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Bonus post: Everybody Hurts - Review

So the letter D is going along nicely, but before that I'm going to do something quite different, namely a book review.

My hope is that my pseudo-academic academic style will be complemented nicely by exploring what other people have written on the genre. I hope to do more of these eventually, but probably not at a too steady rate because I can be rather lazy when it comes to reading.

Everybody hurts is a book published in 2007 that was written by Leslie Simon, who at the time worked as an editor for Alternative Press and Trevor Kelly who worked as a staff writer, also for Alternative Press. The book is actually quite different from my blog in many respects. Aside from the obvious ones, it isn't specifically focused on 90's emo but instead on what in 2007 was considered contemporary emo. Also unlike my blog it's focused on emo culture (the cover says "an essential guide to emo culture") as opposed to just music.

Some background: The 4th wave, Real Emo and the death of Scene culture

Part of what makes this book interesting to me is that it's very much a product of its time. The story that it tells about the music and community surrounding it is incredibly different than what would have been told in the 90's and even more so today.

So, first some basics: Emo is a very broad term that at many points have meant different things. One popular way to categorize it is by splitting it into 4 (or 5) waves. We have the first wave which refers to the offshoot of hardcore-punk that is the origin of the genre. The second wave is much more influenced by indie, alt-rock and pop. It's much less overtly punky, depending on where you draw the line between first and second wave. The third wave (which corresponds to the time period when this book was written) consists to a large degree of pop-punk and poppy post-hardcore. This is the period of time in which emo music was the most commercially successful and emo culture was properly cemented in the public conciousness. Finally, we have the fourth wave also known as the "emo revival". Now, this is where things get interesting.

As the name implies, emo revival was a movement concerned with bringing back emo to an earlier stage, namely the second wave. As such, many people associated with the revival where to some degree self-concious about the way "their" genre was misinterpreted as being about something else, namely third wave emo. Emo culture at the time was often mocked and the more commercial emo music wasn't looked upon favourably in underground circles. Fourth wave wasn't just a re-embrace of the values of the second wave but a rejection of the third wave.

I should also mention that this isn't nearly as true as it used to be now that enough time has passed for people to be nostalgic sooner than derisive, although it's an assumption that is very much woven into contemporary emo culture.

The history of emo as told from a fourth wave perspective would generally look on the third wave as an embarrassing parenthesis that we'd be better of forgetting. Some people have even gone as far as referring to the bulk of the third wave as "fake emo", being emo in name only while failing to embrace the core values of the genre sufficiently to be considered part of it.

So, this is where this book comes in. Being written in 2007, instead of viewing third wave emo as a heretical misstep, it's treated as the logical conclusion of the genre.

Emo as an identity

Another contrast with modern-day emo culture is it's treatment of emo as almost more of an identity than a music genre. This is also very typical of the time period. I'm born in the mid 90's, and my first exposure to the word emo (as I remember it) was when I was perhaps 10 or so and a friend told me about "a group of mentally ill people who dress in black and self harm". Not even a mention of the music! From then on my pre-pubescent self was mostly exposed to Emo as an identity. Sure, they had a special type of music that they listened to, but it wasn't any more integral to their emo-ness than their fashion for example.

Fast forward to today and I would never unironically call myself or anyone else "an emo", and I don't think almost anyone else would either. The understanding of emo that you find by modern fans is of something that might have cultural connotations, but is ultimately a style of music at heart.

While the authors where a lot more familiar with what emo in general than my 10 year old self and also saw music as a more central part of it, it is very informed by the view of Emo as a broader identity and only a small part of the book is actually about music.

My impression

The book starts of with a foreword by Andy Greenwald, author of Nothing feels good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, And Emo, a book that I'm hoping to eventually cover on this blog.

Then we get to the first chapter, titled ideology. For a second I (foolishly) thought that it would be a Žižek-style examination of pop-culture or something, and got very exited. Reading a few words below, we get a faux dictionary definition of the word:

ide•ol•o•gy n a body of ideas and social needs that separates you from your parents, the pep squad, and Dave Matthews Band fans.

Žižek was never this snarky.

After appropriately adjusting my expectations, snark is a constant background noise in the book. It's sometimes funny, sometimes making fun of a target that deserves it, sometimes an excuse to not treat a subject seriously and sometimes something that has aged quite poorly (ableist slurs stand out like a sore thumb, something it generally didn't in 2007).

The book is divided in 9 chapters, discussing everything from emo ideology, emo fashion, emo literature to emo eating habits and oh right, actual emo music. I generally found that the book was quite well researched (although it is an entertainment book, so it's not exactly done with any academic rigor) and that the authors where happy on going in to detail on most of the subjects they brought up. The facts and anecdotes that make up every chapter are accompanied by either helpful advice ("Don't put on a band shirt right after buying it from the merch table, you'll look like an emo novice") or snarky commentary ("Let's say that a guy and his crush watched One Tree Hill a week earlier with a group of seven of their friends. Never mind that there where nine people in the room. In emo terms, this was a date.")

One section of the book is about emo blogs. Just for fun, let's see how my emo blog measures up:

[From the section "how to emo-fy your blog" [...] you're going to want to look over your text and ask yourself a series of questions before hitting the "submit" button and releasing your deepest, most intimate thoughts into the world. Those questions are as follows:

Does this read well?

Am I making my points in a clear and efficient way?

Did I use actual paragraphs?

Did I capitalize all the words that need capitalisation?

Is this what my life is actually like?

Ok, 5. doesn't really apply but for the others it seems like I'm doing fine. So far, so good.

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you should probably scrap your post and start over. Ideally, a good emo blog post should be over dramatic and a bit abstruse. You know the magnets you see on fridges that people sometimes assemble into bizarre phrases? That's what emo posts are supposed to look like

Well, fuck.

Chapter 6: Music - a review

While it can be anywhere from amusing to interesting to read about everything from proper show etiquette to Emo porn sites (yes, seriously), this being a music blog first and foremost I'm gonna give some extra attention to their taste in music.

They have a section titled "Essential Emo Records 101". So what does it consist of and what do I think of it?

Rites of Spring, S/T

Embrace, S/T

Sunny Day Real Estate, Diary

Jawbreaker, Dear You

Lifetime, Hello Bastards

Texas is the Reason, Do You Know Who You Are?

Weezer, Pinkerton

The Promise Ring, Nothing Feels Good

The Get Up Kids, Something To Write Home About

Jimmy Eat World, Clarity

So far, so good. Lifetime is almost never talked about these days, but Hello Bastards is still a solid record. Mineral, American Football and Cap'n Jazz are all absent, although American Football and Cap'n Jazz weren't very popular until a long time after they split, so it's not that strange I suppose. They would be impossible to not include had the list been written today though. All the bands are accompanied by some text. For the first two albums they snarkily remark that they're not so much good as important historically. I believe that this comes from viewing the history of as stepping stones to what it was when this book was written and not with an attempt to see emo as it was at the time which I think is disappointing although not very surprising.

Saves the Day, Through Being Cool

Glassjaw, Everything You Ever Wanted

At the Drive-in, Relationship of Command

Bright Eyes, Fever and Mirrors

Thursday, Full Collapse

Dashboard Confessional, The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most

Taking Back Sunday, Tell All Your Friends

The Used, S/T

The All-American Rejects, S/T

Brand New, Deja Entendu

Coheed and Cambria, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Yellowcard, Ocean Avenue

Hawthorne Heights, The Silence in Black and White

My Chemical Romance, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

Panic! At the Disco, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

There are a couple of albums that I personally don't really think qualify as emo even from a third wave point of view (although, maybe I'm just too poisoned by 4th wave elitism) namely Fevers and Mirrors, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 and A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. I do still think that at least the first two at least are quite good so it's more of a matter of being overly loose with the genre. Although, maybe it's worth interpreting this list as more "music that emo people like" rather than "emo music" in line with the rest of the book. I did honestly think that it would be a bit worse in terms of including "non-emo" music so I'm honestly positively surprised. The authors do in my opinion manage to escape with a good amount of emo cred.

One thing that I'm disappointed in is the complete absence of screamo music, although this is once again more disappointing than surprising really.

Final verdict

One helpful question to ask when reviewing any piece of media is "who is this for?". My impression is that it's mostly for people who are already immersed in Emo culture who are interested in laughing at themselves. It is a very silly subculture in many ways (particularly in 2007) and the authors poke fun of this many times. If you can take it in stride, this book might be a pleasant read. You might also learn some things that you have missed.

For people such as me who are trying to puzzle together what emo culture actually was like at the time I find that the snark gets in the way of actually learning things, and I wish that they had taken a slightly more serious approach. The book could also have done with a lot more interviews.

Ultimately I think this leaves the book with a quite narrow audience in the present day, but that's fine maybe. At the time it came out it was actually commenting on something culturally relevant and might have served as a decent primer to the subculture.

Today however, I think that I can only really recommend it to the unhealthily obsessed (like me) and the nostalgic.

[83gigsof90semocore-blog]

Post 4: The letter C

Welcome back! It sure wasn't yesterday, how have you been? I'm fine thanks, been a little busy myself and had to put this project on the backburner as you can probably tell. I alluded to being really busy in the last post and that's been pretty much true for all of the past year. Luckily, things are looking a bit better up ahead so I might actually start posting regularly soon!

Much has happened outside of the blog too. I toyed with the idea of moving this beuat over to blogspot (where all the real emo blogs are anyway) when it looked like tumblr was self-destructing for a hot minute. But in the end cooler heads prevailed and it looks like tumblr is just gonna keep existing albeit with less popularity. In the emo world, 125, Rue Montmartre, the first band I covered about a year ago are releasing their discography on vinyl and are now on spotify. All thanks to my blog, I'm sure. Don't be fooled by my modest follower count

I actually have quite a few prestigious readers. Most notably perhaps being Prof. Anders Ahlén, a man important enough to have his own wikipedia page.

C has been the longest letter so far by far clocking in at a mighty 6.56 GB as opposed to the average of 2.8. I've been listening to it in phases with sometimes a month or more in between so it hasn't really been a coherent experience. It has been a real slog though, which is part of why I gave up several times. This has also been a letter with a great number of "famous" emo bands. Because part of the purpose of this listening experience is to experience 90's emo "as it was" rather than colored by nostalgia or what is deemed worthy of attention by the internet discourse I'm disqualifying bands that are prominent in the emo canon from best name, song or image. I will however still do a quick write up on them for those of you not as familiar with emo, chances are I'll reference them in the future so do take notes.

Emo classics

Cap'n Jazz

It's almost impossible to tell the story of 90's emo without Cap'n Jazz. Among their members they have Tim Kinsella, who would later go on to play in Joan of Arc and Owls, his brother Mike Kinsella who would later play in American Football as well as Owls, Their/They're/There and Owen and also Davey von Bohlen who would later play in the Promise ring. When they formed in '89 they where just a bunch teenagers, Mike being just 12. They released their first album 6 years later which goes by the title 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, but is simply referred to as Schmap'n Schmazz by fans. Most of the lyrics where supposedly written by Tim one night while high on mushrooms. They have a wonderful surreal dadaist quality to them with lines such as Hey coffee eyes, you've got me coughing up my cookie heart or You are colder than oldness could ever be. The music is chaotic and full of a warm messy energy. I am personally absolutely enamored with their cover of Aha's Take on me which I insist on putting in as many playlists where it makes some sense whatsoever. As you can hear, Tims vocals do absolutely not Morten Harkets heights (not an easy feat in Tims defense) and you can plainly hear a teenagers voice falseto-cracking and it's absolutely amazing somehow.

Cap'n Jazz really hit the spot of this awkward sensitive yet punk energy that from the start was very central to emo. Although Cap'n Jazz are a big helping sillier and more pubertal than, say, Rites of Spring.

One popular quip about the Velvet underground is the following:

The Velvet Underground didn't sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band.

I suppose Cap'n Jazz is a bit like that for emo although their presence was perhaps felt as strongest around 2010 with bands such as Snowing, Glocca Morra and in particular Algernon Cadwallader aping their style.

Christie Front Drive

I think part of the reason for Cap'n Jazz's status as a cornerstone band stems from their originality. Christine Front Drive is in contrast a very prototypical 90's emo band. They have a sound that borrows heavily from both post-hardcore and indie-rock with the slightly whiny vocals typical for the genre and era. On their song November they sing Still the same // Fucked for what you've done // Still over // Staged over // November's almost done // Still the same which I think is a nice cross section of their lyrics (most of the rest of the song are just variations on the same words with "remember" also thrown into the mix). The overall sound is slow, moody and a bit dreamy, very typical of their brand of emo. As easy as it is to find bands that sound similar to CFD, I dare say that they did it better than most and that this is what has earned them their spot in the emo cannon.

Cursive

Cursive formed in 1995 and has since been together on and off up to the present day, the drive only has music up to 2005 though. This includes their 2003 release the Ugly Organ which was released by Saddle Creek and is the only one I've heard before starting this project. By that point they had already moved away from their emo roots though, and I'm glad to finally have gotten around to their earlier stuff. The Ugly Organ is artsy, catchy and a bit baroque, but also definitely on the outskirts of emo to the point where I'd perhaps describe it as an indie/alternative album if I wasn't talking about them in the context of emo. This doesn't mean that it isn't worth a listen because it absolutely is. Their early stuff is more typical of what the rest of the drive is like with a sound more in the ballpark of CFD but much more punk, with a higher tempo and angrier vocals while still maintaining a somewhat whiny voice, introspective lyrical content and the cold, big guitar sound typical to this branch of emo.

My favorite band

Car vs Driver

So far I've generally picked bands that stand out a bit because in a long stream of relative sameness, that's what you end up paying attention to. Car vs Driver is however not one of theses bands that stand out but rather pretty typical of the emocore sound. They do it pretty well though. They are undeniably punk, but with more introspective lyrics and a slightly melodic edge, which is exactly how emo was first conceived. One some of their tracks like the featured Without A Day day even flirt a bit more with an alt-rock sound but they also have songs that are a lot more hardcore like Livid Step.

When researching them I half expected them to be a pretty substantial band that I had somehow managed to miss, but they're actually very unheard of, something which I consider to be a shame.

I did however find that the drummer of the band has a blogspot at beyondfaliure.blogstopt.com where he catalogs various bands he's been a part of. There is a collection of Car vs Driver flyers as well as two live recordings and this summary he wrote for their discography

Car vs. Driver began when I was 17 years old. By the time we played our final show, I was 19. This band was the music of my life during a period when people usually experience the greatest amount of freedom, which is what I think of whenever I listen to this music now. There were so many new experiences: living on our own, meeting new people, getting a new perspective on life. Our lifestyle in turn gave us a new perspective on expressing music, and we poured all of our energy and emotion into it. Music that now seems a world away – music from a different life. It’s hard to remember that everything about being in a band at that time was simply making a 7”, buying the cheapest van you could find, and touring the country for the summer. There was no infrastructure to build your music around, which also removed its barriers. Instead of running our band like a corporation, we played peoples living rooms and basements, engaged in kickball tournaments, made record covers out of manila envelopes, slept on top of our van, cooked pasta, and played with some of the most amazing bands in the process. Bands that epitomized the time – like Spirit Assembly, Policy of 3, Friction, Current, The Yah Mos, Assfactor 4, Frail, Hoover, Freemasonry, Scout, and Inkwell. The experience we had is something that could never be recreated, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been a part of that moment in time. Thank you Matt, Steve, and Jonathan for bringing this to me.

James Joyce August 2004

This compilation is dedicated to our faithful roadies Ashley Lawrence Moore and William Anthony Nation.

We froze, sweat, bled, argued, and laughed.

Amazing stuff in all, I can highly recommend clicking around their for a while if you, like me are a bit obsessed with the 90's emo scene.

My favorite band name

Christopher Robin

Christopher Robin is a screamo band that go pretty hard. The name is a funny contrast to this and the juxtaposition between childhood nostalgia and angsty screaming works really well.

My favorite picture

Featured is the cover to a demo tape by french screamo band Cather Mathra, which features songs such as Ils M'ont Oubliés (they forgot me) or Leur Révolution (their revolution). You can read more about them on psychoviolence, a blog dedicated to French punk & violence. I think that using a medieval (?) drawing for a cover is pretty cool, especially if you're a french screamo band.

Curiosly they don’t have any music on youtube, you’ll have to check out the drive if you want to listen to them. Tumblr has a limit of 5 embedded videos anyway, so that worked out nicely I suppose.

[83gigsof90semocore-blog]

Post 3: The letter B

Well, RIP my dream of finishing this within one year I guess.

I've had a tough month ...or two. I don't have much free time these days, and what I have is usually dedicated towards lying on my bed in exhaustion watching Queer Eye. But now I've finally managed to scrounge up enough time and effort to type this up.

It was forever ago that I actually listened to the drive, by the way. I made some notes so luckily I don't have to listen to it all again in order to write this.

My favorite band

Broken Hearts are Blue

4 melancholy boys who made some nice tunes between '95 and '97 originally. They sound a bit like Texas is the Reason and otherwise lean heavily into the indie-inspired midwest sound (why yes, I do like 90's midwest emo, why do you ask?).

They are actually re-releasing their LP "the truth about love" for the first time in twenty years, and also recording some new music even.

The snarling voice and funny song titles might fool you to believe that they aren't as self-serious as many of their contemporaries, but looking at their lyrics we can see that they, in fact, are, even if they have a tone of ironic detachment more commonly found in - say - revival music.

Get'n over my sassy self

I'm your twenty first century denim cult hyperbole. I'm hopelessly hopeless. Don't ever try and love me. Ravage me over my sassy self. Rant and rave over...When you're famously fighting photos and everyone wants your autograph. And the darling that you really want decides on Vic Damone instead. If you want to redefine yourself, then come on in, I'll show you around. I'll show you off. I'll validate you. I'll certify you. O terrible me. O terrible me. Rant and rave over my ideology. Ravage me over my sassy self I'm your twenty first century denim cult hyperbole. I'm hopelessly hopeless. Don't ever try and love me. Ravage me over my sassy self.

The main reason why I'm writing about them is that they are almost as good as many of the 90's midwest emo greats and could easily fit in to the emo cannon, but for whatever reason they have remained fairly obscure. If you like Texas is the Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate or Evergreen you will probably like these guys as well and you should check them out.

My favorite band name

Ugh, I'm not really finding anything particularity good here, but I'm gonna settle for baby harp seal.

Pictured: Baby Harp Seal and an actual baby harp seal

I found this excerpt from their last.fm page, but I don't know the source for it. It probably does the band more justice than anything I might write:

my first band was called baby harp seal, we played from 93 - 96 when we broke up because of egos (mostly mine). we played kind of emo music, but not really - we were into hoover and fugazi and heroin, and two of us had a led zep fixation. we did a few 7 inches and one album, which i still listen to now and then. some parts make me cringe, and some parts make me nostalgic. with hindsight, i'm quite proud of it. it was what it was, some lads in their early twenties being a bit pretentious. sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I was gratified to see on last fm that someone is still listening to it on their computer - i don't know how it got there because we only ever released vinyl. happy days though, happy days… As someone else wrote above, it put me on the path i'm on now, nearly fifteen years later, and has, so far at least, given me a nice, if impovershed, life.

- Seth Bennet

Remember Audience of One from the last post? These guys are right up that alley, but more post-rocky.

My favorite image

If you’re gonna call yourself “broccoli”, this is probably the aesthetic to go for

They’re also pretty good, and where contender for both best band and best name. I couldn’t really decide if the name was really good or really bad, but I think i landed in really bad in the end. As noisy put it:

[83gigsof90semocore-blog]

Post 2: The letter A

A

I've made it through the letter A now. It's my first major letter and I must say that the experience has been interesting. Normally I spend most of my time listening to music listening to bands that I already know, however these past two or so weeks I've had a steady flow of fresh music which I think is something that I like. The music has been at bit more varied than expected which I'm very happy for. The letter 'A' has had 2 days and 24 minutes worth of music which means that I've averaged a day of music per week or ~3.42 hours a day which I'm incredibly happy with (I actually finished in exactly two weeks, just took a while to get the post up). What I've done is mostly that I've made sure that I can listen to music at work, which gives me lots of time to listen. Despite the good listening pace, I haven't had as much time to write this post as I've wanted which has held me back a bit. Since the last post, a third of my time has been spent not even listening to music just waiting to find the time and energy to type all this up.

My favorite band

Audience Of One

Not to be confused with the Rise Against song or the christian folk band sharing the same spotify page.

Audience Of One was Anthony Greens first band, formed when he was still in high school. Anthony Green being the part-time vocalist of most notably Saosin and Circa Survive, both emo/post-hardcore bands that I'm sorta vaguely familiar with.

The vocals are a mix of the kinda whiny slightly off-key vocals that people typically associate emo with and screamed parts closer to the hardcore side of emo, although they are more often closer to the hard core side. Similarly, the guitar ranges from fuller chords full of colourings that are probably played in some funky tuning in classic Midwest style to more dissonant scramzy intervals. Despite this, the album in this collection, I Remember When This All Meant Something, feels coherent as a whole and the relatively large variance is a welcome break from many of the same-ier bands that I've listened to during this project. The overall mood of the album is one which really captures angst of being a teenager who might start an emo band in high school while dealing with their first heartbreak. The songs are energetic rather than melancholic while at the same time conveying this sense of discomfort. The lyrics are often a few lines repeated multiple times, mostly alluding to the narrator processing a breakup. Just reading the lyrics to a song might make you cringe a bit, but it completely works while listening to the song, the band really sells you on the whole concept. Actually, maybe just listening to the song might make you cringe as well but I personally find it endearing sooner than embarrassing

Unfortunately commenter GREENASANTHONY doesn't agree with my assessment that this is emo

Honorable mention

Antioch Arrow

Antioch Arrow is, according to wikipedia, "considered to be one of the most influential bands of the early 1990s that shaped emo and post-hardcore music of the late 1990s and early 2000s". They are energetic, messy and chaotic and much closer to the mid-80's school of emo than Audience Of One for example, even naming Rites Of Spring as one of their influences. While the lyrical style is more hardcore punk, they have a lot in common with many big name screamo bands from the 90's like Heroin or Orchid.

While Antioch Arrow is more interesting and more historically important than Audience Of One, at the end of the day Audience Of One was the band I enjoyed listening to the most. Antioch Arrow is (to me at least) not very enjoyable to listen to. And maybe music doesn't have to be limited to being enjoyable but in that case you might miss out on having the prestigious honour of being my favorite band of whichever letter.

My favorite band name

Agna Moriane's Autobiography

Agna Moriane's Autobiography is actually one of the better sounding bands as well. The name is pretty dramatic but so is their music so that is only appropriate. I think that the reason why I like the band name is that it paints a picture while also sparking my imagination. Like, who is Agna Moriane? Google doesn't seem to have any answers to this. One of their albums is also named "Chapter Two: The Recalcitrant Memory Of..." which helps build the concept.

They made me think a lot about Old Gray's An Autobiography (also, in the interest of not supporting abusers, it's worth mentioning that this is a thing) and while it was the name that drew my mind that way I don't think that the comparison is useless. Both bands are screamo bands with spoken word bits mixed in and a lot of gang vocals. Instrumentally, Agna Moriane is much more hardcore punk than Old Grays cleaner more indie sound. They also have a similar lyrical style, with Old Gray being a bit more literal perhaps. They are both very moody and make references to self harm and struggling to stay alive, which is then framed differently by their different sounds.

My favorite picture

The cover to Amber Inn's Serenity In Hand. Atsy, tasteful and understated. I like the mood that the colours help create. Nothing too dramatic, it's just a cover that I like.

[83gigsof90semocore-blog]

An introduction, plus 0-9 review

Part 1: background

The idea behind this blog is to listen to all of the long live emo google drive, a drive containing “emocore” music from the “90’s” (more on this later), and comment the process. I found this archive while browsing some semi-obscure facebook group dedicated to emo music and decided to listen to all of it. I did this in part because I wanted to learn more about music, in part because it seems interesting to not have as much of a filter when listening to music as I’d only ever hear the most popular 90’s emocore otherwise but mostly because why not??

The E-word

(Feel free to skip this section if you already have a solid idea of what the hell “emocore” means)

(The rest of the section is basically just emo 101)

I like trying to categorize things, even though I’m aware that every categorization falls apart when you start really pushing it’s boundaries. I like strange cultural artifacts. Because of this, I am fascinated by emo. Emo is older than most people expect with it’s roots in the 80’s and that has meant several very different things both to different people and in different points in time. The part of emo that most people are familiar with is the one that was commercially successful maybe 10-15 years ago, and that is not even considered to be “real emo” by most people immersed into the subculture.

Emo started as an outgrowth of hardcore music in the 80’s and was pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring, Moss Icon and Embrace. At the time it was referred to as “emotional hardcore” which was later shortened to “emocore” and finally just “emo”. During the 90’s a different style of emo was developed known as Midwest Emo which was much closer to alternative rock or indie rock while only maintaining some of it’s hardcore roots, with bands such as Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, the Promise ring and american football. During the 00’s there was more of an effort by record companies to make money of emo music which lead to more listenable and widely market music being created often closer to pop-punk and sometimes post-hardcore. Notable examples are The red jumpsuit apparatus, My chemical romance, Fall Out Boy, Taking back Sunday, Brand new and Jimmy Eat World. For a lot fans of more underground emo, most or all of these bands are considered fake emo. I’m gonna call it scene emo instead because that is a less loaded term. During the late 00’s, the so-called “emo revival” movement began to make more underground music with a more 90’s midwest sound. Some important revival bands are Snowing, The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die, Empire! Empire! (I was a lonely estate) and the Hotelier.

Basically, for some reason people consider Orchid, american football and Panic! At the Disco to be part of the same genre. To clear up any confusion, I’m using the word “emocore” to indicate that I’m talking about the more traditional “emotional hardcore” definition of emo. Note that the most common definition that you see in emo communities on the internet, or among more recent bands that call themselves emo is one that includes emocore (although this aspect is somewhat downplayed), 90’s midwest emo, a select few scene emo bands (specifically Brand New, Taking Back Sunday and Jimmy Eat World) as well as emo revival. This is also the kind of emo I am personally most familiar with.

There is however a contingent of people instead use the emocore definition, which you might recognize if you’ve ever seen the infamous real emo copypasta. The author of the long live emo archive, Лобынцев Артем, also seems to use this definition, although they probably actually know what they’re talking about.

“90’s” “emocore”

So some of the music on this drive isn’t actually from the 90’s, there’s also music from the 80’s and the early 2000’s. I’m calling it 90’s emocore because it paints a better picture than just emocore, even if it technically isn’t true. On a similar note, I’m calling it emocore even though there may very well be music that some genre nerd might argue isn’t actually emocore. As previously discussed, emo is a hopelessly broad term so I’m using emocore to give people a better idea of what to expect, not because it’s necessarily 100% accurate.

Part 2: The archive

The entire archive is 83.8 gigabyte which is more than 10% of my harddrive. I’ve spent several hours just downloading files, and I’ve only gotten up to the letter D. In the root of the folder there is a file called “List of folders.txt”. According to it, there are 1671 albums, 69.76 GB (this is presumably just the music without the image files also included? Maybe that’s what I should have called the blog) 12496 songs, and 19:00:26 hours. That’s in the format DD:HH:MM by the way.

This is an absurd amount of music. My plan is to try and finish it within one year, or before 2019/7/20. To do that, I would have to listen to an average of 4.6 albums, 34.22 songs or 1.25 hours a day. We’ll see how that goes.

Part 3: The review: 0-9 (finally!)

So this is the format: The drive is divided in to folders based on the first character of the band name. Every time I finish one such folder I will post a review like part 3 here (don’t worry, I wont spend hundreds of words talking about emo every post). I will talk about my favorite artist under that letter, my favorite band name, my favorite image (as I said, there are images included under some of the bands, mostly of their album covers and such) as well as anything else I find interesting. I might shake up the formula a bit as I go, who knows. Before writing this post I’ve listened to the first folder, titled “0-9”. This is one of the smallest folders in the compilation, despite technically containing ten different characters, with only 160 songs. For comparison, the letter a has 831 songs. A careful start in other words.

Here are all the songs, albums and bands I've been listening to: https://pastebin.com/Xm5b4ZN1

My favorite band

125, Rue Montmartre

So after all this talk about emocore I ended up picking the maybe least hardcore band, figures. Commenter Kyle Cornwell on Sophies Floarboard says that they’re emocore at least so we’re still good.

125, Rue Montmartre is a German band named after a street address in Paris. They where active between 1998 and 2000 and they released 1 EP, took part in 1 split with Maggat and appeared on 2 compilations. They have a female singer who not only sings but also speaks and whispers. The guitars mostly play short, catchy riffs or arpeggios with some occasional chords during more explosive parts. The bass is comparatively loud and often contributes to the melody of a given song more than the guitars. Their style is clearly closer to the Midwest style of emo with it’s arpeggiod guitars, more indie sound and more melancholy mood. Here are the lyrics to their song Disco Hijack along with it’s English translation, which are very emo:

My favorite band name

30 second motion picture

I didn’t really find any name that was all that interesting under the number category (although I expect to find a lot of good ones down the line) but this is the one that spoke to me the most for whatever reason

My favorite image

This is from 309 chorus’s 1994 demo.

There’s just something really endearing about this grainy picture of this nerdy-looking dude with arm tattoos playing in front of a sign that says “haymarket collective” and has a fist and a circle E. Makes me happy inside.

Expect a new post in maybe two weeks? I’m not sure exactly how long time everything takes yet