this summer, one person will learn what it means to knock on wood
June 18, 2019 3:16 PM   Subscribe

 
I literally shrieked at the perfection of midwestern emo (1:48).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 3:18 PM on June 18, 2019 [15 favorites]


All right, Internet. You get to live another week.
posted by offalark at 3:20 PM on June 18, 2019 [7 favorites]


I...wow. Hats off.
posted by salt grass at 3:22 PM on June 18, 2019


When he said "every genre", he really meant Every Genre!

I like that the modern Ska song at the end is a straight rip-off from The Specials' first album ... kinda like a lot of modern Ska.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:25 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


I have tears in my eyes from giggling. Thank you for posting this!
posted by cynical pinnacle at 3:28 PM on June 18, 2019


Amazing. I highly enjoyed the Studio Ghibli version.

I didn't know midwestern emo was a thing but judging from comments I guess it is. The Bossa Nova was great.

also that was the best "like and subscribe" ending i've seen
posted by numaner at 3:31 PM on June 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


I had no idea emo came in regional varieties.

That was very weird and awesome.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 3:38 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Oh my god this is so good
posted by lazaruslong at 3:48 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Wow, I originally only saw the clip on Twitter and had no idea there was so much more and that I was missing out on, like, 8 additional genres, including a delightful new entry to the genre canon, Lo-fi Hip-hop radio: Beats to study/relax to.
posted by Copronymus at 3:55 PM on June 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


I feel personally attacked by these genre selections.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:56 PM on June 18, 2019 [10 favorites]




The lofi hip hop is so spot on down to the video he has playing on the barely visible laptop screen - it's this very popular stream.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:03 PM on June 18, 2019 [10 favorites]


Made me cry from laughter,
thank you so much for posting this, everybody had matching towels!
posted by bigendian at 4:13 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


That's a great Streetlight Manifesto poster.

Oh, the video is great, too.
posted by sacrifix at 4:15 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Ska is my favorite
posted by Jon_Evil at 4:17 PM on June 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


including a delightful new entry to the genre canon, Lo-fi Hip-hop radio: Beats to study/relax to.

You've never searched for video game or movie music on YouTube, I see. At least not the last three years or so.
posted by Caduceus at 4:22 PM on June 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


I had no idea emo came in regional varieties.

Well, that's sounded more like Hot Rod Circuit to me, which hail (or is it hailed?) from the well known Midwest stronghold of Auburn, AL.
posted by sideshow at 4:29 PM on June 18, 2019


That was delightful. The bossa nova one made me crave a Astrud Gilberto/Walter Wanderley version of the song. Hearing that on an electric organ would be a lot of fun.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 5:00 PM on June 18, 2019


Postal Service lives, yessss!
posted by waving at 5:26 PM on June 18, 2019


Weren’t we just talking about Andrew Huang?
posted by q*ben at 5:48 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Fu. Cking. Brill. Iant.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:12 PM on June 18, 2019


Doo-wop and drum corps are fun, skate punk was hilariously spot-on, but the one that genuinely frightens me is midwest emo. EERILY pitch-perfect.
posted by chrominance at 6:33 PM on June 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


That man has never heard doo wop before!
posted by rhizome at 6:43 PM on June 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


The midwest emo bit makes me want Lifted Bells (or any Bob Nanna band, really) to do an album of 90s modern rock hit covers.
posted by aaronetc at 6:46 PM on June 18, 2019


Did the Peter Cortner era of Dag Nasty really spawn an entire genre?
posted by rhizome at 6:48 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


I spent most of high school lusting after a midwest emo band (I was on the top 5 of their myspace for a while!!!). When I moved to Ohio for grad school they played at a bar literally down the street and I bought tickets for me and my then-boyfriend but HE'D bought tickets to the Melvins without letting me know and then told me they'd never play again in Columbus and the Swellers would be back all the time because they were from Michigan and so I agreed to go see the Melvins (who I had no attachment to) and it turned out that was the Swellers' final show and I know he's seen the Melvins at least three more times and ... GRRR.

This made me feel feelings, is all.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:49 PM on June 18, 2019 [13 favorites]


This is amazing and I love it!!!
posted by Secretariat at 7:15 PM on June 18, 2019


The lofi hip hop is so spot on down to the video he has playing on the barely visible laptop screen - it's this very popular stream

On that subject, some curious Googling last weekend led me to this article: The Connection Between Lofi Hip-Hop and Anime.
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:20 PM on June 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


You've never searched for video game or movie music on YouTube, I see. At least not the last three years or so.

Oh, I'm absolutely familiar with the YouTube stream by that name, which is why it was so delightful. I just wasn't expecting to see it represented alongside Bossa Nova or Doo-Wop.
posted by Copronymus at 8:23 PM on June 18, 2019


As a former captive audience of a Midwestern emo musician roommate (I never even LIKED Pedro the Lion!), that one cracked me up, but "Studio Ghibli film" was where I really went "holy shit this video is the gift that just keeps on giving."

Anyone else find the original song incredibly vapid in that it's about a guy who's been fortunate enough to avoid incredibly dangerous/tragic situations just sitting in a coffee shop or somewhere wondering if he could hack it if it ever happened to him, or is this an uncharitable read?
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:08 PM on June 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


shhletpeopleenjoythings.jpg
posted by Etrigan at 12:58 AM on June 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Anyone else find the original song incredibly vapid in that it's about a guy who's been fortunate enough to avoid incredibly dangerous/tragic situations just sitting in a coffee shop or somewhere wondering if he could hack it if it ever happened to him, or is this an uncharitable read?

How can I help it if I think you're funny when you're mad?
posted by rhizome at 1:30 AM on June 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Thank you for posting that, dephlogisticated. I also wondered about that connection.

I was also captivated by Midwest emo in the late 90s. Every now and then I go back and listen to the music of my HS years, emo and beyond, and most of it just doesn’t hold up for me now.

Pavement still slaps tho
posted by lazaruslong at 5:43 AM on June 19, 2019


Anyone else find the original song incredibly vapid in that it's about a guy who's been fortunate enough to avoid incredibly dangerous/tragic situations just sitting in a coffee shop or somewhere wondering if he could hack it if it ever happened to him, or is this an uncharitable read?

I feel like that's a thought most of us have had. You hear about the kid you kinda knew in high school who just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and you think about how fortunate you are, but how your life could change overnight, and how would you cope with the tragedy. Would you be strong? What do you really know about yourself if you haven't faced adversity? Y'know, basic anxiety and empathy stuff. I always liked that it's a danceable bop about existential dread.
posted by skullhead at 7:09 AM on June 19, 2019 [5 favorites]


I feel like that's a thought most of us have had. You hear about the kid you kinda knew in high school who just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and you think about how fortunate you are, but how your life could change overnight, and how would you cope with the tragedy.

It's definitely a thought I've had many times as a soft squishy person privileged along enough axes to have had mostly a safe & comfortable life, & probably "incredibly vapid" was too harsh a criticism.

I just find it striking that there exists, through the magic of ska, a record* of this person saying "My friends have been through some shit, but I haven't, here are my thoughts about myself in relation to my friends' trauma" when there is zero record of what his friends even went through or how they happened to feel about it.

It reminds me of an article I read in the Fond du Lac (WI) Reporter about the experience of a Fondy High sports team who happened to be staying in a Milwaukee hotel on a night that someone else in the hotel was murdered.

To paraphrase incorrectly from memory: "We were in our rooms all night and didn't see or hear anything," said Josh Dykstra, star center forward of the boys' varsity team. "But man, that's heavy, you know?"

I like the song fine (lyrics don't make or break a song for me), I love the multi-genre cover, & this isn't a hill I'm interested in getting even slightly wounded on. Just, it's always kinda bugged me, is all.

* The Skakashic Record, anybody? Our collective unskanciousness? Anybody? No? Just me? Okay.
posted by taquito sunrise at 10:31 AM on June 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


So, like in the late 60s I was about 10 years old and I made an AM radio receiver from a set and found an Easy Listening station and I used to listen to that a lot. Fast forward through a lifetime of rock, jazz, Beatles, Miles, Dead, prog rock, Zappa, reggae, disco, rap, grunge, EDM, dubstep, to lo-fi hip-hop, and I realize I'm back at easy listening again!
posted by M-x shell at 11:51 AM on June 19, 2019


A bit of a tangent, but in the 80s I was a complete nerd for hardcore and post-punk. Anything SST, Homestead, Alternative Tentacles and all that. Like, I changed people's lives by turning them on to the Meat Puppets. Sonic Youth, making music on their own terms and making it work. The Descendents pretty much inventing power pop. Then the 90s sorta recapitulated all that, with a second wave, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, etc. and a whole new generation of power pop. Then the 2000s, and yet another generation of power pop (third time as farce, Blink 182). Then a whole wave of basement-tapes lo-fi, Elliott Smith, Sebadoh, Grizzly Bear, Sufjan. Meanwhile I had missed hip-hop and EDM completely. Lo-fi evolved to chamber-pop and then to something more like prog all over again (The Decemberists, Flaming Lips) and we end up with Arcade Fire and Gogol Bordello and I am DONE. Just no. Then there's this new wave of pop and "I'm gonna party all night" anthems (ok, fine, go ahead, is anyone stopping you?). For me the music died when Health stopped being a noise band.

And stupidly, I completely missed the off-ramp when Pavement was cheekily celebrating the death of rock and roll (Fillmore Jive). I shoulda taken the cue branched out.

Anyway, I can still listen to Bardo Pond and Belle and Sebastian, so there's that.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:43 PM on June 19, 2019


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