What do you get when you combine veteran members of Chrome Cranks, Gang Green, Motorbike with Cincinnati street-savvy working class Punk values? The answer is one bruiser of a near-perfect and rollicking debut album from The Stabbing Jabs! From the red-hot street punk n roll comet streak of “Broken Brain” to album closer “You’re A Drag” (which almost sounds like it could be an early Unsane cut), your ass will be walloped. If you’re dead tired of over-produced and bigoted garbage like Falling In Reverse being called “punk”, here is a great place for something a million times more authentic.
Peter Aaron, William G. Weber, Chris Donnelly, Andy Jody, and Jamie Morrison have the cure for what ails ya and it was imperative a conversation about it happened for Ghost Cult! I spoke to vocalist Peter Aaron about the record, released first in Europe on French label Beast Records and now in the USA on Reptilian Records. Peter was gracious and forthcoming about the circumstances that begat this tremendously rip-roaring monster.
Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult Magazine: The Jabs sort of effortlessly seem to embody physicality, aesthetic and sound in a swirl of energy. I say that cuz I don’t want to imply at all that anything is conceptually undercooked, but rather that many bands now seem to over think things instead of just…being good, hahaha. That’s why I loved The Bronx when they came out cuz they just sorta ripped. As soon as you hit play on The Stabbing Jabs “Broken Brain” it hits the ground running. Was it always a goal to sort of have this “train in motion” element to the songs?
Peter Aaron: Yep, you nailed it. Exactly. I think it’s safe to say that we all feel like at the moment there’s too much music being produced that overthinks itself and is, to put it simply, trying too hard. The dominant trend in popular music at the moment seems to be one of overconceptualizing and trying to hard to be clever or profound. There’s certainly a need for some of that; it’s part of what keeps music interesting. But the basic, gut-human, below-the-belt instinct of just opening the tap and letting it fly feels like it’s being overlooked and not upheld sufficiently. Underrepresented. There has to be some foundational, bedrock grunt going on here — not just in rock ’n’ roll or music in general but in art, period — or the universe will collapse. Someone has to do this kind of elemental shit. It’s important. And when we do it, it’s like, “Oh yeah — this feels great and it’s why we got into playing music in the first place.”
GCM: How did the band come together and how long have you all known one another? Obviously you and William have known one another. The band all have a great mutual pedigree of real rock n roll. I love how grimy the sound is, especially on “Little Lamb.” Great balance of early punk and rock n roll elements.
PA: Thanks! Yeah, William, Chris, and I have all known each other for decades. Before the Chrome Cranks started (ca. 1988), I was briefly in Human Zoo with William, and before that I was in Sluggo with Chris. Andy and the rest of us met when we started the band, but it feel like we go back just as long. We had a different bassist for the first few gigs and the recording; Jamie is a long-time buds of Andy’s, so we’re happy to have him aboard. The Jabs actually began with the idea of us being a one-off cover band. In 1989 I started doing the booking at a club in Cincinnati called Murphy’s Pub, putting on early shows by Nirvana, L7, the Jesus Lizard, and other touring and local underground bands of the time. In 2019 the owners decided to put together a 30th anniversary weekend to celebrate the era of the venue when I’d been involved, and they invited me to emcee it. Around the time of that event, we were living in Cincinnati, an archival compilation of early local punk tracks that I’d assembled was set to be released. So I got the idea to put together a band of local musicians just to do a few songs off the comp at the show. One, fun, and done. Playing up the local theme, we called it Harambe’s Heroes (a reference to the 2016 shooting of the gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo, which made national headlines). But we had such a blast and sounded so great that we decided to keep it going with original material. We did a couple more gigs under that disposable name and recorded nine or so songs in early 2020 before becoming the Stabbing Jabs to gig and record the rest of the album the following year.
GCM: I was sad about Willie Mays and James Chance both dying on June 18th this year. In a way though they are both great American underdogs who became symbols in their respective fields for not backing down. I am glad some (not all) younger hardcore bands seem to be remembering to confront people with things they don’t want to face these days. As a writer and musician, how aware are you of the balance between being in the present moment and also embodying “where you have been”?
PA: Well said. Yes, very sad to lose both of those icons. Regarding the balance stuff, the art comes from you, but at the same time it’s independent of you. If something’s not right, you’ll feel that and you’ll know it. As an artist, especially a rock ’n’ roll artist, you must trust and listen your gut — not your brain — and know when to stay out of the way.
GCM: Where is everyone in the band located? It says Cincinnati on the Bandcamp, but I know you don’t all live there. I mean, I know you are in The Hudson Valley, Peter. (Not to sound creepy, like – “I know where you live!”)
PA: I live here and Chris has been in St. Petersburg, Florida, for the past couple of years. The other guys are in Cincinnati, which is where the essential spiritual heart of the band will always be.
GCM: How many shows have you done so far? The record feels like it is coursing through your veins like you have lived in these songs a lot. But they are pretty new! So maybe that is cuz you guys can rock in your sleep?
PA: We’ve done about four shows at this point. Some of the songs I had written before the Stabbing Jabs came into being, two are covers of older Cincinnati bands that we learned for the first show, and there are a couple that I wrote once the band got going. It’s true: We deeply share the common language of this style of music, and we know how it’s supposed to be played, largely because we’ve all been doing it for so long and have also been exposed to so much music in general. There’s not a lot of talking about stuff. We just learn the songs and play, letting the music exist and breathe.
GCM: Ok, what is the most pretentious prog-rock album you own? Hahaha. Like do you ever run out of things to rebel against and so you rebel against yourself and blast “Tales from Topographic Oceans”? Lmao. I am just kidding but also can’t say shit, cuz my musical taste is so schizophrenic. I’ll go from Aurora to Gravediggaz. Are we past the age of “guilty pleasures” in 2024 where everything is kind of stripped of meaning and shoved in Amazon commercials anyway? No war but class war, but it is ok to still be a niche genre snob…maybe? Is gatekeeping always wrong? Haha.
PA: Haha! Gatekeeping kills the music by not opening it up to future generations. I do own some pretentious records, mostly because I think they’re funny. Like the 1968 self-titled LP by Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood on the Impulse! label, a hilarious record. But you know, there’s good and bad everything. And of course, it’s healthy to, like you say, rebel against or challenge yourself instead of always staying in your comfort zone. Some stuff you listen to just for distraction, not to get anything big from it. Which is fine; not everything has to be a direct influence or profound. It brings levity and helps accentuate the real stuff as well. Phony bullshit is still phony bullshit, of course. But over time it hits you, more and more as you hear music, how, with real, honest music at least, it’s really all different ways of saying the same thing. Different ways of conveying the same truths and emotions. Which keeps things interesting.
Buy Stabbing Jabs music and merch here:
https://thestabbingjabs.bandcamp.com/album/the-stabbing-jabs
https://www.instagram.com/reptilianrecords
MORGAN Y. EVANS
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