Why Emo is Going Tits Up
I remember a time around 1999 when my long-time friend suggested we go out to see a band he liked who I had never heard before called "The Get-Up Kids". He told me they were an "emo" band. I was so curious about checking out this scene. I had heard the terms "emo" and "emo-core" so many times before in the mid-90s, but growing up as a young metalhead in those days, I never really knew what the scene was all about. It was still a relatively underground thing in those days.
When another one of our friends from school found out we were going to the show, she exclaimed with pride, "Oh man, you guys are emo kids, too?!" I thought to myself, "What the hell does that mean…emo kids? This scene must be bigger than I thought…they even refer to themselves as EMO KIDS?!" I explained to her that I wasn't really in the scene or anything and that I was just checking it out for the sake of being exposed to something new. By then, I had taken a listen to my friend's "Get-Up Kids" cd and though it wasn't really my cup of tea, I was still pretty keen on the idea of checking out this scene I had heard so much about.
So the day of the show arrives. My friend and I headed on over to the Wayne Firehouse in Wayne, NJ. I was immediately taken by the fact that there were so many people at this place…it was packed to the rafters! I suddenly had flashbacks of some of the awful experiences I had in the mid-90's when I foolishly thought I should visit some packed local VFW hardcore shows, where I was treated like a piece of garbage by the meatheads in wife-beaters who didn't think I "belonged" to their exclusive little club of ninja-wannabe spin-kickers. However, my fears were immediately alleviated as I moved inside and saw the concert-goers therein. The best way to describe the place was that there were representatives from a bunch of different subcultures all joined together harmoniously and simply hanging out. The audience was made up by a ton of blazer-clad indie-rock kids with thick-rimmed "Weezer-style" glasses, a solid bunch of full-out mohawked punk kids, a very few metal-looking kids, a couple of ska kids (remember ska?) and--perhaps the most startling group of all--regular people who didn't wear a group affiliation on their sleeves who were just there to enjoy the show. It was quite a pleasant and welcoming environment.
We stayed for the whole show (there were probably about five bands)…I was impressed with the crowd, to say the least. I had never seen such a melting pot of musical subcultures. However, I'd be lying if I said I was truly taken aback by the music--it simply wasn't my thing. But I gave it complete and total respect and walked away having had both a good night and a new-found admiration for the scene with which I had just been acquainted.
However, over the next few years, I watched this wonderful little scene become corrupted into a corporate travesty the likes of which the musical world hadn't seen since the hair metal days of the late 80's. Even for an outsider such as myself, this was a sad thing to witness. Everywhere you looked, the term "emo" began to prop up. Everyone in the local music world suddenly scrapped the last remnants of their "rap-metal" bands and started emo bands. The national musical climate just radically shifted from the "Limp Bizkit" sound to the "My Chemical Romance" sound seemingly overnight.
With this national attention came a completely new emo scene--one that was much less sophisticated and a whole lot more watered-down. The entire core of the scene changed—especially the shows.
Sure, there was always a slight hipster vibe at emo shows just as there are with indie and punk shows, but a few years ago the scene was not even remotely exclusive--the indie-rock people got along fine with the punks, who all got along fine with the "unlabelled" kids (for lack of a better term). There was no quintessential "emo kid" like today…you know, the super-straight hair in the face, the extra-tight pants, the studded belt, etc. That idea just didn't entirely exist yet. But now, that "emo kid" look is EVERYWHERE. Oddly enough, it appears to me that virtually every aspect of the "emo" style these days is just borrowed from the indie or punk scenes which populated the audiences of emo shows. Go down the list…the hair, the pants, the glasses, the belt, the shoes…it's all either stolen from or deviations of elements of the punk or indie scene (and arguably a few other scenes, like 80s punk/hardcore, ska, etc.).
It seems to me that the current-day emo scene has become more about the fashion show and less about furthering the music. In the 90's, "Sunny Day Real Estate" and "Hot Water Music" picked up on cues from "Embrace" and "Rites of Spring" and furthered the genre. While it's arguable that bands like "My Chemical Romance" and "Panic! At The Disco" and others have pushed it along further, there is no question that there are very few bands doing anything more than fitting the "emo mold" nowadays, just as hair bands had in the late 80s, grunge bands had in the mid 90s, and rap-metal bands had in the late 90s/early 00s. A scene that is this over-homogenized is not going to be able to stand under its own weight and will implode soon enough, unless there is the highly unlikely event that a truly astounding emo band comes along and reaches out to the masses in a similar way that Nirvana did.
Here's my final thought and it's the crux of my argument that emo's days are numbered. The other day, I was at a baseball game and overheard two little kids who couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 years old talking about their favorite emo bands. A very simple yet undeniable fact suddenly dawned on me…if 5th-graders like something, it's simply not cool anymore. It's just a fact of life! Look around on myspace…the vast majority of those chanting the praises of emo are young kids not older than 15. Not only are young people the most fickle audiences and most likely to change their tastes on a dime, it simply is not the way of the world that grammar school and middle school children will dictate what is cool to the entire rest of the population. The whole point is this…when little kids are the majority of a genre's audience, that genre's days are numbered. The marketing machine has taken it to the masses and only the youngest and most impressionable have been sucked in by the hype. Hence, emo is about to go tits up.
---Don