Dear You: A Belated 25th Anniversary Party of Jawbreaker's Greatest Artistic Triumph

I’d seen ads for The Linda Linda’s Vans campaign all over town. I’d always assumed that they were seasoned veterans from the underground alt scene. I was expecting head-to-toe tattoos, crazy dyed hair - you know, your traditional new age punk band vibe. Instead, I was met with four kids dressed in casual school wear. The bassist and apparent frontwoman, Eloise Wong, was literally wearing a kid-sized NASA T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of a rocketship on the front. The guitarist was wearing a Stevie Nicks-esq dress and was rocking a shag haircut (a very on-brand look for a rocker), but she had a total babyface.

The second The Linda Lindas started playing, I was stuck in a near-permanent state of shock. These teenagers were shredding! Bassist Eloise had a scream for Courtney Love to envy. Guitarists Lucia de la Garza and Bela Salazar played with levels of rage and passion that rivaled Bikini Kill. Drummer Mila de la Garza had the skill and style of Dave Grohl - and I kid you not - I googled her age after the show - she was only eleven years old.

The audience consisted of primarily Gen X men, who came to reminisce about their punk days to the sounds of Jawbreaker, but who were now moshing with extreme passion to The Linda Lindas. I could sense the teenager in each of them float to the surface with each new song The Linda Lindas played. It was like the entire crowd was time traveling. There was no doubt in my mind that The Linda Lindas were the true rebirth of punk rock.

The next band up was Grunge band The Lemonheads. The Lemonheads, much like Jawbreaker, were celebrating the anniversary of their biggest album. They played the entirety of their 1992 It’s A Shame About Ray. Everyone around me was buzzing with excitement. I overheard the guy next to me tell his friends how he had met lead singer Evan Dando at the urinal that night and how much of a chill guy and inspiration he is. Now that’s a true fan.

At first, I could totally see where the inspiration came from. These three dudes rocked… for about the first three songs. But, very quickly, the drugs kicked in. The tempo got looser, their eyes started to glaze over. And then, eventually, Dando dropped his guitar and started singing “Frank Mills,” a song from the 1968 Broadway Musical Hair: A Tribal Love Rock Musical to the audience. After the first verse, he dropped the mic too, and began to scream the song into the crowd, conducting the audience under the assumption that we’d all know the words. Spoiler alert: we did not. It was one of the most awkward yet weirdly entertaining moments of the night.

Now, while I’m writing this, I’m listening to The Lemonhead’s album It’s A Shame About Ray and it’s incredible. Dando’s voice is expressive and pleasant to listen to, the guitar riffs are exciting, and the drums are tight (or as tight as Grunge drumming can be, I suppose). I was especially impressed by their cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” They added such an exciting personal flair to the song with their addition of distorted chords and scream-singing style. But, on stage at the Wiltern, the song was a bit of a disaster. “Mrs. Robinson” was one of the last things they played that night and by then, they had completely lost it. Drummer Bill Stevenson was all over the place and Evan had forgotten nearly every lyric. It was genuinely sad to see, especially knowing how good they were in their heyday.

Thank God Jawbreaker, who came onstage just minutes after The Lemonheads finished their set, was everything I’d hoped they’d be and more. This tour was the belated 25th-anniversary celebration of their 1995 album Dear You. They were set to tour during 2020, but we all know what happened there. I was surprised that so many people came to celebrate the album. I knew that Jawbreaker had a passionate following from their indie days back in The Bay Area, but I also happened to know that Dear You was known by some of their fans as their sell-out album. Dear You was their first and only release with Geffen Records, one of the subsidiaries of major label UMG, as a part of a record deal Jawbreaker signed after very publicly announcing that they would never go to the majors. Needless to say, fans didn’t like this and the album flopped.

But on this night, the fans showed up, and they were excited. Everyone around me knew every word and every riff to every song Jawbreaker played all night. And, despite the performance taking place 27 years after the album’s release, Jawbreaker played with the same angst and fervor as they did during their early 20s. They even had the same rebellious tongue-in-cheek banter between songs that I’d only heard rumors of from old fans and articles. At one point lead singer Blake Schwarzenbach announced that “there are three new semi-depressed sheriffs in town and we’ve come to drink coffee and play kickball with your deputy’s head.” Later on, he repeated this phrase, exchanging deputy for “Dick Cheney’s still-beating heart.” Now that’s punk rock.

I found myself moshing along with the hard-core Jawbreaker fans. The music had reached me in some sort of primal way that I couldn’t help but rock out to with the others. While in the throes of the moshpit, I noticed that there were also younger teenagers moshing along with us. Then I realized that some of these fans had brought their families. Parents were teaching their kids the euphoric, rebellious ways of punk rock. Jawbreaker had reached multigenerational status.