Avant-garde. Sophisticated. - Jon

Happy birthday! -for some reason on this occasion, at this point in time, I offer you this song. - Tom

In the 1920s and '30s, men in jug and jazz bands said "Yowza!" almost as often as they said "Yas, Yas!" - a tendency exhaustively exhibited in the late recordings of the Memphis Jug Band, viz. "Ruckus Juice and Chittlin'," "Gator Wobble," "Insane Crazy Blues." These exclamations, forever gone from the language, come to mind whenever i see Joanna Yas - and not merely for her name. Without question, Joanna embodies all the qualities any reasonable person would associate with such terms. So, in the spirit of her birthday, don't just call Joanna "Yas," call her Joanna "Yowza." I do. - Andrew

Happy Birthday Joanna. Bert Jansch is coming so I got you a ticket. xx - Sam

Joanna is impossibly sweet and refreshingly tart and really really saucy and if I were a country there would be a national feast day every May 18th where we would eat food dressed with a complex and delicious sweet and tart sauce called Joanna Sauce and then we would spend the next 364 days wishing we could have some Joanna Sauce every day. - Ethan

By Joanna Yas I am always slanted and enchanted. She is the queen of whatever borough she graces, and for her next year I and many others wish lots of further success and love and happiness, local and otherwise. Love - Matthew

WORD YOU USED TO SAY
Dean & Britta
Back Numbers
Zoe/Rounder : 2007
[Buy It]

Last week was the Open City Magazine Spring Prom. Joanna reigned queen. For me, it was high school all over: I was drunk, idling by the bleachers, nursing sweaty-palmed crushes on people other than my date. The Open City version was held at a bookstore, so there weren't any bleachers. But they'd turned the biographies table into a bar, so I idled there. For that night I was stalking Britta Phillips, of Dean and Britta, of Luna, and of my first adolescent stirrings at the hands of a capable woman, Jem and the Hollograms.

Jem was the holographic alter-ego of Starlight Records founder and ceo, Jerrica Benton. Nights on Sunset, Jem would shatter hearts with skirts the violating shades of the Genera-brand rainbow, set pubescent imaginations afire with her rhinestone-studded fingerless gloves. During the day, a demure Jerrica padded those same fingers through Starlight's double sets of books, doing the complicated arthimetic of keeping her original indie label afloat, all the while fending off boozy passes from A and R sleazemen looking to buy their way onto the Starlight.

Jem was the inspired marketing ploy of the Hasbro Toy company, and Britta Phillips was her voice. So when Britta Phillips appeared on the invite as a patron of Open City, I set myself to finally meet Jem.

I never got to meet Britta. Or Jem. I'm not even sure if she was there. But I did meet Alex. I don’'t remember spilling anything on him nor borrowing any money, so I was surprised to get an email from him this morning.

I was more surprised to hear that Joanna was celebrating a birthday this week. For I was certain that Joanna and I had agreed not to age. Admittedly, this is more of my hang-up than hers; I'’d been hiding from my birthday for years when the subject came up. But when I voiced the idea last summer, she seemed open to it, we tried it on that night.

I'’m not pathologic about it. I had just planned on a few years off from birthdays, lingering at 28 until some greater sign was delivered upon me, something that told me it was alright to move on, call it time served. For me, birthdays always meant reconciling with accomplishment, or lack thereof, of pride in what you'’ve achieved. Years have passed. I’'ve remained birthdayless, as if that is all it will take to live a life where compromises and commitments don'’t have to be made, to live past the markers of adulthood that try to box us into predictability and labels. The labels that would have us choose between becoming a holographic rockstar or successful entrepreneur. The same labels and predictability that Jem and Jerrica laid to waste.

But Jem, if attendance at the Open City fundraiser is any indication, doesn’'t exist. Joanna does. Joanna, who commands the impossible task of keeping an enviable literary magazine afloat by day, who ravages the hearts of audiophillic moistdorks - and few others - by night. No holographic alter-ego. No shortage of foiled passes from drunken agents and editors, either. As for rhinestone-studded fingerless gloves, well, you can ask her.

Jem was lucky. She was a cartoon, held frozen in the slutty florescence by the colorists at Hasbro. Jem never had to choose whether or not to celebrate a birthday. But with all she had going for her, she’'d be right to indulge the passing of a year with one hell of a party. So I'm certain that Jerrica Benton would never hide from her birthday. Because i know that Joanna wouldn'’t, either.

Happy twenty-ninth, boo.
love mike

Labels: alex, joanna, rock