Jay Gabler

beckylang:

I show up at Sarah Heuer’s house and she greets me by saying, “Hi Becky, you look like a chola, let’s go work on that ponytail.” Jay Gabler is sitting on the couch drinking beer from a receptacle that is yet another new size that we aren’t sure what to call.

I spend too long “invigorating” my ponytail and suddenly they want to leave and I haven’t yet “got it in” properly with the hard alcohol. I notice Sarah putting on tiny socks, one pink and one green and think, “So that’s what’s under those epic 4-inch boots.” I take in some cheap rum and then the cab has arrived.

We get to First Ave/Club Jager/ Some Secret Warehouse and pick out “soul mates” for one another who we may or may not go on to harass. Sarah’s posse of devoted men emerges and buys us drinks. We try to smoke cigarettes but the bouncer is like, “No drinks outside.” We chug them and decide this place totally sucks, time to leave.

We take a cab somewhere that also sucks and I make a friend outside the club while smoking. I will never talk to that person again. We get to a quieter bar that doesn’t reek of weed and I see “guy with a French name,” “blonde guy,” “that guy who looks like an anime.” We are past names now. Time to call Lew.

Lew Cabdriver (that’s his personal brand) shows up as usual, and I might sit in the front seat because we’re really good friends these days. He might even tell me about his personal life, which I know is strictly against the Lew Cabdriver policy. 

I get home and smoke cigarettes in my car and then fall asleep watching Ally McBeal.

thetangential:

(And Tumblr posts, Facebook statuses, etc.)

10. Pop culture references. “If this Rapture also stars David Duchovny, I’ll die happy.”

9. Speculating about the activities of disappointed believers. “There’s gonna be a lot more people at Liquor Lyle’s than at church tomorrow.”

8. Straightforward goodbye. “I’m outta here, suckas! Enjoy the brimstone rain!”

7. Can I have your stuff? “If the Rapture happens, can I have your Adderall and your Volcano Choir vinyl?”

6. Macho Man Randy Savage references. “Whether or not the Rapture happens will depend on who wins the steel-cage match between Jesus and Macho Man.”

5. Announcing what you’re doing pre-Rapture. “Well, guess I’d better finish this pint of Rocky Road in one sitting. Who am I kidding, I was going to do that anyway.”

4. Asking for clarification. “Can the west coast watch the Rapture happen first on the east coast, like the New Year’s ball dropping?”

3. Pretending it already happened. “Thank you, God, for getting my evangelical co-worker out of my hair. Now I can actually get some work done today.”

2. Advertising. “We’re having a pre-looting sale! Everything 15% off!”

1. Exasperated tweets about all the Rapture tweets. “Can you all please go back to complaining about traffic?”

- Jay Gabler

thetangential:

Minnesota’s legislature is in the process of passing a constitutional amendment that will outlaw gay marriage—but what’s the point? Gay marriage is already illegal in the Gopher State. Here are five types of marriage that currently plague our fair state in actuality. Hold that amendment, folks, and let’s pile a few more on there for good measure.

1. Second marriages. That first marriage didn’t go so well—why should we trust you with a second one? What? Your first spouse died? Well, whose problem is that?

2. Civil marriages. There are people in this state who believe that they can cheat on their spouses, get divorced, or masturbate without being thrown into eternal hellfire. Are those people you really want to trust with the sacred institution of marriage?

3. Marriages over the age of 30. These are just shady, am I right? Because, come on, what took you so long? You were probably pursuing your career or going to grad school or “looking for Mr. Right” in a lot of seedy bars, and that does not suggest the kind of single-minded focus on matrimony that we like to see in this state. At this point in your life, you probably just want to get married to save on rent and have a lot of sex. That’s not what marriage is about—at least, not in Minnesota.

4. Marriages where the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” is not played at the reception. Why would you get married and not have the DJ play “Shout”? Is that too cheesy for you? Marriage is cheesy—at least, when it’s done right. That snooty attitude is only going to get you in trouble. No union is really sealed until at least one bridesmaid has fallen on her butt while trying to “get a little bit softer now” in four-inch heels. Everybody has a good laugh and reflects on their shared experience of mirth on your blessed day. If you’re too fancy for that, then get the h-e-double-toothpicks out of our state.

5. Marriages made outside of Minnesota. Since we can’t trust neighboring states and countries (we’re looking at you, Canada) to be as morally sound as we are, any marriage originating outside the State of Minnesota will be considered null and void until such time as the couple are legally remarried by the rigorous standards of Minnesota law. If you move to Minnesota as a married couple after turning 30, well, consider this a new lease on life. You can’t be married here, so go have fun! Ride your bike, be a hipster, even be gay! You can do whatever you want in Minnesota, just so long as you don’t do it while you’re married.

- Jay Gabler

riskylengths:

In the past few weeks, I’ve come across Jay Gabler and his various media outlets that where he writes (directly and indirectly because of Paper Darts):  TCDailyPlanet, The Tangential, and his tumblr, which I have an excerpt from below, about the 1990s being the worst musical decade.

[7 of my friends just fell off their chairs reading that.]

I’ve posted the excerpt so I can talk about it. Please follow the link and read the whole thing afterwards. And for further reading later, go check out The Tangential series 1990s Project where Jay attempts to rediscover the music of the 1990s to see if it changes his opinion [Hint: not really, but it’s a funny and insightful journey].

jaygabler:

7. [note: dead last in his list]: The 1990s. Grunge, okay. Not really my bag, but I’ll give you Nirvana. And? Other than that, this decade was at best a time of fruitful transition—hip-hop became increasingly integrated into pop music generally, and “college music” became “alternative music” and “adult contemporary” en route to its much more flexible and powerful incarnation as “indie rock” in the 2000s. You’ve got that, and then you’ve got a lot of completely forgettable top-40 filler. See why I took to the cave? Wouldn’t you, or didn’t you?

I completely agree. 

[The other 7 friends of mine that read this blog have now fallen off their chairs. Those who’ve already fallen off have passed out]

I love my music of the 1990s. It was not everyone’s music. Though it was for a brief, almost shining, moment which faded quickly. I once went so far as to discussa friend the idea that even for us, the best music of the 1990s was a very fertile period between Summer 93 and Fall 1995. Everything else sucked. But Mary Lucia counting down REV 105’s top 10 songs of 1995 still sticks in my head, because every song was amazing. To me. But no one listened to REV 105. [Well, not enough people that Cargill Communications didn’t runaway with a check from the company that owned KQRS in 1997 that represented a 2000% return on what they originally paid for the three stations in the signal. That’s not an exaggerated figure, by the way].

As far as I can tell, from a little bit of creeping I did once I read the initial assessment, Jay is two years older than me. He talks about being stuck on that edge of a generation, where we had the cool older brothers and sisters who were part of Gen X and we were missing out. Years later, after the internet changed everything, we were ushered out of Gen Y and put into Gen X because we didn’t really fit with Gen Y. [In fact, if you asked some people from Gen Y, they’d say both Jay and I are too old to be on Tumblr]. So, I wondered, how was it that he missed out on all this? Well, being two years older than me, it seems Jay went to college right as the peak of the 93-95 boom was about to come about. REV 105 wasn’t there for him, like it was the rest of us who were stuck in the midwest and hating the rest of society. Likely, he was learning how to binge drink. Something we could barely dream about. 

Regardless of what he was up to and how it compared to what I was up to, he’s still right. The 90s got so much worse the longer it went on. 

How? Well, right now, if you go to shows at First Avenue to see a band that gets significant airplay on The Current or shows up on Pitchfork, chances are the place is packed. You’re gasping for air. 

I saw the last Son Volt show (of the old band) in 1999 at First Ave. The nearest people standing next to us were at least six feet away. Which somehow didn’t prevent the drunk woman from flailing about as if there was a mosh pit and smacking us in the head with her beer glass. I’m pretty sure Elliot Smith’s performance in 1999 was not sold out. Because the Ben Fold’s Five show two years earlier was, and I couldn’t breathe at that one.

There was good music. The indie (rock and hip-hop) stars of then that are the veteran heroes of now were not played on the radio, they were not on MTV, and you had to live near a college to even hear about them. Or actually read the reviews in Spin and Rolling Stone that were not about Hootie & the Blowfish. We constantly complained about the lack of good music in modern culture. 

Now, critic’s darlings actually sell out shows in large venues, win Grammy’s, and have their music blasted over your TV on your favorite sitcom/copshow/Targetad.

The 1990s were a musical waste land. It hurt to be a discerning listener. You cringed every time you heard Puffy rap over The Police. And if you were lucky, you could drive the one hit wonder “How Bizarre” or anything that came after Limp Bizkit out of your mind. Also, Will Smith.

So yes, it was the worst decade for music. Because good music was so few and far between. And not all of it ended up on Pitchfork’s revisionist 1990s lists. 

Thanks for the thoughts and the kind words. I like your observation about how we’ve been shoved into the Gen-X drawer because we don’t fit anywhere else. The Brats of the Brat Pack might be a good name for mid-70s kids, though I’m going to keep pushing Disco Babies.

Before I was a critic/writer, I was a sociologist of culture, and I still think that changes in culture often, fundamentally, come down to social-structural and/or technological changes. Why are critics’ darlings more commercially successful now? In part, because rewards to education are steadily rising: the kind of well-educated people who like critics’ darlings are less likely to be starving artists and more likely to be working for (relatively) good pay at high-end marketing firms. I think this is why you see the relatively marginal REV 105 being replaced with the much more mainstream Current.

Also, technology has allowed critics’ darlings—and all bands—to find audiences much more efficiently. Tori Amos was a success story, but look at how much easier life would be for an idiosyncratic artist like that in the 2010s than it was in the 1990s. Then, she still had to worry about finding a market niche and getting airplay. Now, though airplay still matters, you can essentially be your own niche. I can effectively curate my own very specialized radio station of Tori Amos and people just like her—I don’t need to wait for REV 105 and the Cities 97 to figure out which side she falls on, and then wait through either buzzing post-punk noise bands or Marc Cohn to get to her.

Oh, and I’d guess that if anything, being at college rather than high school in 1994 meant that I was more rather than less exposed to the music that was new then. When I was a teenager, I was frankly frightened of the alternative-music stations and went nowhere near them—but college gave me no choice. SO MUCH PEARL JAM.