Move to New York and decide to start a band

Prior to forming Jawbreaker, Blake Schwarzenbach and Adam Pfahler were childhood friends in Santa Monica, California and classmates at Crossroads High School. In 1986 they moved to New York City to attend New York University and decided to start a band. Seeking a bassist , they responded to a flyer posted on campus by Chris Bauermeister. “It wasn’t just this Xeroxed thing”, Pfahler later recalled, “It was something he had drawn, like a poster. It was all colored and it named all the right bands.” The trio began practicing together at Giant Studios on Sixth Avenue , with Schwarzenbach on guitar and Pfahler on drums . “It was just us, trying to figure each other out in that hourly room for a while”, recalls Schwarzenbach, “We went through a lot of incarnations before we sounded anything like the band we became. I am glad we didn’t play live [very much then], because I had to go through my hardcore phase.” They practiced with several singers and went through several names during this time, eventually settling on the name Rise.