You and I – “Silent Morning Whisper” from s/t 7” (1996 Sage Records)
My buddy Simon has been a reliable and trusted long distance friend since our bands played together in small-town Illinois in 1998 or so. And in all that time he has been someone whose musical opinion I put a great deal of trust in.
Yesterday evening, while walking to Burbank’s newest (and best-named*) pizza place, What Up Dough, I texted Simon to confirm what I believed to be true — his desert island screamo band is Honeywell. I had just shuffled my way over to You and I, and thought that perhaps it is finally time for me to delve into an exploration of the screamo genre.
We will not be calling it “skramz” here. “Screamo” is stupid enough. “Skramz” is a bridge too far. I’m a few thousand coffees away from being fifty years old; I can’t be running around using these stupid terms.
While you’re stepping off of my lawn, when did “cap” cease meaning to insult and begin meaning to lie? What’s wrong with leaving well enough alone?
Well. One thing. If we leave well enough alone we allow the following weirdness from an earlier Shuffler post to stand as established record: [I”]nasmuch as [Joshua Fit for Battle] weren’t Saetia, You and I, or Orchid, they weren’t a screamo band I really fucked with very heavy in their day.”
So there you have it. And I am more generous than he is. Which, you know, chalk it up to my innate kindness, or what can only be described as woeful naivete as against Simon’s cultivated sophistication.
And I guess all of this is a sort of prologue to my exploration of the screamo timeline, itself a prologue to me finally exploring this You and I track. We’ll talk cinema, homophones, and times of day. But first, screamo.
Many on the ol’ internet like to talk about San Diego as the birthplace of the genre, with the Che Cafe operating as the primary venue. I’ve never been inside of either space, but it seems to me that comparing the Che Cafe and its influence on San Diego’s punk and hardcore scene to 924 Gilman up in the Bay Area is appropriate, despite differences in sonics, etc. And where there’s a scene there’s a label, Gravity Records in this case, which came on the scene in 1991 and released music from bands like Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Clikatat Ikatowi, Heroin, John Henry West, Mohinder, Second Story Window, and Universal Order of Armageddon. It’s easy to see why they are so often cited as having been early purveyors of the new genre.
One internet source even went so far as to say that Universal Order of Armageddon was the “first true screamo band ever.” It is perhaps noteworthy that this comes via a Prezi that is riddled with spelling errors, so it is likely that this comes to us from a school project for which minimal effort was applied. I’ve been an educator since 2005; I’m all too familiar with this sort of work product.
But it does raise an interesting point: Universal Order of Armageddon were (eventually) on an important San Diego screamo label to be sure, but they hail from Baltimore, Maryland, and in fact put out their first couple releases on hometown label Vermin Scum, who eight years prior had put out releases by cult emo darlings The Hated in 1985.
Let’s pause here to delineate a handful of things: a) I have only the most passing familiarity with The Hated catalog b) Even so, that’s enough for me to feel confident in saying that they are hardly a screamo band. c) But they are basically from D.C., and while Revolution Summer happened nearby in 1985, it seems this release may have predated it by a handful of weeks. d) Still, it’s worth citing Rev Summer here, as many internet types like to go all the way back to Rites of Spring as the first proto-screamo band. e) But that’s stupid because f1) This is also widely considered to be the first emo release, and f2) because to my mind there are two releases that more accurately usher in the new sound: 1990’s Tightrope Walker/Chinese Nitro 7” by Washington D.C.’s Circus Lupus (on Cubist Productions), and the 1988 Vermin Scum release by Moss Icon, the Hate in Me 7”.
Those of you who enjoy tidy full-circle moments will especially enjoy this paragraph. We’re back at Vermin Scum with Moss Icon, and while I don’t know the first thing about Cubist Productions, I do know that Chris Thomson and Chris Hamley later played together in Monorchid and — what’s that? — released a Monorchid 7” on Gravity Records in 1997.
That was a lot to sift through, so I’ll condense. The Moss Icon demo (1987) foreshadows screamo as well as anything in my opinion:
The same can be said for early Circus Lupus, though by the time I was of age and reading fanzines, I mostly saw their name used as a reference point for the then-contemporary-if-not-quite-screamo band The Hal al Shedad. Anyway, check it out, and shout out to Sweetbabyjaysus for having the best page on YouTube:
And at this point I’d like to forfeit the task I created for myself, creating some sort of history of screamo timeline. It’s murky and nebulous and I don’t want to talk out of my ass. Suffice it to say you have a lot of DC, a lot of San Diego, and then, in the late nineties when the scene was at a zenith of sorts, quite a bit was happening in the Northeast. Indeed Saeita were from NYC, Orchid from Amherst, Massachusetts, and You and I from New Brunswick, New Jersey, famous for its basement shows.
And don’t worry, Boulder, Colorado, I know about you, too, but as I say, I have to keep it moving.
Honeywell, meanwhile, were from Southern California’s oddly named eastern hinterlands, the Inland Empire. Corona, specifically, where my brother-in-law resides with his lovely family on a street called, I shit you not, Fashion Drive, and where I always feel somewhat obligated to play the song “Corona” by non-screamo band Minutemen. Corona, by the way, is roughly one hundred miles from San Diego. Honeywell, it turns out, didn’t release anything on Gravity, Vermin Scum, or Gold Standard Laboratories, however, so apparently the pie marked “neat and tidy full circle moments” has made another half rotation on its carousel, and we’re left pondering some unappetizing tin labeled “tidbit mush.”
You and I were formed in late 1996 in their native New Jersey. And as mentioned above, they did attempt a sort of metal screamo hybrid that, while not entirely unheard of at the time (see: early Cave-in, early Converge, Piebald, etc.), was nonetheless very ambitious (and let’s face it, how many of us remember any of the listed bands for that particular sound?). Being more generous than Simon, however, I’ll allow that when it hit, it really hit, but it just as often rings as incongruous I suppose.
Everybody can’t be Saetia. Or Orchid. Or Honeywell.
In sixth grade we watched It’s A Wonderful Life on LaserDisc, cutting edge technology at the time that involved a couple of silver LPs that my teacher, my friend Ben’s dad, would have to flip periodically during our viewing. Ben’s dad had created a whole unit around the movie; it may have lasted two weeks or two months, but ignited my love for the film.
As such I love hearing George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) asking Mary (Donna Reed) if she wants him to lasso the moon in the song’s opening. But wait a minute — lasso the moon in the morning? The song is called “Silent Morning Whisper,” which doesn’t make a ton of sense on its own, and especially not with the introduction of the moon. But a closer examination of the record’s packaging reveals that at times the song is called “Silent Mourning Whisper” (emphasis mine), which changes everything.
Musically the song is as frenetic as the rest of the band’s catalog, a real song part soup, but I find it to be a successful soup at that. Lyrically, I don’t really know what we’re mourning. We’re in pain, we love someone, they maybe don’t love us, life is pain, here is my art. That sort of vibe, which, I guess if you’re nineteen, do you, you know?
It was a weird time. Everyone was skinny and smeared with black dye and wearing too-tight thrift store park and rec t-shirts, caking their lungs with tar while holding court ad nauseam about the purity of their hearts.
In retrospect, I guess we should have seen the k and the z coming.
*I want so badly to be able to give this title to Pinball Pizza, except inasmuch as they are not a sit-down restaurant and do not, in fact, have any pinball machines, just a sign that says it in Old English and a counter for ordering, they actually have the worst name. And bad pizza.
The Shuffler 