In the wake of the overwhelming success of Nirvana’s Nevermind, major labels in the early/mid-’90s began signing any and every cool indie band they could in hopes of a similar payoff. One such outfit was Jawbox, a Washington, D.C., post-punk quartet that had issued two promising albums on the indier-than-thou Dischord label. The band—guitarist/vocalist J. Robbins, guitarist Bill Barbot, bassist Kim Coletta and drummer Zachary Barocas—signed to Atlantic and released the excellent For Your Own Special Sweetheart in 1994. (Though MAGNET named it the fifth-best album that year, Sweetheart was far from a commercial hit.) In 1996, Jawbox issued a slicker self-titled LP, which also failed to catch on beyond the indie-rock crowd, and the band broke up the following year. Dischord has just reissued For Your Own Special Sweetheart with three bonus tracks, and to celebrate, Jawbox is reuniting for a one-off performance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon tomorrow night. Barbot is also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Barbot: We travel to Vermont just about twice a year, at least once in the summer and again to snowboard and ski in the winter. The summer trip is always a funny one; when I tell people we’re heading to Vermont for a couple of weeks in June, they look at me as if I’d told them I was planning on vacationing in South Dakota. Their mouths say, “Oh, it must be nice … What do you do up there?” but their eyes say, “Jesus, what are you, antiquing?” Suits us fine. In winter, the Green Mountain State gets littered with New Yorker and Bostonian ski bunnies, but summer sees far fewer flatlanders like us around to wreck the scenery. And what scenery it is, rolling pastures and green mountains unmarred by a single billboard (they’re illegal), dotted by little towns with clapboard houses and sparkling Congregational churches standing watch over real-live village greens. Yeah, Burlington’s got some hippy litter, but it’s easily ignored when you’re always minutes from an unpolluted lake, a vacant trail, an excellent bike shop and a stellar farmer’s market. And the farmer’s markets are almost worth the trip in and of themselves. The hippies roll up with some serious handmade action, spinning yarn practically off the back of a sheep or peddling homemade honey in handmade glass jars. But the cheesemakers are what will keep you coming back. Vermont boasts more cows than people, and their skills in the milk world are stellar, especially considering the size of the state. (Only Wyoming has fewer humans.) Take Jasper Hill Farm‘s Bayley Hazen Blue. Tangy, sweet, crumbly but creamy and a knockout with pears and a baguette. While every so often, if you’re lucky, you get a hint of liquorice from the magical mold (penecillium roqueforti!), what you always get is authentic Vermont terroir: the taste of the grass, the earth, the milk, the snow. The mountains. See you in January. Video after the jump.
