Yesterday, Megan Seling posted this video for the awesome Promise Ring song “Why Did Ever We Meet?” We talked about different Promise Ring records (Megan loves only Nothing Feels Good; I love that one as well as 30 Degrees Everywhere, the Horse Latitiudes, the Boys + Girls EP, the song “Make Me a Mixtape,” and under the right conditions—young and in love and just home from Chicago—I even loved Very Emergency). Nobody likes Wood/Water—that thing is a monster.

But ranking Promise Ring records is beside the point. The point is that I asked Megan, “Well, if you like the Promise Ring, you must have heard Cap’n’Jazz, right?”

(crickets)

Oh, man! How can you like the Promise Ring and never listen to Cap’n’Jazz. It’s like being a fan of New Order, but then saying, “Oh, Joy Division? Never really gave ‘em a listen.” You have to listen to them. (Although, Joy Division:New Order::Cap’n’Jazz:Promise Ring doesn’t quite work, because Ian Curtis kills himself, whereas Tim Kinsella just goes off and forms Joan of Arc and a million other bands.)

But there are so many reasons to listen to Cap’n’Jazz: You get to hear the larval stage of both the Promise Ring and Joan of Arc, their songs stand as some of the best of the mid-90s midwest emocore (Braid scored some hits there too), and dudes were all like 15 or 16 fronting one of the decade’s most seminal punk/indie bands. Fucking crazy!

The place to start is, of course, the band’s awesome posthumous double disc collection on Jade Tree, Analphabetapolothology. But in the meantime, someone has posted some rad old live footage of the band rocking some Illinois bingo hall basement: