2021 #4: A Decade With Joyce Manor
I’m three weeks late at this point, sorry, and shoutout to Danielle Chelosky for doing this first, but the tenth anniversary of Joyce Manor’s first LP came and went on January 11 and it’s difficult to name a modern punk band whose music has meant more to me in that time. It’s not a stretch to say that my life has drastically changed, mostly for the better but sometimes for the worse, in the last ten years. There were the cross-country moves, from Orlando to Cleveland to Philadelphia, then about a dozen other moves just within Philly. If anyone ever asked me if it was worth moving here I’d say yes, because that’s easy to say now that I share a rowhome with my wife and our cats and had a good job pre-pandemic, when in reality I lived here for almost six years before I found true stability, which is a pretty long time to just float somewhere without ever completely sinking. But all those moves, my shitty belongings haphazardly thrown in black garbage bags rolling around the back of a rented vanshare from one rented room to a moldy, mouse-infested apartment to another rented room to an apartment with a bedroom facing, for my money, the loudest block in the city. There were the countless mistakes I made, talking to people I shouldn’t have, doing things I shouldn’t have, being a selfish friend and irresponsible partner yet always, and incorrectly, believing I was in the right. There were the walks, bus and train rides to shitty office job to even worse bar job to pretty good bottle shop job, each 20 minute interval soundtracked by the self-titled or Never Hungover Again or Cody. Joyce Manor were there for all of it. This is the part where I get a little self-indulgent—as if merely having a newsletter wasn’t self-indulgent enough—so forgive me, but there was the satisfaction of finding their demo on Bandcamp, being blown away by it and reviewing it for Punknews in 2010 and seeing my enthusiasm for it shared by so many others. There was writing a news clip about their signing to 6131, who released the self-titled album that set myself and so many of us on this path of extreme fandom. (As a sidebar, a perhaps even more sobering fact than Joyce Manor’s self-titled being a decade old is pulling a news clip on the Internet with my name and “11 years ago” next to it.) There was Mike Park emailing me a .zip of Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired in the dead of winter 2012, my first real winter as a Florida Man in Cleveland, and playing it loud enough in my open office at AltPress for probably all of my coworkers to hear, much to their delight (or perhaps dismay.) The editors all had a shared iTunes (I’m still not really sure how it worked, but it doesn’t matter) where we could all listen to songs from the same library on our own computers. I let Scott Heisel, who at the time was in charge of the magazine’s record reviews, know that Mike had sent over the record and a few minutes later I could hear it emanating from his office too. He then called my desk phone and said something to the effect of, “Did they really cover “Video Killed The Radio Star” in the middle of this fucking thing?” I got to interview Barry Johnson about this off-the-wall album that I loved, but that we both had a feeling their fans, drawn by anthems like “Beach Community” and “Constant Headache,” may not like so much. I have very few good memories from working at that magazine but the time leading up to that record release is one of them.
Barry and I became friendly online, chatting about music we liked on twitter and facebook back when those websites were a lot more fun to be on. At one point when Joyce Manor were working on what would become Never Hungover Again—and I hope the statute of limitations has passed on this—the band was getting offers from big labels and he asked me what I thought of them, which is wild to think about now that I’m so removed from that world and happily have been for years. Epitaph was one of the labels he mentioned, but I told him if it were me I’d sign with the other label (I won’t name them here, just in case, but it seemed to me like the “cooler” and more sensible choice for the direction the band were going in, even though it was a smaller label). Obviously I wasn’t the only person he was asking, and he ended up not taking my advice—and he was clearly 100% right not to and they took off from there, as we all know. They went from the virtual pages of the ‘Org and Bandcamp demos to headlining shows in big rooms full of enthusiastic kids screaming along to “Leather Jacket” and “Heart Tattoo.” I take no credit for their success, that’d be psychotic behavior and anyway it would’ve happened to them regardless because they’re so talented and the songs are so great and unique, but it’s admittedly cool to feel like a tiny part of their story in that way and my relationship with their music is, to a degree, informed by all that history. I would love the music just as much if it weren’t, and, this could be a whole other newsletter but once I stopped writing about music in any meaningful way, it’s weird, but I felt like I had to reprogram my brain to just be a fan again and not be constantly thinking about music in the context of label relationships and PR and industry politics and transactional, inside baseball things like that that most people never consider because they just like the way the songs sound and that’s more than enough. That a-ha moment of, “right, I don’t have to care about this shit anymore” was pretty gratifying once it happened, as fun as it is to reminisce about my former life.
This week’s playlist is 68 minutes of my favorite Joyce Manor songs. Definitely shuffle this one and let me know what your favorites are, whether they’re on this playlist or not.
There’s a new episode of GOIN’ COMMANDO out this week. James and I watched the influential 1990 French spy/action movie NIKITA, which neither of us had seen before. I really enjoyed this movie and I hope you check out the show to find out why. Spotify is below, click here for other platforms.
Speaking of anniversaries, the other week was the four-year anniversary of my first and only zine, Shoplift. I regret not better framing these seemingly innocuous stories from my childhood as an indicator of the privilege I had as a white kid. Lots of people shoplift because capitalism has left them with no choice, which is not something I thought about when writing this in 2016 and 2017. I regret that and I’m sorry. Other than that I’m still pretty proud of this thing. You can read it here or below if the embed works if you missed it back then.