In the year 2012 emo has become a pejorative term, a scathing ball of spit to lob at the mascara-fouled MySpace refugees and the kitschy bands of our middle school years.
Like, “oh man, look at that dude, his pants are super tight and he’s wearing a Panic! at the Disco shirt, he’s so fucking emo,” for a particularly egregious example.
Considering my own love for the scene, one of the most eclectic and visceral music movements of our time, I can’t help but swish my hair and stare pensively off into the distance in morose response (oh, slings and arrows!). But, all Hamlet-ing aside, the mistreatment of the scene in the past 10 years is something truly abhorrent.
Let’s get this straight. First: Emo was never the preferred nomenclature, it was just another press-appointed label thrown upon a burgeoning scene.
When, as tradition states, Rites of Spring kickstarted the genre in the mid-’80s, they were just another hardcore punk band—manic riffs and shouted vocals and skuzzy production and everything, as per the norm.
Well, almost just another hardcore band; Rites of Spring were heavily and atypically indebted to Ian Mackay’s (of later Fugazi fame) straight-edged, violence-free brand of punk immortalized via Minor Threat. And they took the concept a step further.
The first ‘emo’ bands were punks separated from the pitfalls of punk—they were concerned with the individual’s sorrows over the system’s, the implications of violence as opposed to the propagation of it (I’m looking at you, GG Allin). It was naval-gazing, to be sure, but it was far removed from the mall-punk theatricality of My Chemical Romance and their ilk.
Yet the blame for emo’s mistreatment doesn’t totally lie with the denizens of the 21st century—after all, purely as products of our environment, it’s infinitely more likely for someone to have heard, say, Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American than Saetia’s A Retrospective.
Our generation was just passing through grade school when emo exploded out from mangy basement shows and into car commercials and tween’s iPods—the average American doesn’t know or care who Jarecrew is, or what skramz means (for the uninformed and/or curious, it’s a communal term used to distinguish post-2000’s, traditionally inclined screamo from, say, The Used).
So it’s not really fair to take the purist or even elitist stance on the matter, it’s really just a lack of exposure (which, despite what Portlandia might have taught you, is almost always a bad thing).
Years and years ago (my, how time flies), my buddy left his copy of Cap’n Jazz’s classic ’90s emo album Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped on and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over (or Shmap’n Shmazz as most may know it. Well, actually Analphabetapolothology, but I digress) in my car.
And, being the curious little scamp I was, I gave it a listen, my ears all a-perked.
I won’t pretend it was a life-altering experience—after all, I was only half-listening, and Tim Kinsalla’s strained, belting vocals were prickly to my Arcade Fire-attuned ears. But it did pique my interest.
I’d always been under the impression that emo music was all just mashed power chords and histrionics, and Shmap’n Shmazz was anything but.
The guitar work was angular and bizarre, full of mathy-noodling, and Kinsalla’s lyrics were poignantly childish and piercing (“I’m dying to tell you I’m dying!” from the song “Yes, I Am Talking to You!” is still one of my favorite lines ever).
It wasn’t long afterward I learned most of my other assumptions about the collective scene were wrong as well— screamo wasn’t just something that Hawthorne Heights did poorly, power violence was equal parts beauty and pain, and post-hardcore was more than just the smoldering ashes of At the Drive-In.
To this day I’m still an outsider looking in—I lack the encyclopedic knowledge and stalwart dedication some of my friends hold towards the DIY punk scene—but I’m still absolutely enamored with the culture and the sound.
So-called emo is music unfettered and unburdened, in love with itself but also in love with everything around it. And for that, at least, I can’t help but feel that it deserves more recognition than it has ever been given.
Spending your adult years working out the crick in your neck from excessive hair swishing in high school? Get angsty about it with Cameron at cgraff2@wisc.edu.
