like or hate emo? Options

[sillakilla220]

no offense to anyone but personally that stuff is trash. whiny boys too in touch with their feminine side doesnt really appeal to me. just wondering cuz i hate seeing it on mtv, who else even listens to that garbage?

[banthisaccountno...]

(i stole the following from here)

Emo does not stand for emotional. Emo isn't that whiney rich kid in your algebra class who whines about how much his life sucks. Emo isn't that sh*t you see in Hot Topic or on MTV. Emo isn't My Chemical Romance or Taking Back Sunday or Dashboard Confessional or Bright Eyes. Emo is not a mindset. Emo is not a person, or type of person. Emo is not a corporate trend. Emo is not tight pants or moronic hair. Emo is not a fashion. "Emo" is not the use of diluted, meaningless metaphors and similes such as "My arms are like pinecones," and most definitely is not the rampant use of words such as "autumn," "heart," "knife," "bleeding," "leaves," and "razorblade." Emo is not cutting your wrists because your girlfriend dumped you and your mother wouldn't stir your chocolate milk. Emo is not bad music.

Emo is the term used for an underground movement of music in the mid-80's through the early-90's. What does emo mean? Emo is emotionally charged hardcore punk rock or "emotive hardcore". It is simply just a subgenre of hardcore. (Hardcore punk meaning bands like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, FEAR, etc.) In the original incarnation, the term emo was coined to describe the sound of (Washington) DC area bands such as Rites of Spring, Embrace (Ian MacKaye's transitional band after Minor Threat and before Fugazi), Dag Nasty, One Last Wish, Moss Icon, Grey Matter, and Fire Party, Rites of Spring being the first actual emo band. Most of these bands sound nothing like today's "emo".

In 1985 in Washington, D.C., Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, veterans of the DC hardcore music scene, decided to shift away from what they saw as the constraints of the basic style of hardcore and the escalating violence within the scene. They took their music in a more personal direction with a far greater sense of experimentation, bringing forth MacKaye's Embrace and Picciotto's Rites of Spring. The style of music developed by Embrace and Rites of Spring soon became its own sound. (Hüsker Dü's 1984 album Zen Arcade is often cited as a major influence for the new sound.) As a result of the renewed spirit of experimentation and musical innovation that developed the new scene, the summer of 1985 soon came to be known in the scene as "Revolution Summer".

Within a short time, the DC emo sound began to influence other bands such as Moss Icon, Nation of Ulysses, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think, Fire Party, Marginal Man, and Gray Matter, many of which were released on MacKaye's Dischord Records. The original wave of DC emo finally ended in late 1994 with the collapse of Hoover.

Where the term emo actually originated is uncertain, but members of Rites of Spring mentioned in a 1985 interview in Flipside Magazine that some of their fans had started using the term to describe their music. By the early 90s, it was not uncommon for the early DC scene to be referred to as emo-core, though it's unclear when the term shifted.

As the DC scene expanded, other scenes began to develop with a similar sound. In San Diego in the early 1990s, Gravity Records released a number of records in the hardcore emo style. Bands of the period included Heroin, Indian Summer, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Universal Order of Armageddon, Swing Kids, and Mohinder. At the same time, in the New York/New Jersey era, bands such as Native Nod, Merel, 1.6 Band, Rye Coalition and Rorschach were feeling the same impulse. Many of these bands were involved with the ABC No Rio club scene in New York, itself a response to the violence and stagnation in the scene and with the bands that played at CBGBs, the only other small venue for hardcore in New York at the time. Much of this wave of emo, particularly the San Diego scene, began to shift towards a more chaotic and aggressive form of emo, nicknamed screamo.

By and large, the more hardcore style of emo began to fade as many of the early era groups disbanded. Even still, a handful of modern bands continue to reflect emo's hardcore origins, including Circle Takes the Square, Hot Cross, City of Caterpillar, Funeral Diner, and A Day in Black and White.

Back in DC, following the disbanding of both Rites of Spring and Embrace, MacKaye and Picciotto decided to join forces in a new band, called Fugazi. While Fugazi itself was not categorized as emo, the music it created would soon influence the second major wave of emo.

Emo, and it's various incarnations, is very good underground music if you're a fan of raw, aggressive, fast-paced music with introspective lyrics. Emo is NOT bad music! Generally, if you're a fan of punk rock, hardcore, indie, or even grindcore or metal, you'll probably like emo/screamo.

Today, the words "emo" and "screamo" are often (incorrectly) used on bands like Dashboard Confessional, Senses Fail, My Chemical Romance, Atreyu, the Used, and Bright Eyes. (Bright Eyes, has nothing to do with emo, they're a folk-indie rock band.) The other bands, however, are nothing more than pop music or mallcore (which is pop music itself in a more "br00tal" form). The labels "emo" and "screamo" are slapped onto almost every teeny-bopper pop band with "angst-ridden" lyrics and members that are "so HAWT LOLZ" by the three M's: the Music industry, the Media, and MTV. They all have the same basic formula and sound with a couple different variations. Most of these bands have nothing to do with hardcore, punk, or emo music at all. Also, emo is used to describe a lot of a "depressed" kids that cut. These kids aren't emo, they're just retarded attention-whores for the most part. If you want to insult someone who claims to be "emo", the most appropriate names for these corporate cock-sucking zombies, are "scenesters" or "scene kids".

List of True Emo Bands
Rites of Spring
Embrace (US band, not the UK brit-pop band)
Gray Matter
Ignition
Dag Nasty
Monsula
Fugazi
Fuel
Samiam
Jawbreaker
Hot Water Music
Elliot
Friction
Soulside
Lifetime
Split Lip(same band as Chamberlain)
Chamberlain(same band as Split Lip)
Kerosene 454
Moss Icon
The Hated
Silver Bearings
Native Nod
Merel
Hoover
Current
Indian Summer
Evergreen
Navio Forge
Still Life
Shotmaker
Policy of 3
Clikatat Ikatowi
Maximillian Colby
Noneleftstanding
Embassy
Ordination of Aaron
Floodgate
Four Hundred Years
Frail
Lincoln
Julia
Shroomunion
Unwound
Heroin
Antioch Arrow
Mohinder
Honeywell
Reach Out
Portaits of Past
Assfactor 4
Second Story Window
End of the Line
Angel Hair
Swing Kids
Three Studies for a Crucifixion
John Henry West
Guyver-1
Palatka
Coleman
Iconoclast
Sunny Day Real Estate
Christie Front Drive
Promise Ring
Mineral
Boys Life
Sideshow
Get-Up Kids
Braid
Cap'n Jazz
Funeral Diner
Circle Takes The Square
A Day in Black and White
A Trillion Barnacle Lapse
Air Conditioning
Amanda Woodward
Breather Resist
Coliseum
Envy
Gospel
Hot Cross
Kaospilot
Lack
Melt Banana
Mikoto
Newgenics
North of America
Off Minor
Gun Metal Gray
Saetia
I Hate Myself
I Would Set Myself On Fire For You
City Of Caterpillar
The Kodan Armada
Raein

NOT Emo:
All-American Rejects
As I Lay Dying
Atreyu
Avril Lavigne
Billy Talent(What talent?)
Blink 182
Bowling For Soup
Brand New
Busted
Coheed & Cambria
Dashboard Confessional
Early November
Emery
Fall Out Boy
Finch
From Autumn to Ashes
From First to Last
Green Day
Good Charlotte
Hawthorne Heights
Haste the Day
Linkin Park
Matchbox Romance
My American Heart
My Chemical Romance
New Found Glory
Rufio
Saves the Day
Senses Fail
Silverstein
Simple Plan
Something Corporate
Starting Line
Story of the Year
Sugarcult
Sum 41
Taking Back Sunday
Thursday
UnderOath
Used
Yellowcard
Test Icicles
AFI



..and just so I stay on topic:
The stuff people call "emo" nowadays sucks, but real emo is alright.

[Your pain is not...]

I only skimmed through the topic, forgive me if I repeat anything or whatever.

(i stole the following from here)

That's a pretty good essay, I found one a few years ago that is very similar :

"LEASE LEARN A THING OR TWO, KIDS
Before all you dumb kids go prancing around proclaiming that "OMGGG MCR R SO EMOO" or "OMMGGGZ BRITE EYZ R TEH EMO-EST EVARRR" or WHATEVER the f**k.

PLEASE learn what emo is, ENLIGHTEN yourselves, by doing one thing.

READING THIS SHORT, VERY WELL INFORMED ESSAY.

Maybe afterwards YOU'LL f**king KNOW WHAT EMO IS.




THIS ESSAY WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME
What the f**k is emo, anyways?

"The definition of emo:

I was bored as hell the other day, and had absolutely nothing to do, so I thought to myself, “Why not write about something that means a lot to me?” I figured I would do an essay of sorts on the origins of emotive hardcore. It is somewhat biased, and opinionated, but nonetheless, I hope you’ll give it a quick read. Here it goes:

Emo is a term that is short for emotive hardcore. Most people these days think that emo is strictly short for emotional, but this is false. If emo just meant emotional, wouldn’t it encompass all musical genres, because all music has emotion in it? If you only pick one thing out of this article, be it that emo stands for emotive hardcore, not just emotional.

Many kids have the complete wrong sense of what emo is. Many earlier emo bands only released their songs on vinyl, and they were distributed minimally, so the origin of emo is lost among most people. This is my attempt at tracing it back to the start, in hopes to educate you. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of important bands and years missing, but hopefully it will give you a vague idea of how it all started out.

With that said, let’s move onto the history of emotive hardcore. Heres where the term emo came from: When Minor Threat broke up in 1983, the hardcore punk scene was getting pretty stale. In 1984, Husker Du released “Zen Arcade,” which somewhat set the blueprint for emo bands to follow. This album had the rough vocals, but it had more melody, and was a bit slower than their previous works. Many people give credit to this as the first emo album.

In the spring of 1984, a band called Rites of Spring was formed, containing members of previous hardcore bands The Untouchables/Faith and Deadline. This band kept the speed and stylings of hardcore punk rock, but the vocals were a lot more emotional, and at times even broke into a throaty moan. The lyrics also strayed from politics, and took a more emotional/profound look at life. Rites of Spring gets a lot of credit for being the first emotive hardcore band. Ian Mckaye, formerly of Minor Threat, got into a band called Embrace. Definitely different than Minor Threat, Embrace took a more emotional side to the lyrics as well, and were a lot more melodic. These bands, and much of the other bands on Dischord Records are now labeled as “The Classic DC Sound.” This was the first wave of emo bands.These bands focused more on emotion, than punk rock energy. Legend has it that while Rites of Spring, or Embrace, or Moss Icon were playing a show, someone from the crowd shouted “You’re emo!” and that’s how the term got started. The show where it happened, and which bands were playing always differ with whoever you talk to, so I have no idea how true it is. Don’t take my word on it.

From there, more and more emo bands started forming around North America. Moss Icon, which formed in 1986, started the loud/soft alternating twinkly guitar parts, and crashing distortion side of emo. Indian Summer and Native Nod, who were around 1995-96 are good examples of this, and focused more on the emotional part of the music, rather than the hardcore part, but were still hardcore. Emo was now a bit broader.
Bands like Heroin(1992), Angel Hair(1997?), and Antioch Arrow(1995?) on Gravity Records focused more on the hardcore part of the genre, but were still very emo. The music is pretty chaotic, with just enough melody to pullthings through, and the vocals are usually hoarsely screamed.

1997 marks the release of Saetias fist 7” record, and the debut of level-plane records.
I highly recommend that you pink Saetias “A retrospective” cd. At any rate, Level-plane records is probably the most famous emo label out there, and is still going strong today.
It has released many important and influential albums, and is a huge part of todays emo scene.

Some of the most important emo labels are as follows:
Dischord, www.dischord.com
Gravity, wwww.gravityrec.com
Ebullition, www.ebullition.com
31G, www.threeoneg.com
Level-plane, www.level-plane.com
Robotic Empire, www.roboticempire.com
Theres a lot more record labels out there, just take a look around the internet.
The above are just some of the ones that I enjoy.

Amanda Woodward, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Bucket Full of Teeth, Circle Takes The Square, City of Caterpillar, Embrace, Envy, The Fiction, Heroin, Indian Summer, I Would Set Myself On Fire For You, Native Nod, Orchid, Pageninetynine, Rites of Spring, Yaphet Kotto, and You And I are some of my personal favorite emo bands.
Check them out if you’ve got the time.

Continuing on, a lot of bands are getting called emo by the mainstream, when in fact they are not. Take Dashboard Confessional for example. Chris Carraba just plays acoustic ballads. There is nothing hardcore about it. The music may be very “emotional” and heartfelt, but even so, it is not emo. The same goes for indie bands like Death Cab For Cutie, and Bright Eyes. Conor Oberst is a brilliant songwriter, and I love his work, but again, there is nothing hardcore about his music. Another common misconception about emo, is that bands like Taking Back Sunday, and My Chemical Romance are emo. To me, these bands are strictly pop punk, although their lyrics may seem very emotional at times, but emo doesn’t stand for emotional, now does it?

Another false interpretation of emo is the term “screamo.” I’m sure you’ve all heard this rant before, but I figured that I’d include it anyways. The media has used the term for bands like Thursday, and The Used. Because people call Dashboard Confessional emo, they interpret emo as “whiny watered down music for depressed kids who cut themselves.” With that as their idea of emo, it’s no wonder that people call The Used, or any other “whiny emotional band” that screams here and there “screamo.”

With emo standing for emotive hardcore, the way I see it, screamo would stand for:
Emotive hardcore + screaming, right? Wrong. Emotive hardcore contains screamed and/or whispered vocals in it already. Screamo = Emo. Just leave it at that. Even so, bands like The Used that are being labeled as “screamo” by the media aren’t emotive hardcore, so the term “screamo” is completely misused. The term “screamo” can be used for a band like orchid, although emo works just as well, but not for something like The Used.

I was talking to someone on nexopia the other day, and he was talking about screamo. I asked him what screamo is, and he replied with “any band that screams.” That is completely wrong as well. Metal bands scream. Hardcore bands scream. Punk bands scream. Hell, even Linkin Park screams. You can’t lump all of those genres into one super genre. It just doesn’t work.

Screamo is made up by the media to sell bands like The Used, Poison The Well, and such, to people who don’t know any better. As I said before, with people calling Dashboard Confessional emo, it’s no wonder that they call any band that screams “screamo.” Alas, this is false.

I first heard the term emo, when one of my friends joked “Stop being so emo, Evan.” I had no idea what emo was, so that evening, I went on the internet, and looked up the term emo, and tried to find some history on it. I was already into punk rock, and some hardcore at the time, so when I found out that emo was emotive hardcore, I was like “Wow, this stuff is pretty cool.” It really opened up my eyes to a lot of amazing music.
Emo is probably one of my favorite genres out there. Why do I love emo so much? Pure effing passion. When I actually sit down and listen to an emo record, and pay attention to nothing but the music, It’s amazing. Theres beautiful melodys duting the quiet parts of a song, and suddenly crashing distortion and chaos …theres just nothing else that compares to how much passion that emo bands put into there music. The music, and the lyrics of emo are simply some of the most beautiful and passionate stuff that I’ve ever heard. As long as emo bands keep screaming their hearts out, and keep putting out passionate music, I’ll be listening to it. "

written by Saetia at http://web6.www.nexopia.com/forumviewthrea...d=514706&page=0

I don't like the conventional wisdom of "emo" in today's (mostly teenage) society. A lot of people are still close minded about it and only see it as short for "emotional" or anything that is complaining or sad. It's quite upsetting. I don't have an opinion on "emo", just how it's seen and treated by naive people.