#342 (of 365) "Heartilation" AJJ

The artist formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad is a band I was into in the first half of the last decade, after 2014's Christmas Island. This track comes off of one of their first albums, and while I think I explored their back catalog at the time, it was a more recent resurgence of interest that brings this song onto the list of my favorite songs ever. Sometime after Christmas Island, Sean Bonnette decided to change the band's name to AJJ, as both parts of the original name were potentially offensive. Unfortunately, in my overwhelmed music fandom of the late 2010s--with blogs no longer popular and music review sites a shell of themselves--I never heard this news and Apple Music didn't either, not able to recommend new tracks from AJJ. It wasn't until 2019 or so that I found out the news and discovered The Bible 2, but mostly it was COVID, and the nightly acoustic shows Bonnette put on during the first few months of the pandemic on Instagram. At roughly 10:30 pm EST from April 2020 through at least the summer, Bonnette would sit in a room in his house he'd constructed into a studio of sorts, talk to his fans through Instagram, and play about 30 minutes of music. AJJ songs, cover songs, maybe some new songs. And for a while there, I listened every night. One of the few joyous memories of that time. And a way to experience "live" music again--something I wouldn't be able to do for almost the remainder of that difficult year.

Anyway, AJJ/Andrew Jackson Jihad have 7 songs on this list, and almost all of them I fell in love with after watching Bonnette pour out his heart with free music to get us to bed every night during the end of the first horrendous Trump administration. We can only hope the next one doesn't go as badly, but I don't have much hope for that anymore.

I wanna break apart my heart, Glue the pieces to my car
Crash it into a wall, I don't want to feel at all
I want to break apart my heart
Douse it in gasoline, So the fire burns clean
Flick a cigarette like that movie "Con Air"
Doused in gasoline
And if you think you are better than me
You're right
There's no one to love
There's no one to trust
In my life

"Heartilation" - AJJ // Can't Maintain (2009)

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This "Live from Quarantine" session is from May 23, 2020. "Heartilation" is the second track.

Today's set (mega medley): 0:02 AJJ - Brave as a Noun 1:14 AJJ - Heartilation 3:25 AJJ - Love in Your Heart 4:45 Kimya Dawson - Hadlock Padlock 8:34 AJJ - A Poem 13:50 AJJ - Linda Ronstadt 17:18 The Mountain Goats - Alpha Rat's Nest
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