Jawbreaker was a popular San Francisco punk rock band in the 1990s. They had their roots in Los Angeles, where members Blake Schwarzenbach and Adam Pfahler were students at the exclusive private Crossroads High School. The band came together when they met bass player Chris Bauermeister at New York University in 1988.
Jawbreaker had seemed poised for critical and commercial success by the time of their last album, Dear You. Despite a vigorous marketing push, Jawbreaker's album sales were anemic in the wake of a post- Green Day market, and was one of the causes leading to the end of the band's career. Surviving members of the group recently reacquired the rights to Dear You and have successfully put the long out-of-print album back into circulation.
The band's cult status as the definitive nineties post-" emo" band has grown since its breakup, and songs like "Kiss the Bottle" and "Jet Black" are referenced as influences by bands such as Sparta. In 2003, a Jawbreaker tribute album, Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault was released on Dying Wish Records, and featured covers by 18 bands including Fall Out Boy, Nerf Herder, Sparta and Face To Face.
Singer Blake Schwarzenbach went on to form the New York City-based band Jets to Brazil, who have also since broken up, and is now an adjunct English professor at New York University.
