Our pals at Noise Pop recently launched a new regular feature on their website called Town Crier where they get their pals to write guest posts about the local music scene or music in general. This week, they were lucky enough to get yours truly to investigate the local emo scene (which, as we all know, centers around Diary AKA “Emo Night” at Pop’s, which is celebrating its second anniversary this Saturday night). Here’s how it starts:
I never got into emo. Friends in high school were into it, but I just didn’t get it. Years went by, and you stopped hearing about it so much. I thought maybe emo was a thing of the past—and then one night a couple years back somebody invited me to something called “Emo Night at Pop’s.” I liked Pop’s pretty well, so I went, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a roomful of kids drinking cheap beer (seemed pretty familiar up to this point I guess) and shouting along to every single word in every single song the DJ played. With such joy on their faces, every one of them. I drank some beer and nodded my head, but I couldn’t shout along. I felt so left out.
Read on for the rest of my emotional story, plus Q&A’s with Diary co-founder Patric Fallon and a real live San Francisco emo kid, and some epic emo videos!
RSVP and invite your friends here.
I think Emo stills fills a void left by rap music and other types of night-club music like techno which a lot of awkward teenagers can’t relate to.
I posted a link to The Emo Diaries compilations on Deep Elm, which are good, I recommended “Chapter 2: A Million Miles Away,” but apparently I am no longer allowed to post weblinks on here anymore because I made a bunch of racist comments on another page.
Hey, you know what guys, I like this blog, but it’s not an integral part of my life. Let me know if you want to just part ways…
My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and even Alkaline Trio, ironically, are insulting to West Coast emo purists, who witnessed the birth of the movement in the early 90′s before it was popular. Of course, none of those bands or their fans understand why they’re hated by people who they would expect to embrace* them.
One of Emo’s downfalls was all the drama and petty cliquishness, which is why some people left the genre for other stuff like just straight up indie rock (also smarmy) or crusty stoner metal.
I actually think that if Fall Out Boy hadn’t gone the MTV route, they would be more legitimized amongst the old school emo crowd, because their music is very much the archetype of the genre.
Drive Like Jehu was a good band that helped bridge the emo and hardcore genres in the mid 90′s and really influenced the San Diego music scene up until about 2001. They released two albums, recommended if you want to understand the evolution of the Emo genre.
I also recommend, the more sedate, slo-core, but definitely emo band Secret Stars which featured Karate’s Geoff Farina and another girl, (I can’t remember her name) but their s/t 1996 album is pretty good in my opinion.
Emo will probably fade away eventually, like everything else, but it was a radical and potent form of music that a lot of people found really inspiring in the mid to late 1990s.
*yuk yuk, emo joke
hell yeah, clarissa shout out!!
You know, this is kind of funny, but to be true to the technical definition of Emo, by some measures, GREEN DAY was an emo band that came out of the mid 90′s bay area music scene. I hope that made some people cringe. Also, if you don’t know who Cap’n Jazz is, you’re not emo.
I like that RUNDMC song, “you comment too much, you never shut up.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzSMvFP6mdg
Goddamn, is it so hard to write Diary on a real tape and photograph it. Have some PRIDE in yo design fools.
i’m sayin’
Oh well, most of you are barely literate, so I guess my grad school level literary perspective is too much for you then.
I agree that emo should be combined with broadway tunes.
HA HA!
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