Rimbaud at the food court
January 12, 2017 2:33 PM Subscribe
"When I went inside the venue, a marching band was playing Jimmy Eat World’s 'The Middle,' and the ceiling was covered with 'SAD AF' balloons. To my right, a pair of husky lurkers talked about the Promise Ring; to my right, three girls who appeared to be dressed for social media Snapchatted themselves singing along to 'Mr. Brightside,' the 2004 hit by the Killers, which was playing over the speakers. The Killers were not emo." The Rise of Emo Nostalgia, by Jia Tolentino for the New Yorker.
I'm a little bit older than Tolentino (ok, maybe more than a bit?), but I wonder about the line "as a teen-ager, I was both attracted to and angry about the total absence of female voices in emo." It was definitely a male-teenage-angst genre, so no argument there. But also, I mean, Rainer Maria?
posted by migrantology at 3:13 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by migrantology at 3:13 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
But also, I mean, Rainer Maria?
If you're nitpicking the word "total", okay. But I honestly can't think of any band aside from that one.
posted by naju at 3:17 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you're nitpicking the word "total", okay. But I honestly can't think of any band aside from that one.
posted by naju at 3:17 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Wasn't Paramore kind of emo?
posted by Selena777 at 3:18 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 3:18 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
I went to one of these at a club here in Portland a couple months ago (I can't remember if they were going with the Taking Back Tuesday or Emo Nite branding, or both). I agree that most of it did not really strike me as what I think of as emo music per se, and "emo dance music" probably causes some brains to kink up in weird ways, but everyone there was 100% into it and it was completely amazing. The people I was with were into "real" emo (don't ask me to define that, since I mostly missed it myself), but still knew and loved all of what did play.
From the article:
"When I asked him what the scene reminded him of, he said, “A group of middle schoolers who are really excited to be at the dance on the final night of camp.”
Absolutely yes. I loved it.
posted by curious nu at 3:19 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
From the article:
"When I asked him what the scene reminded him of, he said, “A group of middle schoolers who are really excited to be at the dance on the final night of camp.”
Absolutely yes. I loved it.
posted by curious nu at 3:19 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know, the 80's Night I went to in 2002 played Ladytron, because 80s standards were mastered for vinyl and didn't have the bass oomph needed to shake modern asses and fill modern glasses. Vegas casinos geared to the 24-35 age group play decade-old almost #1s to make their patrons feel like they did when they had fewer responsibilities. Recent nostalgia and the exploitation of it isn't a new thing.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:31 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 3:31 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
It was definitely a male-teenage-angst genre, so no argument there.
By analogy to "bluesmen", I propose that these angsty male musicians be known as "emomen".
posted by thelonius at 3:32 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
By analogy to "bluesmen", I propose that these angsty male musicians be known as "emomen".
posted by thelonius at 3:32 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
No argument that nostalgia-as-garish-farce is not a new thing, but there's still something that riles me up about this shit...
posted by naju at 3:36 PM on January 12, 2017
posted by naju at 3:36 PM on January 12, 2017
fad as suck
posted by beerperson at 3:39 PM on January 12, 2017 [29 favorites]
posted by beerperson at 3:39 PM on January 12, 2017 [29 favorites]
When I was young and active in subcultures emo was seen as whiney punk rock. I was caught entirely off guard when it became the next evolution of mall goth and I have no idea what it is now.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [16 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [16 favorites]
There was a time in the late 90s when I could guess with near precision how old you were by what you defined as "emo" . . . and then all the bands this article is about happened and It seemed like emo became a generalised shorthand for "unhappy teenager working out feelings about puberty via their hair."
posted by thivaia at 3:45 PM on January 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 3:45 PM on January 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
I won't lie, I have some of this nostalgia. No one else I knew was into this stuff the first go-'round, though, so it's almost better now.
posted by limeonaire at 3:46 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by limeonaire at 3:46 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know how at the beginning of Beetlejuice, Lydia is all: "My whole life is a dark room. One. Big. Dark. Room." But then at the end, she's literally dancing in mid-air? This is like that. Feel-good emo. Shake, shake, shake, Senora, Shake your body line. Shake, shake, shake, Senora, Shake it all the time.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:52 PM on January 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:52 PM on January 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
There's a part of me that thinks I should stop being a stick in the mud, and embrace the mall-goth emo resurgence as a knowing celebration of Camp. not sure if i'll ever get there though...
posted by naju at 3:55 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by naju at 3:55 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Rainy Day Real Estate is barely emo.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
In 2000 I dated a girl who was into Get Up Kids and Rites of Spring, who told me that emo was over. Dashboard Confessional became popular around that time, and I figured that was the death knell of emo. In college, around 2006, Panic!, Fallout Boy, etc. became popular and people started talking about emo, and I thought "surely now emo is over." In the early 2010s shit like crabcore (I'm struggling to think of a band here... Attack! Attack! maybe?) became popular, and, certainly, that was what would kill emo. Anyway, it appears emo is an enduring concept.
posted by codacorolla at 3:58 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 3:58 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Can't we all just listen to The Cure again? Get up, Robert Smith! Drink your Ensure and put on your red lips! We need you!
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:22 PM on January 12, 2017 [20 favorites]
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:22 PM on January 12, 2017 [20 favorites]
Huskies, huh. Would have expected poodles, or maybe those yellow labs that are so yellow they're almost white.
posted by mannequito at 4:28 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by mannequito at 4:28 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I just remember chatting with a co-worker in 2006 who confided in me that he was worried about his 13-year-old son, who was getting into the emo scene. "Do you know what emo means?" he asked earnestly. "It's short for emotional."
I didn't know what to say to that. My co-worker stared into the distance, also at a loss but for entirely different reasons, and added, "I don't know why Malcolm couldn't have just been a skater kid like Brandon."
posted by infinitewindow at 4:28 PM on January 12, 2017 [28 favorites]
I didn't know what to say to that. My co-worker stared into the distance, also at a loss but for entirely different reasons, and added, "I don't know why Malcolm couldn't have just been a skater kid like Brandon."
posted by infinitewindow at 4:28 PM on January 12, 2017 [28 favorites]
I just spent a goddamn fortune on a P!ATD ticket for my middle schooler.
posted by padraigin at 4:37 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by padraigin at 4:37 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
If you're nitpicking the word "total", okay. But I honestly can't think of any band aside from that one.
Also Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Carissa's Weird (ish), and Jejune, and I wasn't ever super into the scene.
…
There was a time in the late 90s when I could guess with near precision how old you were by what you defined as "emo"
This. I was probably too glib to make the small point I was going for. I meant to point out how narrow a temporal window Tolentino was drawing around emo and its politics. In my late adolescence, Rainer Maria was "the most-emo emo band." So in my generational(?) experience of emo, the exception to "total absence of women" is…the quintessential emo band. There's a story about masculinity and misogyny in emo, not just an atemporal description, I think.
posted by migrantology at 4:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Also Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Carissa's Weird (ish), and Jejune, and I wasn't ever super into the scene.
…
There was a time in the late 90s when I could guess with near precision how old you were by what you defined as "emo"
This. I was probably too glib to make the small point I was going for. I meant to point out how narrow a temporal window Tolentino was drawing around emo and its politics. In my late adolescence, Rainer Maria was "the most-emo emo band." So in my generational(?) experience of emo, the exception to "total absence of women" is…the quintessential emo band. There's a story about masculinity and misogyny in emo, not just an atemporal description, I think.
posted by migrantology at 4:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
There's a story about masculinity and misogyny in emo, not just an atemporal description, I think.
Yeah - I feel like a bunch of bands I listened to that were at least considered emo-adjacent featured female vocals more or less prominently, granted that most of them didn't really hit pop radio. But there's also this weird temporal-definitional thing going on. I'm probably a little too old to have been directly in the crowd for a lot of the stuff in the article, but also there was no music scene to get into where I was a highschooler (let alone any kind of real punk / d.i.y. / indie anything) so my being into bands like the Get Up Kids is probably time-shifted later than it properly should have been. What I knew about punk in the 90s was pretty much Green Day. And I can't really think about this kind of music without an overlay of things that were pretty specific to Nebraska in the early 2000s - the Omaha scene, people who played shitty college parties and tiny venues in Lincoln...
Anyway. I'm old now. The very specific cultivated nostalgia trip thing is weird, but I have a hard time begrudging anybody going to this kind of event and having fun with it. I guess maybe I'd feel differently if "authenticity" around the original sources of this music had ever been a thing I had access to.
This comment is rambling and largely pointless. Maybe I'll go see if that one Jealous Sound EP that I had the mp3s of is on Spotify.
posted by brennen at 5:02 PM on January 12, 2017
Yeah - I feel like a bunch of bands I listened to that were at least considered emo-adjacent featured female vocals more or less prominently, granted that most of them didn't really hit pop radio. But there's also this weird temporal-definitional thing going on. I'm probably a little too old to have been directly in the crowd for a lot of the stuff in the article, but also there was no music scene to get into where I was a highschooler (let alone any kind of real punk / d.i.y. / indie anything) so my being into bands like the Get Up Kids is probably time-shifted later than it properly should have been. What I knew about punk in the 90s was pretty much Green Day. And I can't really think about this kind of music without an overlay of things that were pretty specific to Nebraska in the early 2000s - the Omaha scene, people who played shitty college parties and tiny venues in Lincoln...
Anyway. I'm old now. The very specific cultivated nostalgia trip thing is weird, but I have a hard time begrudging anybody going to this kind of event and having fun with it. I guess maybe I'd feel differently if "authenticity" around the original sources of this music had ever been a thing I had access to.
This comment is rambling and largely pointless. Maybe I'll go see if that one Jealous Sound EP that I had the mp3s of is on Spotify.
posted by brennen at 5:02 PM on January 12, 2017
For a while, Emo Nite LA was also known as Taking Back Tuesday—a name that drew ire from Taking Back Sunday’s frontman, Adam Lazzara. “I don’t want to become a parody of something I take real seriously,” he told Billboard, in July. “That’s the line that these people are walking. . . . You don’t make shirts that say ‘Sad as Fuck.’ Like you’re making a fucking joke out of it? Fuck you.”
wow, someone can't take the lightest parody possible
anyway a lot of my friends have gone to and really enjoyed emo night events; they sound like a good time and i might go even though i was never into emo (so it's not really nostalgic for me)
posted by Gymnopedist at 5:23 PM on January 12, 2017
wow, someone can't take the lightest parody possible
anyway a lot of my friends have gone to and really enjoyed emo night events; they sound like a good time and i might go even though i was never into emo (so it's not really nostalgic for me)
posted by Gymnopedist at 5:23 PM on January 12, 2017
lol there's a photo of me at Emo Nite at Holocene in Portland (curious nu you probably saw me there without realizing it) and while I had a blast I don't particularly think I wanna go again.
Saves the Day is my fav band of all time and I've seen them play mostly their old stuff about three times now, and each time I went absolutely berserk, yelling the lyrics at the top of my lungs, front row. I saw Mineral on their tour with Hum (two of my favorite bands and I couldn't believe they were touring together like what. the. hell?!) with my ex-girlfriend and cried, singing both band's lyrics at the top of my lungs, front row. Ditto for when Sunny Day Real Estate did their reunion, which I went to alone bc nobody else in Glendale, AZ seemed to like emo. I saw Matt Pryor from The Get Up Kids and Chris Conley from Saves the Day on their acoustic tour, and this guy who I idolized from seeing him at hardcore shows (he looked like Jacob Bannon from Converge) proposed to his girlfriend when Matt Pryor played "I'll Catch You" (goddamnit that was always my idea!)
So the nostalgia factor is real to me except most of these bands I've gotten to see, around the time when this genre was suppose to be over. Emo revival is huge, but it never really went away, so how is it a revival? The only band I missed on their reunions was Christie Front Drive (there are others, I'm sure). American Football has a new album that's actually somewhat decent. Algernon Cadwallader did angular technical guitar riffs mixed with screaming better than everyone and they've broken up and there are a ton of bands in that scene still going strong. Emo night is like, the mass-produced version of late 90's/early-2000's pop-punk singalongs at your friend's house (I've definitely had my fair share of yelling Tell All Your Friends at the top of my lungs in my living room, and then I went to the anniversary show for that album and Adam Lazara and I sang almost an entire song while gripping each other's shirt collars, screaming in each other's faces for Bike Scene) which is fine, but it's weird because none of this exactly went away. I mean, Boys Life isnt gonna come back anytime soon probably, but I bet My Chemical Romance will.
So idk, this nostalgia is weird. I know not everyone got to see those bands live but it's weird to think of going to a glorified party that's basically somebody playing someone else's songs from the aux cord.
posted by gucci mane at 5:31 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
Saves the Day is my fav band of all time and I've seen them play mostly their old stuff about three times now, and each time I went absolutely berserk, yelling the lyrics at the top of my lungs, front row. I saw Mineral on their tour with Hum (two of my favorite bands and I couldn't believe they were touring together like what. the. hell?!) with my ex-girlfriend and cried, singing both band's lyrics at the top of my lungs, front row. Ditto for when Sunny Day Real Estate did their reunion, which I went to alone bc nobody else in Glendale, AZ seemed to like emo. I saw Matt Pryor from The Get Up Kids and Chris Conley from Saves the Day on their acoustic tour, and this guy who I idolized from seeing him at hardcore shows (he looked like Jacob Bannon from Converge) proposed to his girlfriend when Matt Pryor played "I'll Catch You" (goddamnit that was always my idea!)
So the nostalgia factor is real to me except most of these bands I've gotten to see, around the time when this genre was suppose to be over. Emo revival is huge, but it never really went away, so how is it a revival? The only band I missed on their reunions was Christie Front Drive (there are others, I'm sure). American Football has a new album that's actually somewhat decent. Algernon Cadwallader did angular technical guitar riffs mixed with screaming better than everyone and they've broken up and there are a ton of bands in that scene still going strong. Emo night is like, the mass-produced version of late 90's/early-2000's pop-punk singalongs at your friend's house (I've definitely had my fair share of yelling Tell All Your Friends at the top of my lungs in my living room, and then I went to the anniversary show for that album and Adam Lazara and I sang almost an entire song while gripping each other's shirt collars, screaming in each other's faces for Bike Scene) which is fine, but it's weird because none of this exactly went away. I mean, Boys Life isnt gonna come back anytime soon probably, but I bet My Chemical Romance will.
So idk, this nostalgia is weird. I know not everyone got to see those bands live but it's weird to think of going to a glorified party that's basically somebody playing someone else's songs from the aux cord.
posted by gucci mane at 5:31 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
By the way I just want to say something real quick that I bet will upset some ppl here. I know there are some hardcore music nerds on MeFi, so this is basically a call out. Like, I'm calling all of you out, right now:
Boys Life "Departures & Landfalls" is so much better than Slint's "Spiderland" FIGHT ME OKAY
posted by gucci mane at 5:35 PM on January 12, 2017 [6 favorites]
Boys Life "Departures & Landfalls" is so much better than Slint's "Spiderland" FIGHT ME OKAY
posted by gucci mane at 5:35 PM on January 12, 2017 [6 favorites]
I am so into the emo revival. I discovered first wave emo a little late, in 1998/1999, just when the genre was about to tip into the mainstream but wasn't quite there yet. Sarge has always been my favorite emo band. So good! And it was basically a vehicle for the woman singer, she wrote all the songs, played guitar, and sang. I went to see Hey Mercedes on their reunion tour last year and that show was electric. They were great, and The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die opened. In the revival scene, The Hotelier is on fire right now, they are such an amazing band to see live.
I see a bunch of shows at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA, and they do a regular emo night that sounds tempting, but I'm old and I just want to go home after shows. In fact, I'm most psyched when I'm just there for the opening band and can leave before the headliner, thus scoring a night out that gets me home by 11.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:20 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
I see a bunch of shows at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA, and they do a regular emo night that sounds tempting, but I'm old and I just want to go home after shows. In fact, I'm most psyched when I'm just there for the opening band and can leave before the headliner, thus scoring a night out that gets me home by 11.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:20 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
In 1993, my first big boy concert was an emo band. I bought the 7" that youtube is ripped from at the show. I was very confused when people started talking about "this new emo thing" a decade later.
posted by idiopath at 7:30 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 7:30 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
The internet tried to inform me this evening that Refused is fucking emo. I'd accept emo-adjacent, but emo? Bullshit.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:05 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Existential Dread at 8:05 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Tell you what, you posers, once we can agree on a working definition of punk, then maybe, just maybe, I'd be willing to try to define this 'emo' thing.
posted by signal at 8:18 PM on January 12, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by signal at 8:18 PM on January 12, 2017 [11 favorites]
The '90s were elided, as before the Brooks Brothers Riot ruined our nation, we were all part of a prosperous and orderly progression toward functional democracies.
Then we got the shrub. And he let 9-11 happen. And he picked a fight in Iraq we're still losing to this day.
No-one wants to remember the '90s. The music and style and geopolitical outlook was much better than what went before and came after. I'm ashamed at how happy I was back then. I'm ashamed at how frightened I am right now.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:37 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
Then we got the shrub. And he let 9-11 happen. And he picked a fight in Iraq we're still losing to this day.
No-one wants to remember the '90s. The music and style and geopolitical outlook was much better than what went before and came after. I'm ashamed at how happy I was back then. I'm ashamed at how frightened I am right now.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:37 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I woke up this morning with a piece of past caught in my throat.
posted by dersins at 8:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by dersins at 8:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I don't think emo is all that difficult to define. What the heck is emo anyway?
posted by gucci mane at 8:47 PM on January 12, 2017
posted by gucci mane at 8:47 PM on January 12, 2017
I'm with Pope Guilty. I was a punk/hardcore kid in the mid 90's up in Buffalo and went to every show I could. The crowd at a Snapcase or One King Down or even Pennywise or Lagwagon or Dropkick Murphys show would be all but indistinguishable from the crowd at a Glassjaw or Get Up Kids or Saves The Day or Texas is the Reason show. Less moshing, but the same people. Sweaty kids in band tshirts, jeans, and sneakers. At some point after I graduated college in 2002, the scene somehow morphed into this completely unrecognizable hair dye fashion thing that to this day I can't reconcile with the pack of testosteroned up idiots we were back in the day.
I have a sneaking suspicion a satisfactory answer involves My Chemical Romance and Alkaline Trio though.
posted by quite unimportant at 9:08 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
I have a sneaking suspicion a satisfactory answer involves My Chemical Romance and Alkaline Trio though.
posted by quite unimportant at 9:08 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
I didn't know what to say to that. My co-worker stared into the distance, also at a loss but for entirely different reasons, and added, "I don't know why Malcolm couldn't have just been a skater kid like Brandon."
with a name like Malcolm his fate was pretty much fuckin sealed IMO
posted by invitapriore at 9:22 PM on January 12, 2017
with a name like Malcolm his fate was pretty much fuckin sealed IMO
posted by invitapriore at 9:22 PM on January 12, 2017
Punk? Hell people are still confused about which music "blues" refers to. Any cultural history will involve a series of new artifacts using old category names. The young people nod and go along with it and the olds know they are all wrong.
posted by idiopath at 9:53 PM on January 12, 2017
posted by idiopath at 9:53 PM on January 12, 2017
If you're nitpicking the word "total", okay. But I honestly can't think of any band aside from that one.
I lived through this genre and I still can't figure out a definition. I'm amazed that the only true emo band I purposely have seen was Planes Mistaken For Stars, and they didn't seem very emo to me, so what do I know. But in a broader sense, I would think Blonde Redhead and Pretty Girls Make Graves would at least attract followers of more moderate emo fans. Or how about Deerhoof?
I refuse to believe this genre for women meant nothing but being a scene girl.
posted by alex_skazat at 11:02 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I lived through this genre and I still can't figure out a definition. I'm amazed that the only true emo band I purposely have seen was Planes Mistaken For Stars, and they didn't seem very emo to me, so what do I know. But in a broader sense, I would think Blonde Redhead and Pretty Girls Make Graves would at least attract followers of more moderate emo fans. Or how about Deerhoof?
I refuse to believe this genre for women meant nothing but being a scene girl.
posted by alex_skazat at 11:02 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
This reminds me of an 80s night I stumbled into a few years ago. I couldn't believe how authentic it was, in as much as these kids were doing what we were did at the time, which was to cobble together styles and attitudes picked up from videos and magazines. Even the awkward, self-concious dancing was on point.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:35 AM on January 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:35 AM on January 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
Get Up Kids. Promise Ring. Jeans & tshirts, boys with floppy hair, maybe some piercings, no Hot Topic. Guess when I graduated from college.
Weirdly the bands we listened to with women in the lead (Pretty Girls Make Graves, Erase Errata, Sleater-Kinney, the Butchies, Le Tigre a few years later) were just riot grrl and that was girlish emo. Like, then, I would have said men with emotions was what made it emo (even though emotional hardcore blah blah). But yeah, I miss life when it seemed more hopeful and I can never tell if it was because I was young or because everything really is shit now.
But I have a bitchin' playlist on this morning at least.
posted by dame at 6:35 AM on January 13, 2017
Weirdly the bands we listened to with women in the lead (Pretty Girls Make Graves, Erase Errata, Sleater-Kinney, the Butchies, Le Tigre a few years later) were just riot grrl and that was girlish emo. Like, then, I would have said men with emotions was what made it emo (even though emotional hardcore blah blah). But yeah, I miss life when it seemed more hopeful and I can never tell if it was because I was young or because everything really is shit now.
But I have a bitchin' playlist on this morning at least.
posted by dame at 6:35 AM on January 13, 2017
As a teenager in the early 2000's, I spent a lot of time at punk rock shows, pop-punk shows, emo shows. I was lucky to live in an area densely-packed with venues that these bands liked to play; I had five or six within a half-hour drive that my mom was willing to discreetly drop me and my friends off at. (Thanks, Mom.)
At the peak, I was going to at least one show a week, sometimes more. Brand New, Coheed & Cambria, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Saves the Day, The Early November.
Seeing the music live was the greatest, but in the meantime, my friends and I filled in most of our days by singing in the car, or in each other's bedrooms. The connection you feel while yelling along to lyrics you connect with, alongside a good friend who is doing the same, is pretty neat. Especially when you're a teenager and are looking for someplace to belong.
I think that's what these Emo Nights fulfill- it's a re-creation of those late nights in people's backyards with the boom box blasting, or driving in a car packed with all your friends, the radio turned up way too loud.
Some of these bands are doing 'reunion' tours, or are playing their best-known album front to back, since that's the thing to do these days, but some are broken up or not touring any longer.
Being able to get a taste of a lot of different bands at once, maybe with friends you used to go to those live shows with, is not a bad way to spend a night.
Then again, I'm a sucker for nostalgia.
posted by rachaelfaith at 6:53 AM on January 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
At the peak, I was going to at least one show a week, sometimes more. Brand New, Coheed & Cambria, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Saves the Day, The Early November.
Seeing the music live was the greatest, but in the meantime, my friends and I filled in most of our days by singing in the car, or in each other's bedrooms. The connection you feel while yelling along to lyrics you connect with, alongside a good friend who is doing the same, is pretty neat. Especially when you're a teenager and are looking for someplace to belong.
I think that's what these Emo Nights fulfill- it's a re-creation of those late nights in people's backyards with the boom box blasting, or driving in a car packed with all your friends, the radio turned up way too loud.
Some of these bands are doing 'reunion' tours, or are playing their best-known album front to back, since that's the thing to do these days, but some are broken up or not touring any longer.
Being able to get a taste of a lot of different bands at once, maybe with friends you used to go to those live shows with, is not a bad way to spend a night.
Then again, I'm a sucker for nostalgia.
posted by rachaelfaith at 6:53 AM on January 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Chiming in late with a pair of female-led emo bands: Mates of State and Rilo Kiley.
posted by Clustercuss at 7:39 AM on January 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Clustercuss at 7:39 AM on January 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
All subcultures eventually become tourist destinations. There was Indie (in the post-Smiths/Pulp sense of anoraks/cardigans/floppy hair/flouncy dancing/songs about being sad only, you know, British and understated) which spawned nights where people who weren't into indie bands dress up in some novelty glasses and a thrift-shop cardigan and watch a DJ spin Common People and Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now while a group of costumed actors pretend to be a band named The Miserablists and mime along with it. There was Goth and Punk, and countless Mod revivals, and Rockabilly is still undead in its various incarnations.
posted by acb at 9:06 AM on January 13, 2017
posted by acb at 9:06 AM on January 13, 2017
surprised no one has mentioned my favorite Emo band, John Lennon
posted by beerperson at 1:08 PM on January 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by beerperson at 1:08 PM on January 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
oh wow. all the bands in here.
I liked The Rocket Summer back in the day, which my friend introduced to me as "emo, but happy", which is nonsense. But I liked them.
posted by numaner at 1:10 PM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
I liked The Rocket Summer back in the day, which my friend introduced to me as "emo, but happy", which is nonsense. But I liked them.
posted by numaner at 1:10 PM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by palomar at 2:53 PM on January 12, 2017 [16 favorites]