1. |
Rutland String
06:25
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Rutland String was the name of a folk band Jesylin was a part of, along with our friends Jack and Q. It goes to show her unbridled genius. She could play the sloppiest, most in your face guitar you've ever heard as well as the relaxing yet clearly anguished guitar shown here.
There is a laptop somewhere in the world that has a full unreleased Rutland String album on it. Whoever has that laptop is the luckiest motherfucker in the world.
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2. |
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This was a few days after I got back to Massachusetts in August of 2020. Me and Jes had both had nightmarish pandemic experiences and were constantly on the phone at that time. I'd be drunk in a canyon in California, finally at terms with my trans-ness, and screaming to her in Amherst Massachusetts about how happy I feel in a black dress that would later be a victim to bedbugs. She was at constant odds with her parents who didn't understand who she needed to be to survive. She would tell me about our rats (named Dog and King) that she was taking care of and how she would have to stop them from escaping while she was incomprehensibly stoned making noise music. We talked about how depressed we were and how much we wanted to destroy the bodies we knew we weren't supposed to be in.
Despite the chaos of our lives and how dark it would seem these conversations would be, we were laughing hard every call. She just understood it all somehow. God, I have never been more excited to see someone in my entire life than when I saw Jes August of 2020.
She had been living in this house in Amherst with a ton of our friends since June of 2020. I had come back to Worcester in August and she picked me up in her death trap car that I felt comfortable in because she was in it and we drove an hour to her house. We proceeded to get obliterated off of box wine and jam in the home studio. At some point after, I passed out on the couch. When I woke up Jes was kicking me, holding a joint so close to my face, saying in her signature muted tone "Hey that was the most insane jam we've ever done, the energy was unreal, everyone agrees." I don't remember a fucking second of it. But even then I knew it was her that made it that memorable.
I thought I would never ever hear that jam. Then our friend Parker found a cassette tape a few months ago of this recording in a 4 track Jes owned. The second I heard it I knew. I forgot she was obsessed with recording us onto cassette at the time. She was right to do so, because fuck she sounds god-like. She was why everyone said that was our best jam, because she was undeniably one of the best performers any of us had ever seen. I knew that even without hearing the tape. I'm glad I have proof.
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3. |
A Calm Field
02:51
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The Calm Field was the name of our first real project together. Jes had always been into noise music, and knowing that I was a louder version of her she figured I'd love the genre. She was right. I remember her pushing me to try making noise on this track using the synthesizers, me being insecure and her proclaiming she knew I could pull it off.
This was in 2019. We would go to this tiny, decrepit room in the basement of our college and piss off the entire building by playing this absurdly pissed off music as loud as we could. Half the time we were off our minds on psychedelics. Despite that she would have a completely clear vision of what she wanted to hear. She would invite random friends to come play with us and unleash our rage onto the classrooms above. I never wanted to go, too scared that I'd bring up how I want to be a woman while high as fuck. She'd drag me along, definitely knowing that I had something to say. The Calm Field is the reason I make music today.
A year later she would play a Calm Field tape we made to my friends from high school. They were terrified of the music. She laughed uncontrollably at that response. That's just what she was like. Laughing at the people that didn't understand the immense pain we were in together.
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4. |
Jes and Arsen
03:12
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This recording is titled that because at the very end you can hear Jesylin talking to our friend Arsen, who also passed away, about catching a bus. It was at the Amherst house. Jes and I had done probably a little too much molly. All of our friends were there. I remember just staring at Jes and seeing how full of bliss she was, witnessing the unbelievable community she had conjured. I don't remember much from that day, but I do remember my heart bursting out of my chest when I saw how happy she was.
The last few months had been catastrophic. We knew more damage would come. We kept lying to ourselves about it. But I had found the only other person who was willing to smash into a wall going 120 with me, and Jes was smiling, so it didn't matter.
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5. |
Bert
02:05
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I will never in my life forget this story.
Bert was a character from my hometown. He lived above the only convenience store that would sell booze to minors, hung out at said convenience store at all hours of the night, and was addicted to crack. He was known for drinking cans of Strawberita in mere seconds, believing cameras are all over the woods and are constantly watching specifically him, and inexplicably shooting 3 shots in the air with his glock just outside of his apartment one day. And he was a creep. But he bought us booze so we tried to ignore that.
Around late May of 2019 Jes came to visit me in New York. I had told her countless Bert stories and she was fascinated by him. From the literal day I met her I had told her tales of this entity who would ride around my town on a children's bike and buy me disgustingly cheap booze. She was ridiculously excited about seeing this unhinged oddity of a human being in the flesh. So I brought her to the convenience store to buy 40s. And of course, Bert was there.
We walk up to Bert, and I very enthusiastically introduce him to Jes. He seems uncharacteristically depressed. In all my years of studying Bert I had never seen him down. Jes, despite barely knowing this known menace, asks him whats wrong. He tells us his girlfriend had died that morning in his bed. Obviously, we felt deep sympathy for him, and when he asked if we could buy him a Four Loko Jes offered to pay.
We walk up to the counter with our drinks and his. Jes begins to pay. It is summer. Bert looks out the open door of the convenience store. He sees a group of clearly young high school girls in bikinis heading to the beach. He says "Damn, gotta love those Mamaroneck girls," the name of my hometown. Jes turns to him and with zero hesitation, in her unnaturally Daria-esque voice, says "those are high school girls. What's wrong with you? Your girlfriend just died and you're deciding to oggle minors?"
Bert grabbed his drink, looked at us, nodded, and walked off in silence. No soul could stop Jes. We wrote this song after that.
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6. |
Agent of Chaos
07:09
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I've never been positive, but I'm pretty sure this was from the infamous "Penis envy/Sigmund Freud" era.
Holy shit were we in love back then. We had each found what felt like the only broken being that could love the other's equally broken vessel. That's when she truly blossomed into this beautiful car crash that for whatever reason you wanted to be a part of more than anything. We would go to grocery stores, raid the meat and cheese section, every time completely failing to obscure our thievery. She'd drive us to a random abandoned building (somehow she knew every single dilapidated structure in the entire state) and we would have our feast. We'd scream directly into each other's mouthes. We'd talk nonstop about those full bottles of wine we found in the trash that one time and how it was definitely a message from God. We'd drive to a neighboring state, terrorize a town with our queerness, snag everything in reach and struggle not to pass out on the way home. It was pure chaos. It was everything we had ever dreamed of.
She had been building this insane collection of stick and poke tattoos she was doing herself on her left calf. She was without a doubt the worst tattoo artist I have ever seen. She'd push the needle so far deep that the ink would create these unnaturally thick black blobs. It was hilarious. Every week or so a new tattoo would materialize and the collection would build. And they weren't really what you would call "artistic" either. She had a row of smiley faces that only happened because she was gonna do a sad face next to the first smiley. She accidentally gave herself another smiley instead. So she said fuck it and just made more of them. She was so proud of that sleeve and would show it to everyone and they'd instantly smile.
You could never predict what a day with Jes would be like. It's what made her feel so ethereal. Even now thinking back I still say "there is no way I knew this girl no one on Earth could cause this much of a glorious disruption." She was the only girl that could.
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7. |
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Every Dumpster Dicks show used to open with this cover. We loved Ween so much and listened to them non stop so it felt right to cover them. This was the first time I had done vocals for any of her music and she saw we both had the same anger in each other, and I had enough to scream about it. She would play the riff as fast as she fucking could and I'd just be in awe of her. This recording is the birth of Dumpster Dicks. It's literally the first recording as a band we did together that we took seriously.
We had been in a band before, called Garbage Gang. It was the name of our old friend group before that completely fell apart. We had recorded two songs as a band, but me and Jes both knew they were fucking awful. We didn't really have any control in that. After that group disbanded, me and Jes stuck together. We kept playing this song and an original that was her playing as fast as she possibly could for 20 minutes as I screamed till it hurt about addiction in the suburbs.
We played this at our first ever show as Dumpster Dicks, a name Bex had given us not even 5 minutes before going on stage. Jes immediately loved it. I didn't. We had started talking during those drives to nowhere about how strange we felt pretending to be comfortable in our bodies, not saying the obvious part out loud yet. She was more ahead of it than I was, and she did that bizarrely infectious calm yet manic laugh when she heard the name. It's fucking impossible to forget that laugh.
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8. |
Amherst Blues
03:09
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This was a random throwaway jam we did together. I don't have much information on it because truthfully we were probably wasted. I listen to this all the time. It's just a perfect showcase of how absurdly expressive she was with whatever piece of shit guitar she could get her hands on. She did it all completely improvised. There was just a switch that would click on in her brain and magically the most insanely structured riff would just pop out. It was beautiful. She was beautiful.
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9. |
4212020
07:29
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A month after she passed, a recording of Jes spontaneously appeared on Anna's google drive. This is a piece of that recording, dated 4/21/2020. She must've recorded a noise tape she did in her basement. I like to imagine she used whatever energy she had in the spirit world to give us all a gift. An actual goodbye.
She would call me and rant about how horrible it was being forced to live with her parents, and I would tell her how barren my house felt. She would hatch elaborate schemes to get us money so we could get drunk and watch Begotten or Stalker for the 5000th time. We had this road trip planned that was actually more of an abstract thought than a plan. She just wanted to run. I just wanted to follow. By any means necessary. We'd talk about visiting Maine, destroying Florida, and getting as many speeding tickets as theoretically possible. If only we did. If only we did.
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10. |
Sunday Morning
03:22
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Mike gave me this recording of her performing Sunday Morning in 2017. Do not read this message. Just listen to her elegantly fragile voice.
I love you Jesylin. I love you I love you I love you I love you. I hope this made you blush, wherever you are.
Thank you for reading and listening.
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DUMPSTER DICKS Worcester, Massachusetts
slut punk is gay punk.
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