John Jacob Jaunt

We woke up this morning never having heard of Funny/Not Funny, Elephant Child, John Jacob, and a lot of other stuff we don't need to mention right now. A simple search for The Super Vacations' "Controller," though, took us right where we didn't know we needed to be, the Funny/Not Funny Bandcamp Mixtape page. We sampled every song on all four mixtapes and liked John Jacob best. So who is he? Or are they?

John Jacob is apparently a set of identical octuplets from Harrisonburg, VA, offspring of Elephant Child, and maker(s) of very nice Sweetheart-era Byrdsian jangle, Kinks/Whosian strumming/power chording, and other musical goodstuff. We spent a happy couple of hours sampling every one of his/their songs and would like to put you in touch with the ones we liked best/downloaded for free.

The first one we found was on the Funny/Not Funny Summer 2011 Mixtape.


Then we found the John Jacob Bandcamp page, and it was off to the rodeo. Although we attended at least two schools with ursine mascots and were ever-so-slightly offended by this next title, we got over it as soon as JJ jangled.


Then, lo and behold, we found that "Future Girlfriend" was actually part of an excellent three-song EP that included the excellent "Scanners" and a cover from that first LP by The Police. Sure, we're repeating "Future Girlfriend," but we're fairly certain little harm will be done thereby.


Next came a couple of LPs named after months in a couple of years. Although the widgets say "Buy" – and Buy you should should you like – you can download both LPs in their entirety for free. You'll see what we mean if you go here and here. So here are several we liked from those two LPs.




We hope you have enjoyed this jaunty little episode. There's plenty more where these came from.