what is emo?

But I think the meaning is different now.

But there's also bands like Heartfelt Self (which are a Promise Ring/Braid rip off at best) Think Tank and Blueline Medic plus a whole host of awful Adelaide based stuff. I'm under the impression that there's a pretty huge Hornsby straight edge emo/hc scene in Sydney as well, but I've never really delved into it.

Even if you look outside of the immediate punk scene, bands like The Sea Scouts and The Vivian Girls, while perhaps not immediately identifying with any particular leading lights in the genre seem to exhibit plenty of identifying characteristics.

What's emo?
If it's anything like X, it's terrible.
[Someone posts fourfa link.]
[No one goes to fourfa link/]
Yeah, emo's dumb.
Yeah, emo fans are dumb.
What's emo again?

Basically they were ironic tee shirts, go to coffee shops and write bad poetry.

The music is all very myopic and self-obsessed, usually contains something about a diary or stars or how growing up isn't easy.

And don't bring Dismemberment Plan into this, they're a fun pop band in my book.

What do I know...

This picture will never get old.

Well it has. I guess that's the point. But it's going to be the emo-rock equivalent of the pic of the sailor bending his fiancee/wife over in the middle of a parade to give her a bigga smooch.

I'm pretty sure that was just one of the thousands of acts of sexual harrassment occasioned by the news of the end of the war. Actually, it was.

http://www.life.com/Life/special/kiss03.html

http://www.auralcontact.com/images/Photos/1986-88_Caruso/350/NACA_EmoP.jpg

of course, as all such words gain currency in culture and mutate in their meaning, "emo", like "goth" before it, has generally come to refer to an aesthetic paradigm rather than an subgenre of music. and like "goth", hardly any band or artist often described as "emo" likes to be described as such. also, again, as in goth, the name tends to have negative connotations for referring to an inherently self-absorbed style of songwriting.

The Dance of Days book helps lay out the foundations of emo as a music and cultural movement in the mid- to late-80s. It was an outgrowth of hardcore, but it was also a rejection of the meathead tendency that had come to plague East Coast hardcore. Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Fugazi were quite conscious about creating a different kind of atmosphere musically and culturally: less violence, less aggression, less virility, more introspection, more arms folded, more naked emotion, etc, etc, etc. These were things to be expressed in the music, at shows, and throughout the scene in general. Of course, much of the music was still really loud, really heavy, and often quite chaotic. But it was a decided break from what had been going on at the latter Minor Threat gigs.

I'm really amazed the term is still used. Kids were already debating whether emo was dead by '93!!!!!

I'd put Cap'n Jazz right up there w/Christive Front Drive as big time emo bands from the later period. The Promoise Ring were really one of the main bridges between Fugazi-styled emo and a more pop-oriented emo. And I've never really considered anything by Blake Schwarzenbach as emo. But who know?!

Oh well I have no idea, really. I don't know that I've ever heard Jets to Brazil or whichever Jaw- band he fronted. But it all got lumped into the same "emo" box in my mind at the time.

for what it's worth, sunny day real estate is recognized as one of the first emo bands, quite talented and multi-faceted, but i don't really much of them in today's emo. for one thing, sunny day wrote mostly in minor keys, with a heavy dose of theatricality, instrumental interludes and a strong led zeppelin influence. modern emo seems to have replaced these features with a too-strong infusion of greenday/sum41 punk-pop major key zippy doo dah. oh well, there's still some good stuff being released as emo. panic at the disco has some theatrical, proggy long songs that are relatively fresh.

The one from Australia? No. This one's the drummer in my band.

"screamo"? powerviolence? "emoviolence"?

Yessir.

for what it's worth, sunny day real estate is recognized as one of the first emo bands

I have to disagree. As several of us have noted up above, people were using the emo tag long, long before that band came on the scene.

If you haven't then check out Matt Sussman's informative post up above. He gets into the whole West chaos "screamo" scene like the San Diego and Gravity bands: Moss Icon, Clikitat..., Antioch Arrow, Constatine Sankhati, etc. (Note: I never heard the word "screamo" until ong after the Gravity scene was hot.)

(BTW- What was the big emo/hardcore distributor from the Midwest in the '90s? And how can I forget all this emo-centric stuff: Initial Records, Falling Forward, Kerosene 454, and Sideshow.)

As for power violence and the whole Slap-a-Ham world, Charles Bronson, etc., that could be considered just another splintering of hardcore into finer 'n' finer subgenres (with obvious cross pollination going on).

Of course, none of my posts are scientific, and I'm simply trying to recall what I witnessed going down (from my perspective). BUT, I do have to stand by my claim that Sunny Day Real Estate was not one of the first emo bands.

The only important thing for everyone to agree on is that weezer has nothing to do with emo. Right? Right.

Has anybody noticed how This Heat's "Health Efficiency" (the first half) feels very much like proto-emo? It's kinda freaky.

http://topshelfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/whenever-if-ever

lol names

Thomas Maxwell Diaz - vocals, guitar, synthesizer
David Francisco Bello - vocals
Derrick Nathaniel Shanholtzer-Dvorak - guitar, vocals
Joshua Daniel Cyr - bass guitar, synthesizer
Katie Lynne Shanholtzer-Dvorak - synthesizer, vocals
Steven Karl Buttery - percussion
Christopher Joseph Teti - guitar
Julia Fields Peters - Cello
Patrick William Malone - Trumpet
Shitty Greg - guitar, vocals, piano, synthesizer

Shitty Greg, the man, the legend

wow fourfa.com still exists

"god help me, I have a myspace page now. do your worst."

@NewYorker
Emo, originally short for “emotive hardcore,” is experiencing an adult resurgence in the form of emo nights: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-rise-of-emo-nostalgia

@NickPinkerton
Not kidding I want to not be alive any longer.

I clearly remember emo-core as a genre in the 1990s (from "emotional hardcore", not 'emotive' IIRC). A friend recently refused to believe my claim that it was the precursor to emo

Might even have been the 80s...

It was definitely 'emotional'.

"the genre first emerged in the nineties,"

can hear thousands of 40-something former/current punks closing a tab rn

emoticon hardcore

max had a good tweet about how anything after 2002 isn't emo and the get up kids own

the get up kids do own

The crowd that night at the Echo was smiling; wherever I looked, someone was air-drumming or spraying champagne. “This is the easiest shit ever!” a d.j. playing a Spotify track list told me, shouting over his speakers. Tyler Posey, of MTV’s “Teen Wolf,” manned his own laptop upstairs. Toward the end of the night, which closed with a euphoric, emo-E.D.M. mash-up rave, the All-American Rejects took the stage, and played acoustic versions of their mid-aughts hits: “Swing Swing,” “Move Along,” “Gives You Hell.” After one song, the vocalist, Tyson Ritter, called out, “If you’re over thirty in the crowd, say ‘FUCK YEAH!’ ” Many people yelled back.

probably sums up the worse things of the article and this revival

always shuddered at the correlation between emo and my chemical romance

are we all really in our 40s tho

i had trouble settling on an age range. anyway it started in the late '80s

(all forms of "emo" are interrelated except for people who want to retcon weezer as emo)

max had a good tweet about how anything after 2002 isn't emo and the get up kids own

― Islamic State of Mind (jim in vancouver), Thursday, January 12, 2017 2:05 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this ain't exactly a hot take but yeah otm

i remember posting on mid-00s message boards and people would always link to like this really angry geocites page about the origins of emo

emo is a feeling...literally

i remember posting on mid-00s message boards and people would always link to like this really angry geocites page about the origins of emo

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, January 12, 2017 12:48 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fourfa!

it's still there http://www.fourfa.com/

anything after 2002 isn't emo

treeship tho

old guy emos:

was dag nasty emo? i feel like they were but not sure

Ctrl-F "lil peep"

For a while, Emo Nite LA was also known as Taking Back Tuesday—a name that drew ire from Taking Back Sunday’s frontman, Adam Lazzara. “I don’t want to become a parody of something I take real seriously,” he told Billboard, in July. “That’s the line that these people are walking. . . . You don’t make shirts that say ‘Sad as Fuck.’ Like you’re making a fucking joke out of it? Fuck you.”

Fourfa totally got our equipment wrong.

http://pitchfork.com/tv/58-a-brief-history-of/1972-rites-of-spring-sunny-day-real-estate-the-get-up-kids-watch-a-brief-history-of-emo/?mbid=social_twitter

What the fuck is wrong with people?

That's fucking unbearable

wow that is terrible destroy p4k