caP'n Jazz - Analphabetapolothology (Jade Tree, 1998)

I can't claim to have been aware of caP'n Jazz before I was well into The Promise Ring and Joan of Arc, but I think I would have had to been a cool kid in Chicago to have been that lucky. In 1998, when Analphabetapolothology (which is very fun to say - you should try it) was released, it seemed to put together some of the puzzle pieces that had been floating around in my head. I will spare you the history of the band, but one important detail was that this double cd, featuring 18 tracks on disc one and 16 tracks on disc two, was released after most of the members had moved on to other projects where they had established footings in my music collection. In fact in the liner notes of Analphabeta... they justify this release's existence while admitting their reluctance to entertain the idea in the first place:

"Reissues by nature have to be a bit embarrassing. They undermine our pretenses by making what was once special and precious in its rarity, now somehow a little less in its convenient availability."

Reading that excerpt now seems like it was a much better way of describing the "ownership" I feel towards music and the silliness you feel when you put it out there. It's an enormous thing to feel confident about a song and you never seem to hear the good in your own work, you just hope someone else does.

They recognized that this early stuff was simply kids "spitting back out everything, everything, we thought and felt" as a bad thing, but to me it was what made thier music so relatable and playful. The songs were bouncy and the lyrics were fun. What more could I need. Knowing that the cover art for this release, and many other Jade Tree releases, was designed by Jason Gnewikow, from The Promise Ring, and his, presumably graphic design hobby (?) The Collection Agency made me feel like a indie rock know-it-all, although no one cared... no one I knew at least.

"We are all all we've done." Oh Messy Life