A Nirvana-Style Cleansing of Emo Bands?

Also, I think it's your age as well -- and there's nothing wrong with your take on this, nor your revulsion.

If emo is "real", I want no part of reality.

Nirvana aren't the only act to be in that position though.. and that isn't restricted to dance music. It's not as common when acts that accidentally stumble upon success become a legacy and not a blip, though.

and that isn't restricted to rock music. sorry.

(Although there were a few dancey Nirvana songs... kinda.)

CENTERED = look at me
CONCIOUS = Why are they looking at me
Awareness = They are looking at ME, and I know who ME is.

So, self-centered songwriters wrote stuff that was about their appearance. Self-concious song writers write music about figuring out what it is that they are doing/feeling/saying/hearing. Self-aware people write about...hmmmm.

But I agree that it feels like there may be something else coming around...if we could all take a reasoned look at controversy these days instead of just sticking our heads in the ground and not listening to each other, than maybe an open discourse about things like abortion, the war on terror, prisoner's rights, AIDS, etc., could be brought to a musical forum. As it is now, I think that a large amount of music out there right now is pacifying pablam, designed to be easily digestable and totally distracting from anything that could be controversial.

"Issue" rock has always been around, has (usually) always been occasional and benign, and will (usually) remain occasional and benign, as far as pop music goes.

that said, my guess is that Hawthorne Heights is seen as more *real* by their fans than REO Speedwagon was by theirs. Emo has this sort of need for Gangsta Rap style suburban street cred that mainstream rock fans even thought about, say, 25 years ago.

I would say that emo is going to be swept away by the return of real anger to pop music. Remember when Enimem's "Mosh" was on the radio and the extremely angry video was on TV? That's the kind of stuff that I imagine will just drown out emo pseudo-emotion. Angry music like that has strong feelings that will appeal to the emo kids when they get a little older.

I wouldn't be too secure in that guess. Then again, I was nine when REO Speedwagon were big, sooo....

B-b-b-but Nirvana knocked Skid Row and Michael Jackson off the Top 10...not just caused rocks bands to rethink.

It opened the doors for a lot of great, a lot of shitty, and a WHOLE lot of mediocre would-be-independent bands to sign mostly shitty major label deals.

would say that emo is going to be swept away by the return of real anger to pop music.

This is assuming pop music never had elements of anger in the first place. It has been there, and will always be there. The manner in which anger manifests itself in the results might change, but the presence of anger will slightly fluctuate at most.

Well it's always hard to talk about 'pop music' in general like I just did; but at least in emo the emotions are Dawson's Creek, Garden State emotions--that is, not really serious intense ones. Look at American Idiot--that's not a very angry record (like "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is not that angry), but it was so relatively angry that the buzz on it revolved around how Green Day were pissed off, angry at the world, etc. They were actually the ultimate emo band at that point, since they had the aforementioned "suburban cred" + a healthy dose of anger.

Also, side question (considering me and a friend were bickering last night about how much of Emo can be blamed on Cobain...): So...How much of Emo can be blamed on Cobain (I mean, instead of Husker Du)?

I blame Death Cab for Cutie, not Cobain or the Promise Ring, for today's radio-friendly emo.

sure, teh kidz maybe happy to see their bands in concert, but a certain joy is completely absent in emo that was deffinately there in hair metal and most of mainstream rock. sometimes im not to sure that cobain isn't the reason most of rock since him has been moody, if not outright depressed.

and as for the epitome of fake, isn't that the relationship between glitter rock and the over-earnestness of the sixties? (again, broad generalization, no *real* idea of what im talking about)

I blame Weezer - =W=:emo::Nirvana:grunge, bringin' it to the people. (xpost)

Death Cab still just strike me as indie pop, but then, emo no longer really means anything. I've heard kids argue strenuously that Sufjan Stevens is emo. Because he, y'know, sings about feelings and stuff. By which measure, Howlin' Wuff might as well be emo too. Is it unusual for a "new" genre to be so invested in "claiming" other artists for its own? Or is that just what rock'n'roll has always done?

PS - I would have killed to see a Ratt video in 1990. It was the Michael Bolton, Mr. Big, etc. stuff that felt most brutal. And there was plenty of great music happening in the "college rock" world at the time that got blown away by grunge along with the Wilson Phillipses.

yeah, thats my gut feeling too, despite what I said above

Who buys into this dumb timeline, except for MTV watchers/Rolling Stone readers?

= teh kids

Of course, it would be cool if a highly accesible angry group (like Nirvana) got huge and wiped out emo. I absolutely agree.

Like others have said, emo is no more real than any other genre. I doubt most modern emo people could even articulte their frustration without just talking about meaningless buzzwords like feeling "disenfranchised", "lost", or "angry at society" (what does that even mean?).

hedonism and sulking, feeders of the Kapitalist Ego meat flesh machine need to be eliminated.

http://turbine.slackworks.com/robots/jc/tx.jpg

This paragraph is really funny as Dave Grohl was the drummer for DISCHORD RECORDS band "SCREAM".

how is this revisionist? it's been one of rock criticism's biggest cliche's for years now (and the first part is dead wrong, as well).

Can we change that to Chicago or St.Louis or Los Angeles or something? Hasn't New York already taken one for the damn team already? Sheesh.

as is the second part, come to think of it. (don't know about you, but i'd take white stripes or franz ferdinand over fucking pearl jam anyday.)

I find it so refreshing when Chuck and I agree on things.

>This paragraph is really funny as Dave Grohl was the drummer for DISCHORD RECORDS band "SCREAM".

pwned!

I guess I was asking for it with that "any."

http://thousandrobots.com/blog/files/palpatine_02.jpg

"It would seem in you anger you accidentally killed him."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Buddyholly-emo.jpg

The next major contribution comes from TEH BEATLES, who introduced the notion of a cute frontman who both sings and plays electric bass guitar into the pop lexicon.

Then came the 70s, when everyone was too busy dancing and doing "party drugs" to express their true feelings, which were instead hidden away deep inside their lonely souls.

But TEH POLICE revived the cute, bass-playing frontman meme, and added an element of rebellious, authority-defying PUNK ROCK.

So that's how there is emo.

http://www.silver-dragon-records.com/images/hoover_emo.jpg

http://www.mapleglen.co.nz/pics/birds/emu.jpg

Ihttp://www.bobandtom.com/gen3/8cover_img/emo_phillips.jpg