Before the turn of the millennium, emo was a term best used to describe an ambiguous, post-hardcore punk sound that had been evolving in the American underground music scene for about 15 years. Perhaps “best used” isn’t the right term as much as the term was saddled upon this sound: Just as many musicians tagged with the name today, it had been a point of annoying contention since it was first uttered in the community centers and tiny, all ages clubs in D.C. where the first “emocore” bands performed. Unlike the close-minded term the sound was often described as, these teens fused the cathartic dynamics of hardcore with a confrontational pop-twist and blended it all with introspective lyrics that had that was ambiguous as the genre within which these bands found themselves.

Flash forward to the beginning of the 21^st Century, and emo hit an odd nexus between the past, present and future just as it approached its tipping point. 2001 was the year that bands from emo’s first, second and third waves all convened, a year before the “genre” hit its tipping point in mainstream popularity. Fugazi – the band formed by members of two of emocore’s progenitors and the group that influenced nearly every second wave emo act, be it Drive Like Jehu or Sunny Day Real Estate – released their final album, The Argument. A map of the band’s evolving sound, The Argument was perhaps the group’s greatest album and an excellent farewell as the quartet called an indefinite hiatus in 2002.

All the while, many second wave emo bands began to end their respective musical runs in the early part of the decade, and many did so in challenging fashions. Although emo would transform into something of a tangible genre for millions, an almost shallow form of pop-punk in the guise of some bands, many of the second wave groups would exit not with a bang, but with a sound that left many emo apologists scratching their heads. There was Sunny Day Real Estate’s prog-heavy 2000 effort, The Rising Tide, an album that perplexed many longtime fans and left the chaos of their earlier albums on the studio floor. The Promise Ring dropped Wood/Water in 2002, a record that eschewed the group’s potent poppy-punk sound for a retrained, oft-acoustic sound driven completely on harmony. The Get Up Kids followed a similar route with their 2004 album, The Guilt Show.

While many of the titans of emo’s second wave bowed out in seemingly unfashionable ways, one of the period’s second fiddles would push emo onto the charts and into confused adolescent hearts. In the ‘90s, Jimmy Eat World was hardly an emo headliner. But, after being dropped by Capitol Records for failing to produce a big hit single or record, the group quietly recorded what would become the album that helped make emo a sought-after commodity.

Originally titled Bleed American when it was released in 2001, the band changed the name of their third album to Jimmy Eat World following September 11^th. And the album became a smashing sensation, a venerable hit parade and moneymaker at a time when industry types first began to fear illegal downloading. Perhaps Jimmy Eat World’s late career success can be boiled down to timing. In 2001 and 2002, Americans were looking for a certain kind of somber and comforting sound, but one that was ultimately positive following the national tragedy. When there was nowhere to turn in the world of shallow boy-band pop, a song called “The Middle” provided all the comfort one could ask for in a pop song:

It just takes some time/little girl you’re in the middle of the ride/everything, everything will be just fine/everything, everything will be alright

Throw in one heck of a pop hook and mix it in with that undeniable chorus and some positive, comforting lyrics and Jimmy Eat World came away with one of the strongest singles of the decade. Considering “The Middle” helped usher emo into the mainstream, it’s odd to think of how “emo” has become almost synonymous with “depressed.”

While Jimmy Eat World survived emo’s second wave for 21^st Century chart glory, emo’s third wave was well in full swing. Often described in Christ-like fashion amongst his most-rabid fans and critics, Chris Carrabba was stirring things up in the world of emo. Cathartic and punk inspired, Carrabba’s most affecting moments came in the form of his solo, acoustic-guitar driven ditties under the name Dashboard Confessional. Carrabba became something of a fixture in the mainstream music press, and his role as poster boy for the genre seemed solidified.

Though Carrabba plays the same heart wrenching tunes to a smaller group of cult fans today, his meteoric rise in the mainstream and substantially-longer career as an afterthought in the press have transformed Carrabba into a different kind of poster boy for emo. If emo had any solid definition following the aughts, it’s been lost in the translation of pop culture this past decade. Carrabba was the image of emo at the first half of the decade, but thanks to pop culture’s ever-shrinking attention span, emo’s transformed into something completely different at the end of 2009. Carrabba represents the odd staying power and ambiguity of the genre at a time when everyone seems to have a definition of “emo” down pat. Whereas earlier in the decade, emo was synonymous with well-adjusted, upper-middle class teenagers who wore Abercrombie & Fitch and sought to force all their existential quandaries on failed relationships and romantic longing, emo has somehow become associated with depressed, potentially-suicidal tweens who drape their bodies in all things black and could potentially be members of a cult, maybe.

Or has it? For every person that thinks they know what emo means, there are about several hundreds of people ready to disagree. For that, we’ve got the middle aughts to be thankful for. At a time when “emo” was being used to describe any up and coming independent band by the most well-meaning of music critics, the linear “genre” of emo saw a number of inventive albums and bands. Say Anything’s …is a Real Boy. Pedro The Lion’s Achilles’ Heel. Thursday’s War All The Time. Coheed & Cambria’s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. The Format’s Dog Problems. Even the “backpacker rap” of Rhymesayers artists like Atmosphere and P.O.S., or Rhode Island spoken-word rapper Sage Francis, followed some of the same post-hardcore dynamics of their emo peers to produce a solid number of albums often roped into the “emo” bubble and augmented the definition of the term.

While emo (and screamo) was getting the full court press style coverage in everything from The New York Times to Rolling Stone, something was awry. It was something that only Jessica Hopper was able to verbalize in a 2003 Punk Planet article titled “Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t.”

And then something broke—And it wasn’t Bob Nanna’s or Mr. Dashboard’s sensitive hearts. Records by a legion of done-wrong boys lined the record store shelves. Every record was a concept album about a breakup, damning the girl on the other side. Emo’s contentious monologue—it’s balled fist Peter Pan mash-note dilemmas—it’s album length letters from pussy-jail—it’s cathedral building in ode to man-pain and Robert-Bly-isms—it’s woman-induced misery has gone from being descriptive to being prescriptive. Emo was just another forum where women were locked in a stasis of outside observation, observing ourselves through the eyes of others. The prevalence of these bands, the omni-presence of emo’s sweeping sound and it’s growing stronghold in the media and on the Billboard chart codified emo as A SOUND, where previously there had been diversity.

And though some artists pushed the boundaries of where a term like “emo,” could go, others shoved it into a misogynistic, uncreative box. For all their cathartic bleedings, bands like The Used produced “hits” rank with the negative sound Hopper described so well. This, quite unfortunately, became the face that emo has worn throughout the decade, and is part of the reason the genre’s thought to be so worn out.

And the backlash came, though much of it not nearly as intelligent or even knowledgeable as Hopper’s critique. Warped Tour, the preeminent punk summer tour, became ground zero for anti-emo sentiments in the punk community. Elsewhere, the dynamic and image of emo shifted under the guise of two new scene bearers: My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Though Fall Out Boy achieved a cross-pop-cultural popularity unsurpassed by most bands, My Chem grew the kind of “cult” fan base that attracted the kind of negative publicity for emo that couldn’t be made up.

Suddenly, more than before, emo transformed from something of a musical term, to a catchall term for an odd subculture, with little to no roots in the “genre.” It became a type of fashion, inspired by My Chem’s obsession with gothic Tim Burton wear. It became a “state of mind” which parents were told to fear for their kids’ safety. It became hated, like nothing before. Be it the anti-emo beatings in Mexico, the threats of banning emo in Russia, or the simple-minded misunderstandings of local news reporters across the U.S. warning parents of the “dangerous new trend,” emo became huge, and not in the good way.

Although all would seem lost for emo at the end of the decade, it’s reached a curious nexus not unlike the one at the beginning of the decade. Though all signs would seem to point to its “death,” emo has continued to evolve, perhaps in some cases, mutate. Emo is still a misunderstood and maligned “culture” in some circles. And yes, many of the negative aspects of its popular form have continued to thrive in the guise of fifth wave emo-inspired bands operating under the scrunk and crunkcore sounds.

But, perhaps there is a light at the end of the decade. The reunion fever that has caught the indie world by storm churned out headlines that screamed “Sunny Day Real Estate” and “Get Up Kids” across the country. Though nostalgia is so often a dangerous poison in pop culture, every Jawbox reunion performance on TV allows people to refocus their perceptions of emo, and even where it can go.

More over, with band like Brand New challenging the very sonic nature of what emo has become and crushing the Billboard 200 at the same time, it can spell a new crossroads for emo. And all he while, the “indie” scene has been a source of newfound evolutions for emo. Groups like Maritime, The Appleseed Cast and Owen have quietly been creating some of the best music to be paired with the term “emo” this decade. Over the past few years, there’s even been something of an “emo Renaissance” in the underground punk scene, with tiny, DIY bands with names like Algernon Cadwallader, Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) and Monument producing songs steeped in emo’s second wave.

Though emo would seem to be a lost cause at the end of what has been a very long decade in the genre’s existence, if anything, it’s merely proven the definitive point that’s made emo such a longstanding presence in music: It’s all about perspective.

Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”:

[youtubevid id="tVP0b8qvZg8"]

Read it. Reblog it. Tweet it. Tumblr it. Love it.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Another day, another journalist seeks to kill a genre of music.

Today’s suspect is news.com.au‘s Neala Johnson. The weapon – My Chemical Romance. What got the axe? Emo, of course:

NO MORE angst. No more whingeing. No more playing the victim. When My Chemical Romance re-emerge in early 2010 with their fourth album, any trace of “woe is me and it’s all your fault” will be replaced by such self-aware and self-sufficient themes as “strength” and “self-preservation”.

Yup, emo is dead. Long live My Chemical Romance.

Gasp! News.com.au and My Chem said so, so it must be true.

Right?

Hardly. First, while the article begins with a bullet point that says “Emo is dead, band declares,” there is hardly a single quote by Gerard Way in the article that says “emo is dead.” Period. Way makes references to the problems that fans of mainstream emo have encountered over the last few years, be it facing violence in Mexico or the general misunderstandings that emo culture is akin to a suicide cult, but he himself hardly mentions a “death of emo.” Perhaps of the attitude people have towards what they interpret emo to be, but not of the genre itself.

Right next to hip-hop, emo is the one genre of music that people have been trying to kill off for years and/or pass off as dead. And yet, the genre persists to this day just as much as the wild misinterpretations and misappropriations of the word flourish with any casual reference to Twilight or moody teenagers. Though My Chemical Romance certainly ushered in a period of emo in its hair metal phase and popularized an image of emo as depressed-looking teenagers caked in makeup and cloaked in black, their every moves and motives don’t define a genre that’s existed for nearly a quarter of a century. Though they’ve helped define what a majority of people consider to be emo at a given period of this decade, they did not create emo, nor will they destroy it.

Andy Greenwald attempted something similar to what Johnson did in the My Chem. piece, which is tie a specific artist to the life and death of a genre, more specifically emo. Greenwald’s book, Nothing Feels Good, focused a large portion of its might on one artist – Dashboard Confessional. Greenwald placed all the prose he could muster about emo squarely on Chris Carrabba’s shoulders, and ended the book by saying emo was a phase Carrabba would soon grow out of. And he wrote this all before Dashboard’s peak in popularity, A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar was released.

Sure, Dashboard defined emo in the earlier part of the decade, but Carrabba didn’t define the genre as a whole, and it’s continued to grow. My Chemical Romance has been out of “the game” for a few years, and that’s been more than enough time for groups like Brand New to steal their thunder and re-configure the genre to their own liking. Which was always a large part of the original appeal of emo: its reflection of the individual listener’s perspective and tastes. And if everyone were to conform to the standards of emo as written by My Chemical Romance… well, then I’d be more than happy to put that niche genre to rest.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It’s true… Pete Wentz is a genius. Or someone at Fall Out Boy camp has got it going on in their noggin.

A smattering of break-up rumors cropped up online, fresh on the heels of the Tuesday release of the band’s greatest hits album Believers Never Die. Take the NME tweet from just yesterday:

Fall Out Boy have split up, apparently.

And all it takes is less than 140 characters to set off a publicity marathon. And when sites like Contactmusic reconfigure quotes that have Pete Wentz blaming himself for the “demise” of Fall Out Boy, you know some kids are going to run to their local record big box store to pick up ten copies of the poorly-reviewed greatest hits album in remembrance of the band. (As a general aside, many of the reviews have said the album’s biggest fault is that it’s just a collection of previously record singles – which, last time I check, is what greatest hits albums are.)

Now, all of that hubub was basic hearsay. The band’s been fairly up front about going “on hiatus”/taking a break for a little while, but someone somewhere must have caused the commotion over the band the past couple of days. Truth be told, it probably wasn’t Pete Wentz, but there’s no doubt his Kerrang! interview sent rumor-mill-happy bloggers through the roof.

Still, this isn’t to distract from the fact that Wentz and co. are fairly smart players in the music game. When they just about seemed to be fading from the limelight, Wentz announced the death of the emo haircut onstage and practically shoved the band back into the spotlight clear as day. Frankly, this was a pretty smart move, not only considering their greatest hits album was months away from being released, but the new Twilight movie to boot.

Why are these two things related? When was the last time you heard someone incorrectly identify the Twilight series, characters and fans as “emo” just because of the amount of mascara that Edward character wears, or the fans’ penchant for black clothing? And exactly who helped re-focus emo fashion on, say, lopsided haircuts and black clothing? Pete Wentz. Though Wentz has little control over the My Chemical Romance guys, who cake their faces in “guyliner” and really are the band that marginalized emo from an ambiguous aesthetic into a Tim Burton-obsessed, neo-goth cliché, Wentz’s actions helped alleviate the fashion pressures on emo and helped people question the definition of the genre when some of its bigger second-wave acts (Sunny Day Real Estate and The Get Up Kids) were in the middle of reunion tours.

Beyond all the hype over hair and hiatuses, Wentz and co. knew what they were doing every step of the way. They took their headlining status with a sense of wonder most bands might scoff at. How many other Billboard bands would make their own version of the Oregon Trail or try to perform in Antarctica? They took advantage of a position few musicians or bands get in life, and ran with it.

And they could do that because of their own skills. Hell, the band roped Jay-Z, Babyface, Lil’ Wayne and Elvis Costello in for their most recent albums. Few other acts would even have the gall to do that. But, above all these things, Fall Out Boy’s genius might just be in the fact that they were able to make the double kick drum appealing to more 13-year-old girls than any metal act ever could. And that, my friends, is ingenious.

Our own Peter Bagge has a development deal with FOX for THE BRADLEYS and the network has just ordered a pilot.

For folks not familiar with Peter Bagge or The Bradleys, well, suffice to say the man is a legend in the underground comics world. His longest-running comic book series, the now-defunct Hate, is the quintessential read on the Seattle grunge scene. Hate revolved around the life of Buddy Bradley, a 20-something forever stuck in an adolescent apathetic state in Seattle before moving back home to New Jersey in the later part of the series.

The Bradleys came before Buddy turned wise enough to leave home, and that’s what the action of the potential TV series will be all about. The A.V. Club‘s Noel Murray reported that Bagge tried to turn the comic book into a series on other occasions, so I’m not entirely convinced the show is in the bag.

Sure, Buddy Bradley and his family are a precursor to The Simpsons and just about every other Seth MacFarlane cartoon imaginable. But, there might be a reason Bagge could never get his work on TV. Sure, The Bradleys are dysfunctional, but they make the Simpsons look like a mundanely bland family. Grab a copy of Hate to see Buddy in action on his own: it ain’t quite network TV.

One of the more endearing aspects of Bagge’s storytelling is that he doesn’t try to give his characters a nice sheen. When they do something bad, it’s terrible. Buddy does some things that even he finds morally objectionable, and he’s forced to live with his actions. (There’s a reason these comics are called “underground.”) For some reason, it works, at least in print. And Bagge’s thoroughly expressive renditions of emotions on the (usually angry) young Buddy somehow allows one to distance themselves from some pretty unspeakable events that happen throughout many incarnations.

Suffice it to say, I’d be worried that a Fox version of The Bradleys would really make it hard for Bagge to explore certain aspects of society through the Bradleys. It’s not even necessarily (a lack of) obscenity that I’m referring to: much of Buddy’s existence is purely mundane, filled with nothing but days wasted away drinking or complaining about who knows what. Considering Fox’s big night of prime-time animation is jam packed with pop culture references in every nook and crannie, I wonder if there is a place for Bagge’s style of storytelling on that network.

While the methods of Bagge’s expression will be interesting to look for if a pilot does live to see the light of prime-time, I’m more interested in what the potential set up for the show will be. While The Bradleys will take place when Buddy is still in school, will Bagge stay true to the time period within which he wrote the original series, or will he try and update it?

Throughout the series, Buddy is something of a quintessential hipster, but one who’s genuinely not interested in the cool factor and becomes begrudgingly so during the height of grunge. So, what would happen if Bagge decides to update his story to the present? Will Buddy spend hours and days locked in his bedroom, listening to the latest Titus Andronicus and Ted Leo? Or could he potentially get sucked into the Jersey ska scene that seems to take hold of countless Jersey teenagers these days? Would he rep Gaslight Anthem or Lifetime? Or would he be so cool he’d know everything about all the Our Band Could Be Your Life musicians while kids his age are stuck listening to My Chemical Romance? Only time and television will tell…

Peter Bagge interview:

[youtubevid id="n1IGGYir-BA&feature=related"]

“500 Days” is, as far as genres go, a hybrid picture, something of an emo version of a romantic comedy: It disdains machismo, futurism, violence and volume in favor of subtlety and heartfelt, if often mumbled, emotion.

The one time Tom really runs afoul of Summer’s feelings is when he throws a punch at a guy who’s been hassling her at a bar (downtown’s highly photogenic Broadway Bar, by the way). Tom is one of a number of emo leading men to emerge from Hollywood this year, joining sensitive types in “Adventureland” and “Away We Go,” among other pictures. As Gawker noted this week, the cineplex has been full of “gentle, sensitive, geeky male outsiders with a love of Lou Reed and snug hoodies.”

With its very particular aesthetic point of view and calibrated tone, “(500) Days” shares much cultural ground not just with indie bands but with emo culture broadly defined — with journals like McSweeney’s (whose founder, Dave Eggers, cowrote “Away We Go”), radio programs like “This American Life” (whose host, Ira Glass, is Tom with chunky black glasses and a decade or two older) and so on.

Well, I wouldn’t expect an architecture critic to have a complete understanding of a cultural enigma like emo, and Christopher Hawthorne certainly proves that idea. He is, in effect, confusing sometimes fluid state of emo fans and indie culture, though all his descriptions match that of indie culture. Most “emos” – be they the Revolution Summer folks in the 80s, Fugazi’s punk-for-one-and-one-for-punk calls to arms of the late 80s through the aughts, hell even My Chemical Romance – don’t match Hawthorne’s description. Even the stereotypes of “emos” today – depressed punk youths with a fetish for self-violence – doesn’t match that description. Hawthorne’s words are of indie through and through, from a love of McSweeny’s right down to the Morrissey fandom from this quick spec on the movie.

Among the many camps, Morrissey tends to be tossed into the indie one, and Regina Spektor without question as well. Emo is always, always land of the punk, even if it is an extremely watered down version of that.

To break it down a little further and call it a night, sensitive does not always equal emo culture. Everyone has feelings, every music has some sort of emotional depth behind it (even if it is a shallow pit, there are some feelings elicited towards how hollow a music can be). THAT is one of many reasons numerous emo musicians diss the term and a reason that so many confuse the two.

Night all.

Well, specific interest for one. Not level of interest though. Each of these photos represents the countless number of fans of everything from Star Trek to anime to the Oakland Raiders to My Chemical Romance. In each one of these, the individuals express their adoration through some form of costume or method of dress, only to a certain, highly fanatic extreme.

This is a bit inspired by a conversation with a co-worker of mine, who appears deathly afraid of Trekkies and refuses to see the new Star Trek film partially because of an unknown fear that everyone will be wearing these costumes. Now from this branched any number of arguments, being on the conceptualized level of fandom of trekkies versus, say, sports; said co-worker believes that, proportionately, Star Trek fans tend to be more intense about their fandom than sports fans, a point I disagreed with completely. Aside from, say, the infamous “Black Hole” at the Oakland Raiders endzone made up of fanatic ticket holders painted in silver and black from head to toe, there is a certain appearance and assumption that most sports fans tend to have a casual relationship with their team whereas Star Trek fans dress up and have an insane fanaticism with their world.

But, to be perfectly honest, this lead into my general disagreement with the very argument we were having. In many ways, the image of Trekkies that my co-worker upheld is merely an image perpetuated in the media, provided by footage and shots of Star Trek conventions, where dressing up is encouraged. I would argue that, like a sports team, many Star Trek fans have a pretty loose fanaticism with the series/universe/whatever you perceive it as; after all, the very world of Star Trek has lasted countless films and decades of different television series.

So what’s the big difference there that leads to my main disagreement?

Well, sports fans are more accepted in our society. No one will argue that sports is one of those things that young boys (and girls, but, for decades, boys) are reared to love at from an early age, and “geekier” fare such as Star Trek is looked down upon by the majority of society. After all, why would my coworker cower at the idea of a Trekkie when she finds sports fandom perfectly acceptable? But, fandom and obsession has its limits and a turn towards obsession can be a bit much in any case; if you can’t pick it out from among people around you, I highly suggest checking out the new movie by Robert Siegel (who wrote last year’s excellent film, The Wrestler) Big Fan. Clearly, the title says it all. It won’t ruin anything to say that the main character, played by Patton Oswalt, is so obsessed with his team of choice that it dominates his life, underlines his day’s highs and lows, each on-the-field play not only controlling his heartstrings that Sunday afternoon, but the following day and week, and off-season to boot. For these fans, there is nothing else, and they place their very life at the whim of the game.

And yet, there’s a certain cultural acceptance that greets individuals who don a $100+ replica New York Giants jersey (well, not in the case of the film, but that’s a pretty extreme case) versus someone who decides to fit plastic sharp ear molds to the sides of their face and dress up for an afternoon, or wear a Star Trek-themed t-shirt.

All these fans are perceived as a little bit odd, not only because of their level of fandom, but simply because what they’re so enthralled with isn’t quite… normal:

Troll 2 fans

Star Wars fan

Rocky Horror Picture Show fans

And there is a point in that – all these previous pictures depict fans dressed up as other-worldly creatures (or whatever you want to call Rocky Horror‘s characters without giving away any of the plot) and not, say, LeBron James.

Which more or less leads in to the main point of this blog. Emo fans don’t dress up as aliens or monsters, and yet, are treated as such. Again, the media is partially to blame, as many a negative interpretation of emo comes from incorrect reports in “the news.” But then it really comes down to individual people and how they personally perceive those who dress differently. Or it could just boil down to the fact that all these other levels of fandom, when expressed with clothing, are only done in certain circumstances where it’s welcomed; many an emo fan tend to dress up as they want to 24/7, a case which, like so many subcultures before hand, not only invite those around them to look at them, but negatively judge them as well. It’s not a costume there, but how these individuals choose to dress to express themselves not only as fans of a genre or part of a subculture, but what they feel is their individuality. And for that level of fandom, a perfectly healthy form of expression that truly hurts no one, they are persistently mocked.

It may be a generalization, but chances are 99.99999999% of Star Trek fans don’t wear Vulcan ears or a Star Fleet uniform on a regular occasion (after all, all you have to do is like or enjoy something to be a fan). However, many a fan of currently-produced, mainstream emo dress in the perceived fashion of the day all day every day, and unfortunately may suffer for it.

Interview with Patton Oswalt about Big Fan:

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

First, there was the charge of a gang of so-called “emo killers” threatening youths who basically didn’t even consider themselves emo at Spotswood College; the entire incident appears to have died down and had the basic mark of sensationalist-driven journalism looking to dig up dirt on a usual – though still concerning – issue of kids picking on others who are different then them.

But a court case has taken the cultural stereotypes to an extreme. As The New Zealand Herald reports, emo was brought up in an all-too negative light:

Papanui teenager Marie Davis was not an “emo” and had never indulged in self-harm, her mother told the trial of the man charged with murdering the schoolgirl.

The question was raised in cross-examination by defence counsel Frank Hogan at the trial of Dean Stewart Cameron who denies charges of rape and murder.

This is absolutely absurd. Though I obviously wasn’t in the courtroom, from the focus of the article it’s clear that Frank Hogan and the defense have a tough case on their hands. After all, they’re relying on cultural assumptions of negative stereotypes concerning emo to either prove their client innocent or not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s beyond pushing the line of what should be accepted as actual “evidence” or even something worthy of pursuing in the courtroom.

I’m surprised the judge allowed the defense to proceed with such an ill-advised line of thinking. Clearly, Hogan was attempting to link a potential interest in emo to Davis having suicidal tendencies. Considering how any evidence supporting these connections is merely a blame-game at best and pure drivel at worst, it’s unbelievable that this was actually taken seriously in a court of law, a place that’s seen as a bastion of historically-read reason.

And what possible evidence did Hogan run on to assume that Davis was even attracted to emo in the first place? As the Herald reports:

Cross-examined, she said children used to say Marie was an “emo” because of the way she wore her hair.

Basically, not much. The article previously states that:

She had never been diagnosed as having any mental health issue. There had been no major disciplinary issues, and she had never discussed suicide, Mrs Davis told crown prosecutor Chris Lange.

So, in reality, though Davis did have fights with her mom from time to time and maybe didn’t like school all that much, she seemed like a normal teen. After all, like most normal teens:

Marie was not obsessed about anything, but she could take up to an hour a day to straighten her long hair.

I may not have been a teenaged female, but most young people with long hair would be self-conscience enough to take good care of it… though who knows if that would hold any water in court either…

Out of all of this, the ones who continue to suffer are the teens of New Zealand, who, in some feigned interest or boredom, may continue to be scrutinized by peers and elders simply for purchasing a My Chemical Romance album.

Watchmen graphic novel cover

Other than that, for a 2 hour, 45 minute film, I sat in rapt attention, which is a feat considering the weighty subjects as told through a Hollywood blockbuster. If only the soundtrack wasn’t so… well, terrible. But if that’s the worst problem a movie has, then so be it. And poor My Chemical Romance for covering Bob Dylan… or should I say poor Bob Dylan… or poor viewers/listeners…

My Chemical Romance – “Desolation Row” (Bob Dylan cover):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxq-rTGxpyQ]

33 1/3 Book Proposal:

The Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good

Guilty pleasures tend to rear their heads in an interview with music’s next big thing. So when a VBS TV correspondent was chatting it up with No Age, the uber-hip and critically acclaimed experimental punk duo from L.A., singer/drummer Dean Spunt interrupted guitarist Randy Randall’s ruminations on MC Hammer with a shocking revelation:

“I used to like The Promise Ring.”
Beat.
“Yeah, so did I,” replied the stylish interviewer.
The three guys proceeded to awkwardly chuckle and talk over each other until the interviewer brought up his stunning thought:
“Is it really at the point where MC Hammer is less embarrassing than The Promise Ring?”

Great question. And not unlike one I ask myself just about every time I crank up my stereo while playing 30 Degrees Everywhere or Wood/Water. What’s so embarrassing about The Promise Ring? It could be the band’s association with emo, the now-repugnant term for a post-hardcore genre that’s all but taken over the Billboard charts. It was the release of 1997′s Nothing Feels Good that the four “averages Joes” that made up The Promise Ring were presented with the title of poster boys of a genre once thought to be six feet under. The rest of the trials and tribulations of emo remain embedded in our international conscience thanks to numerous pop-punk acts influenced by The Promise Ring. Say what you will about your Fall Out Boys, My Chemical Romances, Dashboard Confessionals, Cute Is What We Aim Fors, Thrices, Taking Back Sundays, Panic! at the Discos, Saves the Days, Coheed & Cambrias, Alexisonfires, New Found Glorys, and Underoaths; when push comes to shove, most of these bands don’t come close to the potent passion, intelligence, and vibrancy of The Promise Ring and their sophomore effort, Nothing Feels Good.

Embarrassment aside, Spunt should have nothing to be ashamed of for name-dropping The Promise Ring as a band that’s clearly influenced the critically-lauded musician. The Promise Ring’s back catalog is filled with nugget and gems of post-hardcore-meets-pop bliss, and much like when No Age’s current work combining elements of pop with hardcore, the results are fantastic. Nothing Feels Good is The Promise Ring’s best and most succinct work, an anthemic, passionate burst of homegrown pop-punk, filtered through tales of existential crises, cross-country road trips, and references to modern Americana. The hooks are sharp, the lyrics poignant, and the performance still as unbelievably urgent as the day the original tapes were mastered over a decade ago.

Part of what’s so phenomenal about The Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good is the impact the album had when it hit record stores in the fall of 1997. Neatly-packaged emo-pop amalgams are a dime a dozen these days, but there was nothing “neat” about Nothing Feels Good when it was released. Although the album’s music has the sugary-sweet taste of bubblegum pop that numerous artists today no doubt want to tap into, the band’s sound subverts the pretenses of slick pop on Nothing Feels Good with quick bursts of hardcore-influenced instrumentation that seem intent on spilling out of each track marking and into the life of the listener. To mis-quote The Promise Ring, it displays a sense that the band had of having no defined sense or absolute understanding of the world around them, but simply enjoying the view. Life’s peculiarities, ambiguities, and “big questions” aren’t shunned, but brought to the surface with keen observation. In frontman Davey von Bohlen’s hands and sweetly contorted lisp – a performance factor that only makes the music on Nothing Feels Good sound an umpteenth more sincere – The Promise Ring made an album of daring proportions and a musical document to the banalities, every day norms, and even celebrations of human existence not heard since Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Nothing Feels Good cover

Part of the story behind Nothing Feels Good is known, but little of it has a concentrated focus on the actual album or the band behind it. Beyond the musical content, Nothing Feels Good was a smashing success. For Jade Tree – The Promise Ring’s label – it meant financial stability, as the album surpassed their modest predictions and allowed the company to flourish, something of a miracle in the years following the alternative music buyout which had left many independent record labels for dead. For the national emo scene – a ragtag, ambiguous assemblage of independent artists around the U.S. – it legitimized their work in the face of the post-grunge milieu that ruled the radio waves and crippled mainstream creativity. For the members of The Promise Ring, it meant video premiers on MTV, critical acclamation, a position as one of the most creative bands operating in America’s underground music scene, and, much later, a place in cult-music lore for having inspired countless musicians to take emo (or whatever genre they called their own) in new and distinctly personal directions.

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Although we’re still feeling the impact of Nothing Feels Good today, the known-narrative of the album’s creation is bare. What inspired the dozen songs on the album, and what transpired in their evolution from muddled creative concept into full-blown pop gold? What about the practices that hammered out the hooks, high-hats, and lo-fi hits in The Promise Ring’s oeuvre? What about the guys behind the instruments, their day-to-day existences and thoughts that no doubt burrowed their way into the band’s sophomore album? What were the moments before, during, and after 1997 that made Nothing Feels Good stand out from a mass of other bands and recordings that make up emo’s so-called second wave? What about each member’s upbringing, their lives in the Milwaukee area, relationships with friends, family, and significant-others? What made four young men band together to form The Promise Ring and create such a phenomenal release as heard in Nothing Feels Good?

These are the pivotal questions I’m seeking to answer with my book on The Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good for Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series. Here is an album and a band who’s impact on music today in innumerable. Part of the unknown quality of The Promise Ring’s importance is due to the fact that these deep-seated questions have never been asked – or rather, published – on such a large-scale forum. Considering the fans that the band amassed since forming in 1995, a list that no doubt has been growing with every article, band, or cultural critic name-checking the quartet as one of indie rock’s great cult bands, The Promise Ring are more than due for their proper place in the rock narrative limelight. And the 33 1/3 series is the place I would like to bring the tale of The Promise Ring’s best album.

For this project, I plan on writing the kind of book that exemplifies the credence imbued in Nothing Feels Good. My model for this manuscript isn’t confined to the band-nostalgically-reminiscing-on-a-piece-of-the-past-type writing you may see in a lot of oral histories or straightforward music books out there. Certainly my work will represent the mold that previous 33 1/3 books have upheld, but I’m also inspired by the writing styles of the great new journalists and literary non-fiction pieces. In essence, I’m looking to produce a book that lives, breathes, eats, speaks, and plays music the way that the members of The Promise Ring did when they made Nothing Feels Good. I want to make someone who’s never heard the album feel as though they’ve been following the band since Day One, that they’re back in 1997 and sprinting to the record store in order to merely touch an album by a band that has touched them. Essentially, I want to write a book about The Promise Ring in the same way the band created their music.

My main informants for this project will be the members of The Promise Ring; as I want to get into their heads and extract information about their environment, attitudes, and memories, they will be my go-to source for the book. I’ve been in touch with Promise Ring singer/guitarist Davey von Bohlen for well over a year, having recruited his current band (Maritime) for a concert and Davey himself for a previous writing project. I have been corresponding with von Bohlen about this proposal for well over a month, and he has given this project his supportive and enthusiastic seal of approval, and has gotten me in touch with the other members of The Promise Ring. At the moment that I’ve submitted this proposal, I’ve been in touch with two other Promise Ring members, Jason Gnewikow (guitar) and Dan Didier (drums), and both are quite enthusiastic about the project. I plan on having extensive interviews with these three members, as well as the two bass players who played in The Promise Ring during their Nothing Feels Good era, Scott Schoenbeck and Scott Beschta.

Although interviews with the members of The Promise Ring will constitute a large portion of my research, I plan on culling information from as many sources as possible in order to make the narrative more vibrant and colorful. I plan on soliciting interviews with not only those closely associated to the band, but also their detractors and adoring fans. Alongside a list that includes friends and family, I plan on speaking to Tim Owen and Darren Walters (Jade Tree owners), J. Robbins (Nothing Feels Good producer), Stuart Sikes (Nothing Feels Good engineer), Jessica Hopper (former publicist), Tim Edwards (former booking agent), Josh Modell (creator of Milk Magazine and close friend), along with musicians who’ve worked with, influenced, or been influenced by The Promise Ring, including Tim and Mike Kinsella (Cap’n Jazz), Jim Adkins (Jimmy Eat World), Bob Nanna (Braid), Jeremy Enigk (Sunny Day Real Estate), Matthew Pryor (The Get Up Kids), Eric Richter (Christie Front Drive), Eric Axelson (The Dismemberment Plan/Maritime), Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional), Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy), Chris Simpson (Mineral), Chris Conley (Saves the Day), Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon), Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi), and countless others for their involvement in this project. Although not everyone listed is guaranteed to be involved, with my personal connections to some of the people previously listed and with the help from the former Promise Ring members, I will have an enormous number of people contributing to the book’s dialog.

Interviews aside, I plan on digging through swaths of information to aide in the creation of the book. Included will be the usual sources of information; articles on the band, reviews of their albums, zines, blogs, and any other published work that would enhance the narrative. But, I plan to go beyond those musings as well. I will approach the band members to see if I could use personal paraphernalia to help me spin a more personal yarn. This would include anything from old photographs, letters, journal entries, lyric sheets, music sheets, and even doodles scratched into scraps of paper they’ve kept through the years. I will also approach the narrative from the direction of an informed anthropologist by researching the socio-economic background of The Promise Ring’s hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Through census information, background information on area high school and college education systems, and the resources for youth in Wisconsin that was available at the same time Nothing Feels Good was in the making, I hope to gain a better sense of The Promise Ring’s background. I’ll also dig up information on American society’s views of Wisconsin and the Mid West and how that was reflected in the actions of those who lived there. It may seem onerous, but the brief scene in Wayne’s World that takes place in Milwaukee speaks volumes about the international perception of the place where The Promise Ring was formed. Throughout all of this, I hope to get a sense of why The Promise Ring did what they did, but from an entirely different perspective than the usual interview could warrant.

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What I hope to accomplish after 15 months of research and writing is a work that can live up to how I felt after first popping Nothing Feels Good on the stereo, and something that will be as powerful as each subsequent listen to that album. My work may lack the aural quality of the album, but I hope it will be able to bring an entirely new sense of being to Nothing Feels Good, and one that will only boost the listening experience of longtime Promise Ring enthusiasts and bring some new fans to the album as well.