Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo

[AgentSun]

It's a book by Andy Greenwald. I bought it today and it's a really interesting read. It doesn't get too in-depth with a lot of punk rock but it does pay a good deal of homage to Fugazi, which I don't think anyone quite does enough. So far there's no mention of Rancid, OpIvy or NOFX. There is a lot of background info on bands like Promise Ring, Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbreaker.

The book makes one point very clear...no one knows what 'emo' means. The 'genre' if you can call it that, is so broad that technically anything can be classified as emo, but how do we know? we don't know what 'emo' really means!

i found myself wondering whether we call bands like jimmy eat world and dashboard confessional 'emo' because rolling stone calls them that...but rolling stone doesn't know what 'emo' means either!

i did find out that 'emo' the term originated in D.C. in the Minor Threat era, pre-Fugazi.

I'm reading this on the tails of reading 'Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk'.

Is it considered stalking if I want to drive up to D.C. to find the Dischord house?

[eta_carinae]

Awww, emo. Yeah, tough to define...

[AgentSun]

I just finished the end of Chapter 5 where Greenwald (the author) mentions that most music critics who slam 'emo' bands as lacking subtlety or depth forget that most of the people writing the songs, recording the songs and the people they are singing to....are all around the same age.

and i realized it was true! these bands that a lot of critics malign are talking about having a crush on a guy/girl because that's what the majority of their high school career was about. and it's the same with a lot of people who like them. it's not a specific time or place or thing, it's that emotion that you get, no matter why it happened. i think that was an important part of the book....making it clear that the reason why the entire 'emo' movement is important is because people needed something to identify with and talking about being bored (green day), sexually frustrated (weezer, on pinkerton) and having broken relationships (almost every single dashboard song--gotta love that) is what happens to practically everyone at some point.

[arthurfrdent]

eh... to round out your punk experience, you may want to go a decade earlier than fugazi... just a thought ;)


AFD
"London calling, yeah, I was there, too. An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!"

[Deadman]

I don't know what 'emo' is either but to borrow a phrase from Keith Anderson----"Give Me Three-Chord Country and American Rock-N-Roll"

[AgentSun]

well the basis of 'Please Kill Me' was to discuss the history of punk from the 60's. so i was actually going like 30 years beforehand. But my problem with that book was that it assumed you knew everything about those bands and those people so when I was reading it, I'd have to get online and try find out who certain people were and that just made reading the book annoying.

[arthurfrdent]

well the basis of 'Please Kill Me' was to discuss the history of punk from the 60's. so i was actually going like 30 years beforehand. But my problem with that book was that it assumed you knew everything about those bands and those people so when I was reading it, I'd have to get online and try find out who certain people were and that just made reading the book annoying.

Nah? Well that is fweakin' stupid, what was the author thinkin' If you want to chronicle a thing to people, you also want to spread stuff to people who havent heard of it, by telling them the history WITH it's back story. OI... well at least you got some stuff from the book. If you start really pokin' around in the history of music throughout the late 19th and all of the 20th century, you will find some amazing connections, and it will surely broaden your musical tastes...

as it turns out... it's all good :D truly I spent half of yesterday just listening to music [and not doing the work I had planned] I had wanted to listen to something loud, and then that led to another and so on heh, ;)

[AgentSun]

The entire book (NFG) should have come with a soundtrack -- but then I would have had 2 of all those CD's then because I own all of them anyway. I'm very emo without even thinking of it. I listened to Thursday cause it wasn't like anything I had heard before...a band that didn't have a super catchy hook for every song? what? haha.