Bad Books Are Bad, and Bad Food Is Bad. But Bad Movies Are Not Always Bad

What’s missing from the title? Music. Specifically bad music.

Perhaps Stephenson left bad music out of the conversation for a reason. Because there’s something intrinsically attractive about bad music that, like bad films, is certainly interesting.

Take brokeNCYDE, a crunkcore/scrunk group that’s almost critically reviled and became the butt-end of an Internet joke when their video for “Freaxxx” hit the web in late ’08. Yet, they have loads of fans, which no doubt fueled a lot of the angry words hurled at the band.

When so many individuals are bent on calling brokeNCYDE purveyors of “bad music,” I’ve got to wonder if anyone enjoys them simply because of their perceived negative qualities. Does the amalgamation of screamo, crunk beats and autotune sound so terrible it becomes kind of enjoyable? Or is there just something intrinsically peculiar about a band that goes to the extreme when trying to find a new voice, no matter how bad it sounds.

I was fascinated with brokeNCYDE the minute I discovered them. Apparently, so was Damian Abraham, frontman for a critically-beloved Canadian hardcore act known as Fucked Up. Exclaim! TV featured an interview Abraham conducted with brokeNCYDE, and though the folks at Exclaim! seem happy to wallow in the irony of these two disparate musical worlds colliding, I’ve got to give Abraham credit for discussing brokeNCYDE in terms most music outlets would never dare to think about. DIY and brokeNCYDE? Perish the thought!

Well, Abraham hardly let the thought go to waste with his intro to the interview, but the actual interview is a bit, well, light. The guys in brokeNCYDE seem so stuck on the same subjects (ie, we just want to create something new, haters hate, etc.), they don’t really get away from the same ole’ same ole’. Though the band members casually complain about being lumped into categories, there’s not much they do to take the conversation about their group in a new direction.

It’s something I encountered when I did a piece for the Boston Phoenix about brokeNCYDE and the whole scrunk scene that took over last year’s Warped Tour. I spent the days leading up to my interview with brokeNCYDE’s Mikl thinking and re-thinking of questions to ask the singer/rapper, but the answers I got were run-of-the-mill. I wasn’t expecting bombshells, but I was hoping for an ounce of difference, a little bit of perspective from these kids that people apparently don’t understand. All I heard on my end of the phone was much of the same, “we don’t care about haters” discussion.

Still, I got some quotes for the article, quotes I hoped would shine some new light on a story I felt wasn’t getting the proper coverage a musical “phenomenon” usually receives in the press. I thought I got it down to the button, and I still do feel like my piece covered the attitudes being brought to that scene within the Warped Tour universe.

But, I was struck again by brokeNCYDE yet again today. Abraham’s interview made me revisit the sound everyone was so hot to dismiss, and, even with its insanely bad qualities, there is still something irresistible to it all. And, to me, it has a lot of the enjoyable qualities of a bad film. There’s just something so appealing about a bunch of kids who want to try something absurd, and give it their all. Christopher Weingarten put it best in an interview with Eye Weekly last year:

What the worst records you’ve had to endure?
Well, obviously the Brokencyde record… I hate to dog on those guys because it’s kind of an internet meme to make fun of Brokencyde. And if someone pitched the idea of southern bounce beats plus screamo, I would totally say that sounds like a great idea.

The idea is great, and even in their “failure” of execution, I can hear some ghost of botched genius hanging out in the background. Despite the horrid sounds, it’s certainly different. And the sincerity, much like the sincerity of the directors of good-bad movies like Troll 2 or The Room, is all there, loud and clear. It’s hard to hear through the obnoxious screaming and insipid lyrics, but the guys in brokeNCYDE really believe what they are saying. I certainly find a line like “Get crunk, get crazy/All fucked up/Make me wanna punch babies” poorly perceived at best, but I really believe that, for the members of brokeNCYDE, there’s something fantastic about getting drunk to the point of wanting to harm an infant.

It’s not a sentiment, or sound, I could ever agree with, but I may finally give brokeNCYDE props for really giving it their all.

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Gosh, is it almost Record Store Day again? I’ve waited so long for this day to come!

And I’ve been a really good music writer this year, Record Store Day Man. Honest I have. (Well, unless you ask brokeNCYDE.) I wrote my heart out about all the bands I liked, and even the ones I disliked, during the past year. I tried my darndest, and I think I deserve something nice on this Record Store Day.

What I want more than anything else this year is to find a random album that I will immediately love. I want to just stumble upon it, I want it to be a fortuitous occasion where the clouds part and a light beams down on that album cover as if to say, “yes, this is the one!” No press releases, no hype, no nothing. I just want to find a new record I’ll like without any pretension of “cool” or big weighty name behind it or anything. And I promise I’ll take good care of the record, and play it three times a day, and make sure it’s in good condition and everything!

I understand I may not find my dream album on Record Store Day. Even if my dream is crushed to pieces and my heart is ripped out and stomped upon, I still know the true meaning of Record Store Day.

In any case, I’ve also enclosed a list of other items I would be happy to receive on Record Store Day. Any combination of the following Record Store Day releases and exclusives would be much appreciated:

Against Me! – I Was a Teenage Anarchist acoustic 7″

Beach House – Zebra 12″

Beastie Boys – White Label 12″

Black Keys – Tighten Up/Howlin’ for You 12″

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us double LP

David Bazan – Live at Electrical Audio CD

Devo – Fresh, What We Do 12″

Dum Dum Girls/Male Bonding – Pay For Me/Before It’s Gone 7″

The Get Up Kids – Simple Science CD

Happy Birthday – Shampoo, Alien 7″

The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever LP

Hot Water Music – Live in Chicago 7″

LCD Soundsystem – Pow Pow 12″

The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs 10″ set

The One A.M. Radio – Credible Threats 7″

Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of The Summer 10″ picture disc

Soundgarden – Hunted Down/Nothing to Say 7″

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – The Oldest House, North Coast 7″

The Thermals/The Cribs – mystery split 7″

TV On The Radio – Dear Science, 12″

Weezer – Ratitude Happy Record Store Day CD (NOTE: Despite my previous ripping of Ratitude song “Can’t Stop Partying,” this has reworkings of “classic” Weezer tunes. And Kenny G. Can’t pass that up!)

That should do it…

Oooh, wait! Also, a copy of I Need That Record! on DVD, which is also being released on Record Store Day. And an ION Portable Turntable if possible, as a lot of these vinyl-only deals don’t come with a download card, and I’d like to be able to convert the songs to MP3 format and play them wherever I go!

Anyway, I know you have a big Saturday ahead of you, and I don’t want to disturb you from fulfilling the wishes of all the other music geeks out there!

Merry Record Store Day!

-Leor

P.S. I left you a virtual milk and virtual cookies on your Facebook page. Enjoy!

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• Third-rate, watered down electronic pop-punk/scrunk with little thought put into the music and lyrics.
• More band tees and general merch than notable songs.
• Blatant racism and bigotry.

Congrats to Teen Hearts for nailing all three categories!

On Jan. 6, Look At This Fucking Hipster posted a “nifty” little YouTube video by the band, using the video for “Hands In The Air” as a curious exemplar of hipster fashion and a terrible taste in music.

Singer Kelly Orr sent LATFH guru Joe Mande a “kind” email in response. I won’t spread Orr’s racist, homophobic email around, but he pretty much dug a fairly deep grave for his band to try and climb out of.

For some, this may present an odd musical and moral query: Does having a terrible taste in music relate to racism?

For my money, I’d say no. But, Orr’s email brings up an interesting query: How does someone so connected to technology and the power of the Internet (the Teen Hearts myspace page screams “HUGE MERCH SALE!!” – the sign that someone knows what they’re doing) not realize that sending blatantly racist messages to a complete stranger who operates a fairly popular website will come back to bite him in the ass?

You can read Orr’s crass correspondence with Mande here. Mande also published Orr’s email address, so feel free to send him whatever messages you feel like passing along.

I’ll follow Mande’s lead and post a YouTube video of a Teen Hearts song that’s unaffiliated with the band for those who are curious. We wouldn’t want to inflate Orr’s ego by making him think hits equals instant popularity, now would we?

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Hip-Huh?: The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones declared that hip-hop was dead and upset a lot of hip-hop heads.

And yet, while Frere-Jones got a lot of flack for playing musical grim reaper, he had something of a point: Where was hip-hop in 2009? Last year, critics and music buyers alike flocked to Lil Wayne. Who took the crown at the top of hip-hop this year? Jay-Z may have come close, but The Blueprint 3 didn’t really create the kind of enthusiasm that The Blueprint 2, The Black Album or even Kingdom Come produced.

Who’s left to claim the top spot? Perhaps Raekwon, who’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II grabbed heaps of critical acclaim and nabbed the 4th spot on Billboard. But the album has also sold less than 200,000 copies since September. Tha Carter III sold over a million copies in its first week. True, chart dominance hardly extends the same might it did a decade ago, but considering hip-hop is a form of pop music that features artist that regularly flaunt their physical excess as a means of success, you have to wonder what happened this year.

Well, there was Eminem’s Relapse. But how many Em fans would select Relapse over, say, The Marshall Mathers LP? At least his cameo in Funny People hit the spot.

And this just may have been the “best” hip-hop single of the year:

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American Idle: Is American Idol still culturally noteworthy?

It’s my understanding that this year’s season ended up with the one people wanted to win getting second place/first loser, and then said individual got turned away from TV appearances after some “scandalous” performance at the American Music Awards. Or perhaps my memory is failing me… But after so many years of not watching so many seasons of American Idol, I’d find it hard for anyone to remember who won what or what AI artists not named “Kelly Clarkson” are still around.

But then, this lady kept Simon Cowell in the limelight for a while longer:

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Funny thing is, Susan Boyle’s style almost nullifies Cowell’s brand. And then her album became a smash sensation stateside. Go figure.

But, if that wasn’t a big enough sign to Cowell that his small-minded branding of pop stars lacks a certain kind of diversity, a U.K. couple launched a successful online campaign to reclaim the Christmas single from Cowell’s X Factor contestants. Nothing like “Killing in the Name” of anti pop homogeny.

Best Music-Related Memes: Kanye West or Christian Bale?

It’s hard to say what was the “better” meme for the year in music. Sure, Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs and the reaction was funny at first. But how many times did one have to read “imma let you finish” on some blog before it really drove someone nuts?

And when another celebrity went nuts while cameras were rolling, people took it and ran in a creative direction. When tapes featuring Christian Bale screaming utter profanities at a cinematographer on the set of the new Terminator movie surfaced, some folks with music skillz took it and made some hilarious tunes with it. The best may just be The Mae Shi’s “R U Professional?”:

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Still, nobody asked Obama what he though of Bale’s freak-out. Though who knows how Bale felt about Swift winning that VMA award for… what was it again?

Biggest Surprise: Grizzly Bear

If the many, many blogs avidly writing about indie rock are to be believed, this was the best year in music since 2007. Sure enough, for fans of all things indie, there was a lot to get excited about this year. When a band like Animal Collective receives the kind of near-universal acclaim it garnered in ’09, what rabid fan wouldn’t be happy.

However, more than the ongoing success of all-things-indie in the mainstream or Animal Collective luv, the biggest surprise of the year had to be Grizzly Bear. True, longtime fans of the band were probably going to love Veckatimest no matter what. But with their newest album, Grizzly Bear ditched a lot of the ambient ramblings that filled Yellow House for a batch of songs that manage to grab the listener almost instantaneously. Between hitting the No. 8 spot on Billboard and Jay-Z repping the band on MTV, Grizzly Bear could do no wrong this year.

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Biggest Disappointment: Passion Pit.

Having spent the last five years in the Boston area, I’ve noticed the way people in the Northeast flock to homebred winners. It’s as if the underdog attitude that painted the history of fans of the Red Sox and Patriots for the whole of the 20th Century extends to every other focus in life, and when “local (enter profession here) does good” pops on the headlines, folks go crazy. And rightfully so: Everyone likes when local people succeed.

Which is why Passion Pit’s debut, Manners, was a tremendous disappointment. In a decade when the only notable music export from Massachusetts included the word “Dropkick” in their band name (let’s put aside the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. reunions aside at the moment), it seemed like everyone in Boston flocked to Passion Pit after “Sleepyhead” dropped. And with the infectious hook of that song, there was no reason to think these kids wouldn’t make it big.

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Sure, Passion Pit made it big, but Manners was so watered down with third-rate electro-indie tunes, I began to wonder why some other fantastic Boston-area musicians weren’t getting any love for creating superior albums.

The Class of ALT Reunions: Pixies reunion? That’s old news.

2009 saw a host of beloved alternative bands reunite to sell out concerts in ways they had never previously sold out concerts… by selling every ticket in the house. Yes, from heavy hitters like Jane’s Addiction and Faith No More, to indie middle-weights such as  The Get Up Kids and Sunny Day Real Estate, to cult-favorites like The Van Pelt all came back for either a show or two or a full-scale reunion with new music on the way. Whether some where in it for the money or some got together now because their schedules finally synched up, they came back and with the vengeance.

The real question with all these reunions may just be “what does it all mean?” above all else. Suddenly, a number of bands that had a hard time getting much attention in their first go round began grabbing headlines, in many cases from hard-working bands struggling for attention today. Is this a case of nostalgia overtaking our currently morphing society? Do people today want to live in the comfortable past vicariously through bands they loved in their youth than experience the harsh problems of our current society?

Whatever a formerly broken up band wants to do is clearly up to the decisions of its members. The questions of “is this the case of too-much-nostalgia” is really up to the individual who’s willing to drop top dollar on an old band and perhaps pay less attention to those mixing up new things today. And that might just come down to 2010: It’ll be Pavement v. the present for some folks.

Lady Gaga: Still ubiquitous. Whoda thunk it?

Blogged About Sounds: Glo-fi vs. scrunk/crunkcore

There are two sides to this coin. Glo-fi was the sound that set blog-reading hipsters into fits of elation. Take lo-fi audio dynamics, mix it in with a healthy does of ’80s music love, a dash of electronica and another helping of kinda sludgy audio and emerge with acts like Washed Out, Toro Y Moi and Neon Indian.

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Glo-fi’s not exactly for everyone, but neither is scrunk… or crunkcore. Whatever you want to call it, it’d been setting the internets afire since brokeNCYDE’s video for “Freaxxx” hit YouTube in November of 2008. 2009 proved to be an even bigger year for “groups” pushing the sound – a mix of screamo and crunk aesthetics (take that as you will) – and many garnered millions of hits online and a fare share of negative online publicity. (Mothers Against Brokencyde anyone?) Still, many a scrunk band crowded the stages at Warped Tour, with names like Millionaires and Breathe Carolina, further infuriating many a “punk” and providing some funny discourse on punk forums. Let’s see what’ll happen to these bands come 2010.

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Monolithic Merger: Ticketmaster and Live Nation had plans to merge into a money-sucking transformer bigger and more powerful than any transformer Michael Bay could concoct. The Department of Justice is currently reviewing the plan and a website was created by concerned consumer and industry groups and members of Congress. Check out the TicketDisaster.org to find out how to avoid massive surcharges in 2010.

June: Was officially renamed “International Michael Jackson Month.”

After Jackson passed, it was next to impossible to go anywhere without hearing his name. But, more importantly, it was also hard not to hear why he became such an important cultural touchtone in the first place: His music. After decades of public scrutiny, all people had were doe-eyes for MJ.

Sign of the Apocalypse Sure to Hit Music Journalism: Rolling Stone‘s Best Albums of 2009

When Idolator pushed Maura Johnston to the side for more… well, who knows what, the music journalism community certainly was hurting. And yet, Rolling Stone‘s “best of” list is somehow worse. How? RS has somehow been trudging along over the past few years with a seriously decrepit view of pop music. True, they hire some great writers, but folks like Christopher R. Weingarten are pushed to the fringes of the RS empire (read: its website) in order to focus on important things. Like old peoples’ taste in rock music… Or old rock music as it is known.

Consensus can be a killer in critical circles, but U2′s No Line On The Horizon was, by consensus, not their best effort. And yet, it topped Rolling Stone‘s list for best album of the year. Which means that one can infer it’s on par with U2′s real classic works. And the classic works of many other great musical efforts through time. So, rather than appealing to the creative drive of many great musicians making new sounds and works that challenge and move people, RS played it comfortable and played to their core audience by feeding them some “news” that the best album of the year featured an awful song about putting on footwear.

Music journalism shouldn’t be about pandering to an audience. It should open people to new ideas as much as shine a light on old favorites. Nice one, RS.

Sign That There Is A Future In Music Journalism: The Washington Post Magazine‘s full-length feature on extreme heavy metal.

David Rowell followed members of Pig Destroyer as they prepared to partake in a metal festival in Baltimore and ended up with a brilliant piece that explored why some people love the music they do. Rowell and the Post clearly understand one of the most important roles of journalism in general, and all parties involved carried it out with the publication of “Into The Darkness” in the Sunday magazine. Despite the “death of journalism” or whatever people want to call it, even a white, upper-middle-class and middle-aged man has the curiosity to explore an element of music he would never listen to in his own right, and a publication that distributes news to a similar audience, had the sense to expose its readers to a foreign world and let them learn something new. Now that’s a great lesson for journalists of every kind.

I’ve Hardly Mentioned This Band in a Context of Their Own and Probably Should: Animal Collective

Because, even if you’re not a fan, this oddball act grabbed so much critical acclaim and attention after many a year of being ignored by any media outlet with a name that doesn’t end in “fork” that they do deserve a hand at making ’09 their own.

The Year, The Medley: If these bullet points weren’t enough of a brief view of 2009 in music, DJ Earworm’s “United States of Pop 2009″ should do the trick. A visual and musical mash-up of the top 25 songs on Billboard, it’s a bit odd and all-over the place. But then again, so was the year in music.

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Anyway, Weingarten has some pretty stellar things to say about the omnipresence of emo and indie in the early part of the decade, the impact of crowdsourcing on music journalism, and many more. Just take a look at what he has to say about brokeNCYDE:

What the worst records you’ve had to endure?
Well, obviously the Brokencyde record… I hate to dog on those guys because it’s kind of an internet meme to make fun of Brokencyde. And if someone pitched the idea of southern bounce beats plus screamo, I would totally say that sounds like a great idea. The only record I’ve heard that’s worse than Brokencyde is the Johnny Cash Remixed record.

Nuff said.

I’m not one to usually recycle news without some sort of comment/insight (errr… at least, not on a consistent basis and based on reporting from other sites), but the following news (as reported by Aversion) certainly speaks for itself:

Much to the delight of uptight moms and punk kids alike, Brokencyde’s pulled out of the Warped Tour.

No reasons were given for the band’s departure from the last four stops on the package shoe commercial/sort-of punk festival.

I guess this is where I’d normally add some two cents to the mix, but I’m honestly a little confused by the news. Chances are something must have happened to affect one of the members of brokeNCYDE personally, which, despite any reservations one may have about scrunk/crunkcore, must be bad enough to warrant such an action and isn’t something to make fun of.

But, as of now, there’s nothing to support the following claim:

Hopefully some more info will be made available to clear up these questions…

EDIT: I knew something might be a little off about this info, as Warped Tour wrapped up yesterday… still no info about this, so unless something new comes out, put this matter aside…

Which is all a bit odd.

I don’t necessarily mind that the paper is using my article – in fact, I’m flattered that they would choose to use it. I guess I’m more confused as to what reasoning they saw to use the piece. I’d written it for the Boston area and the Phoenix in particular. And although the article doesn’t concern a local happening, it was published almost a month ago and has been available online a few days before it was slapped onto some newsprint.

It’s just… so… odd. It’s not like wire stories haven’t existed for decades… but those tend to be for hard news stories, exported to papers that may not have the necessary funds to hire a correspondent in every section of the globe, or maybe their person just missed a story.

But this was a bit different… I find it strange that no one at the East Bay Express wrote about a fairly big annual event/didn’t want to cover it, but then went ahead and wired a full-page arts piece from another newspaper, which, considering the state of newspapers today, is actually pretty heady business… journalists fight for inches of newsprint space, and here’s my piece, something I never expected to crop up in an Oakland paper, having taken up the space that some hard working freelancer could have landed for a story just as interesting.

That’s why, to me, this is all so strange. I take pride in the existence of alternative newsweeklies. They represent what many newspapers once strived to uphold: locally-focused, indepth news stories and arts pieces, written with spry intelligence and a keen awareness for the society in which the readers are living. So why would an Oakland alt-weekly want to print the words of someone who has, well, never set foot in Oakland?

Just my perspective on this whole thing… sorry for that bit!

As I’d said about a month ago, a longer piece behind my scrunk article is due in soon… perhaps within a week! Until then, I’m going to take advantage of the new availablity of Soundcloud’s new inclusion in WordPress and… er… “treat” you to some scrunk.

brokeNCYDE – “Get Crunk”:

[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/angelicatm/brokencyde-get-crunk"]

Honestly, I don’t often think about the state of ‘emo’. The punk scene we came out of and the punk scene now are completely different. It’s like glam rock now. We played the Bamboozle fests this year and we felt really out of place. I could name maybe three bands we played with. It was just a sea of neon shirts to us. If this is the world we helped create, then I apologise.

Valid points, sure enough. Surely, I tend to appreciate it when bands generally refuse to bash groups that they’ve influenced, instead taking the high road and not delving into that subject simply to not unnecessarily stir any bad blood. What’s funny about all this is that Suptic really is speaking the truth about not keeping up with the state of emo. After all, what he’s describing sounds like scrunk, a sound that’s definitely indebted to and a part of the geneology of emo, but a creation that exists unto itself.

How do I know it’s scrunk Suptic is referring to? Well, the neon shirts are a dead give away. But so is the part of his following answer:

We at least can play our instruments.

Same ole’, same ole’. But, to each his own. I never particularly liked much of the Get Up Kids stuff to begin with… I can understand the role they had in both accelerating emo’s ascent to the top of the charts and providing support for the Vagrant business model, but most of their tunes I just can’t dig. But, as Suptic reveals in the interview, they certainly do fit into the 2nd wave emo lineage:

Fugazi is the reason I am in a band today. When I was 14 I heard Fugazi and started a band the next day. We grew up on indie rock. Superchunk, Rocket from the Crypt, Sunny Day Real Estate, Cap’n Jazz. That’s the kind of stuff we were listening to when we started.

Sounds familiar. And though Superchunk and Rocket aren’t emo bands, Superchunk is noted to have a pretty solid influence on 90s indie music, including emo (The Promise Ring anyone? That’s all Pitchfork could do when talking about TPR was to compare the two), and Rocket are a Drive Like Jehu offshoot of post-hardcore. Basically your out-of-the-ordinary ordinary roundup of influences for a second wave emo act.

This whole thing could potentially snowball into the Tim Kinsella vs Max Bemis free-for-all, though Tim had a more malicious rant against the emo acts he inspired, and Max had just as much venom when tossing insults right back. Good for Suptic for generally foregoing all the drama of attacking every band in Alternative Press and generally letting them be, even if he can’t give them credit for their music. Oh well.

The Get Up Kids – “Action & Action” (video):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFTh_Lr522k]

VS

The Bamboozle fare… BrokeNCYDE – “40 oz” (video):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoLUc6cqAOU]

Saw the above t-shirt at Warped on Tuesday. It may just be a shirt, but nowadays fashion is oft as important – if not the important – as the music that a band chooses to define itself. In My So Called Punk, Matt Diehl notes the clashes between “emo” kids and traditional “punk” kids at Warped came out in the t-shirts they wore. Just like during the earlier part of this decade, the same thing is happening currently, but pitted between scrunk and traditional “punk” acts. There were more black punk shirts in support of traditional punk virtues – though none as straightforward anti-scrunk/crunkcore as the photo above. And they faced a host of bright, neon colored shirts from acts such as 3OH!3, brokeNCYDE, Millionaires, Jeffree Star, etc. Take a look at some of the designs below:

3OH!3 shirt. They also had a shirt that said "This is a 3OH!3 Shirt," which I wasn't sure if it was a humorous send up of the "This Is Not A Fugazi Shirt" or not

brokeNCYDE shirt. Their "crowns," when done by hand in concert, is similar to the 3OH!3 hand design. Also, not the most annoying brokencyde shirt

Even check out the Babycakes shirt, which screams (pardon the pun… or play on the situation) scrunk:

Anyway, that was an interesting aspect of Warped I took notice of.

As another aside, while stopping by the Vagrant merch tent on Tuesday, I noticed the tip sign by the guy running the tent. Most tip signs usually have some gaudy or humorous note to get people to drop a buck. The Vagrant guy’s merely asked people to donate to fly his girlfriend out to Warped. In many ways, this image (and I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but the weather was really hit-or-miss, and this was a miss moment) is perfectly representative of Vagrant’s take on emo: there’s a clean cut guy with a simple message trying to get his significant other to come accompany him on a big event for the summer. And the guy was nice to boot and quite enthusiastic about their selection of $5 Dashboard Confessional albums. Couldn’t have been a more perfect match. Needless to say I dropped a buck.

That’s all for now… check in to Bostonist in the late morning, as the Warped piece should be online at that point.

Ok, perhaps that’s a huuuuuge overstatement, but Jon Caramanica did notice the combination of electronics and screamo as sure as I did:

Each summer the Warped Tour traverses the country, surviving through big-tent optimism and style agnosticism. A few years ago it was selling emo, and after that, screamo. But 2009 will be remembered as the year the Warped Tour transmogrified into a rave.

Well that should certainly prove something to the kids commenting on my article on Jason Tate’s AbsolutePunk blog that I’m not the only one who can see an aesthetic realm where Attack Attack and brokeNCYDE coexist as peers.

Gonna check out Warped on Tuesday… I’ll be interested to see how Massachusetts kids react to bands like Millionaires, who (according to the Times article) got quite a trashing.

Also, I apologize for a bit of a lag on many writing fronts as of late (especially with America Is Just A Word). Summer has finally hit New England and I’ve taken to a bit of relaxation here and there. But, I shall continue onwards soon enough!