Jesse is Alive!!

Growing up on the east coast, one's teenage punk cred was certainly accentuated by knowledge of left coast bands - you know that whole "the more unfamilar, or obscure, the better" thing.  And it's a really, really big deal when you're a fifteen year old girl, attending private school, running away from home and pretending to be homeless (yes, I did this).
I wanted to be a gutter punk when I was fifteen and Gilman Street in San Francisco seemed like the place to be - ten year earlier.  Nonetheless, I voraciously read about the Bay Area punk rock scene that existed ten years my senior - as if my knowledge of Gilman Street and Operation Ivy would transport me back in time to actually partake in the scene I idolized so fervently.  I listened to their album Energy ad nauseum, and developed an invented a sense of nostalgia for the scene - a nostalgia punctuated with heart bubbles for lead singer Jesse Michaels.

In 1998, most girls my age pined over glossy centerfolds of Justin from N'Sync; I was drooling over a wrinkled black and white printout 
of Jesse from Op Ivy. Sure it was a bit strange that I was on a mission to find a man that I really knew nothing about, but that made the fantasy even better - reality wasn't much of a factor.
When it came to my attention that Jesse was MIA (perusal of punk zines and very analog websites led me to this conclusion when my AOL search for Jesse Op Ivy rendered nada), I made it my mission to FIND JESSE.
My scrupulous search efforts, which consisted of going to local punk rock shows and talking about my mission to find Jesse, were short lived - two weeks in, I think I turned sixteen and got a car.....

In the ten years since, I my love for Op Ivy has remained strong, but I passed Jesse off as dead and gone, forgetting about that tiny time in my life when he meant so much.  UNTIL, I came across the book Gimme Something Better, which chronicles the Bay Area Scene in its heyday and interviews all the heavy lifters.  A book on the bay area punk rock scene is enough to make me feel super special inside, but when I saw that the introduction was penned by JESSE MICHAELS I almost hit the floor.

To make sure that I wasn't hallucinating, or that the authors were stealing quips from 1987, I googled Jesse Michaels, and right before my eyes expounded a plethora of links about him.  He wasn't dead, he was clearly alive and well - moonlighting in bands, creating artwork, being interviewed - I couldn't believe it.  There is a wikipedia page solely about Jesse Michaels and his influence on the punk-ska movement. 

I'm still in shock about all of this - it's like uncovering a secret that you have spent the past fifteen years (not) wondering about.  I'm sure most of you don't share my feelings of discovery and excitement about Jesse being alive, but you can get super pumped on the spectacular music that he, Tim Armstrong, Matt Freeman and Dave Mello created through Operation Ivy.  The band was only together for two years, but their influence will be felt for a lifetime. 
ahhhh memories.


Operation Ivy - Bad Town
Operation Ivy - Here We Go Again
Operation Ivy - Sound System