DJ Black Jack Shellac

Mechanical music from the Jazz Age. Serving the eastern seaboard since 1923. For your next high-, low-, or mid-brow event.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@mattmondanile I had this exact car, minus the turbo. I can still smell the boiling coolant from two blown head gaskets.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@MissEims This happened to me 13 years ago and took a pic

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@onorma_ Maybe better still, I used to work for Terry Gross as a PA, so I’d get to talk with her every day in her office. THE best human.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@onorma_ I met Conan O’Brien once, a few days before his Late Nite show was about to begin in 1993. I was selling tickets at a tiny art movie house. It was packed and I was the only person who recognized Conan. I let him in for free and wished him good luck. He was thrilled by that.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

This Patrick Stewart line from TNG is always one that I think about every couple of days …

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@TipOfTheBanana I have begun to eat my records. Yum.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@ArcadeChannel Loved the old Fallout songs, found them on actual 78rpm records, bought old phonographs and still gig with them as a side thing. People love hearing them.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@obscenelydolled Please Please Please was on everyone’s tapes. aided by Ferris Bueller

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@TipOfTheBanana Yolo

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

“Dude why don’t you go to concerts anymore?”

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@LewistheLight1 Sorry, is this, like, a co-op record store? That’s a neat idea.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@goth_videos If you have a 12-string guitar and don’t even know how to play it, this song will make you sound like a million dollars

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

My 13 mini 512g soldiers on

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@JakeRudh This House Is Empty Now

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

So strange that for about a 10-month span, people in the early 90s were saying “this bites” to mean “this sucks” or “this blows.” Now “Reality Bites” would probably make more sense as a restaurant name.

[Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81]

There is a movie from 1994 called "Reality Bites" starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller that was a giant hit and a cultural touchstone for that era. It has fallen into obscurity, because today it is like a relic from the distant past or a strange foreign country.

Winona is a brilliant documentary filmmaker, who has a will-they-or-won't they with struggling musician Ethan who is adamantly against selling out or compromising his creative integrity. Then, she meets Ben, who is a corporate suit with an MTV style network. Ben says he can sell Winona's documentary to his company, and Ben and Winona start dating, but all of Winona's friends think Ben is a stuck-up douchebag. Then Winona discovers that Ben has edited her documentary into the style of early 1990s MTV and she dumps him and goes back to Ethan, who was right all along about how Ben was a soulless sellout.

These values are nonexistent today. There are no musicians like Ethan anymore. There is no path to success for them. Every aspiring creative Winona or Ethan is on YouTube or Instagram chasing sponsorships. There is absolutely no compunction about shaping content to suit the audience. Today's Winona would watch hourlong videos about how to make video thumbnails that get better engagement. There is no Ethan Hawke type today who would refuse to shill socks by mail during ad breaks in his podcast.

The movie's one very modern touch is that it has a mid-credits scene like a Marvel movie, which shows a clip of an extremely early-90s laugh-track sitcom about characters based on Winona and Ethan, and then it ends with a reveal that this show was created by Ben Stiller.

Ethan gets the girl, but Ben is the real winner.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” was written by Prince. The lyric “I feel for you, I think I love you” would have been more Princely with a meaning of "I am going to love you so intensely, it's going to overwhelm you, and I almost feel pity for your heart." But no. Just basic love.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@SeracMark @Look_its_Rhonda And the Epicures!

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@HifiSean Lovegod is a fav of mine, and I’m typically no fan of albums. Thanks for the music.

[DJ Black Jack Shellac @djbjshellac]

@WhitStillman Although, if the Angel Eyes harp outro is any indication, he has been unwittingly assumed into the heavens