9.27.2001

I am in the process of preparing this kick-ass vegan soup for dinner tonight. It is called “Curried Lentil and Sweet Potato Fuck A Bitch Stew”. It will be damn yummy. The lentils be soaking in dems juices as we be speakin’. Dawg.

Anyhoo, so the MSN servers are down which also means that the Hotmail servers are down. No one send me any viruses until those servers are back up. If you do I may never receive them and my computer will have to go about the process of crashing all by itself. I know Hotmail is free, but I am still kind of pissed right now. I have been doing a lot of thinking about things that make me mad today and this post will essentially be about one of the main things that makes me mad. The “thing” in question involves the current state of “Independent” Music today. The topic is:

What the hell does “EMO” mean?

A little background; EMO is actually short for Emotional Hardcore or Emotive. This refers to music that is powerful and has emotional substance. “EMO” as I think of it, began in the summer of 1986 in Washington, DC. That summer was known within the scene as “Revolution Summer”. Two of the most important EMO bands ever formed during this period. Those two bands were Embrace (featuring Ian Mackye) and Rites of Spring (featuring Guy Piccioto and Brendan Canty). The 3 members listed went on to form Fugazi along with Joe Lally. Rites of Spring is truly the birthplace of emo. Extremely emotional lyrics set to hard-core music, thus “Emotional Hardcore” or “EMO” for short. Now Fugazi was certainly an EMO band at the beginning of their career, however as time has passed they have certainly evolved into something much more complex. My problem is that nowadays every band in the world can seemingly be classified as “EMO”. This is ridiculous.

Bands like Jets to Brazil, The Get Up Kids, and The Promise Ring are all classified as EMO. Do any of these bands incorporate Hard-core music into theirs? No, they do not. While I enjoy the music of all three of these bands they are in essence pop-bands whose music is released through independent labels. Tons of bands emulate The Get-Up Kids and sing about that girl that broke their heart in eight grade and never gave back their favorite sweater and Boo-Fuckin’-Hoo. Now I realize that “Pop/Rock” songs have been about loss for as long as the genre has been in existence, please do not misunderstand what I am saying, love and loss is an important part of all music. To clarify, I feel that the genre of “EMO” in its current state is ridiculous. All of these bands that play music with loud distorted parts and quieter clean parts and the lyrics are all about pain and loneliness etc… What is the point? Don’t they want to be different? I have seen literally hundreds of bands who use this formula. You know what everyone calls their music? Formulaic. Labels go out of their way to sign bands that sound like other bands who have already gained a substantial following. Everyone is looking for the next Texas is the Reason. How fucking boring.

Now you find a band whose record you really like, and you want to go see them live. What should you expect? A bunch of fucking clones at the show. Backpacks and courier bags everywhere. Horn-rimmed glasses (some of them not even prescription, but solely for fashion). Tight T-shirts. Vintage jeans. Vintage shoes. Pins on everything (bags, shirts, hats etc…). The worst of all is that most of these people do not even care about the bands playing, they often do not even face the stage they have their backs turned talking to their friends. They are there to be “seen” and feel cool. These people kind of make me sick. They all have huge fucking attitudes and really think they are special—in reality they are a joke. They are a joke to the people who are there because they love the music, their true “peers”. It is all pretty stale at this point. Shouldn’t you all be about ready to go back to listening to Dave Matthews and drinking lots of beer? I hope the novelty wears off for you jack-asses soon. I would really like to start going to shows again.

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