, the pathways)
2. BLACK FLAG (pieces that reference Black Flag, even just in passing)
3. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE BLACK DICE (pieces that mention either band, even just in passing)
4. REVOLUTIONARY THEORY (pieces that take music as a possible venue for political/cultural change)
5. FRED THOMAS (pieces that mention Fred, even just in passing)
6. FOLK MUSIC (pieces that talk about folk music and ritual)
7. UNREST (pieces that mention the band Unrest, even just in passing)
8. MORRISSEY (pieces that mention Morrissey or the Smiths, even just in passing)
9. JORDANA (pieces that mention my sister, or where she lurks in the background)
In retrospect I wish I had included the thing I wrote about Silver Jews after seeing them in 2007 and the thing about Life Without Buildings from when the live CD came out and I am still leery about the Spiderman 3 text but I am proud of this book and these topics/categories/songs are in my mind all the time. I think that the pressure to do JABS is the exact same pressure that produced all this writing – loving something so much that I want to find a way to share it with everyone I can – and so I am posting this here because the book is part of THE GRASS IS GREEN IN THE FIELDS FOR YOU and it felt weird to post everything else besides this one, but also because I think there is a legitimate connection between this book and everything else that happens here. And if there isn’t???? SHUT IT ALL DOWN
PS the categories aren’t named in the book itself, but you can tell them apart because they’re separated by scans of old zines
228 pages, perfect bound. Published 2019 by The Grass is Green in the Fields For You of Glasgow, Scotland.
