As much as I don't like to admit it, I tend to be very closed-minded when it comes to music. I have very specific requirements for what constitutes a “good” band in my eyes, especially music I consider to be “Punk Rock”. It's not something I'm proud of, it's kept me from getting into a lot of bands that I adore nowadays. NOFX was too “skater” when I first heard of them in 1995, Bad Religion was too “mainstream”.
In spite of my tendency for extreme musical prejudice, I try to expose myself to new music as much as possible. I gave up on the radio long before I got into Punk Rock (thanks for nothing, Alanis Morissette). MTV had long been a source of frustrated angst, with it's progressive urbanization and simultaneous shift toward a younger and younger demographic, but until Ska's Third Wave crested, I could catch some cool new (to me) bands from time to time. Some of those bands included the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Donnas, The Offspring, Fishbone, Sublime, Rancid, and more I can't recall. It seems like yesterday but it's been almost 10 years since it all fell apart.
Looking back, I've come to realize why I even looked to MTV as a source for new music. As much as I come off as an elitist prick, I liked the idea of the music I loved getting mainstream attention. It meant higher fidelity recordings. Remember, these were the days before every Ryan Ross with an iBook was making decent sounding music. I have a deep appreciation for the nuances of music played loud and recorded on a fifty-dollar DAT machine in someone's basement, but music that's well produced, sounds better.
Mainstream attention also meant the chances of a band coming to my town were a lot higher. I was so frustrated with “discovering” bands that were either broken up (Skankin' Pickle, Operation Ivy, Dead Kennedys), or never came around (NOFX, Dance Hall Crashers, Goldfinger). I grew up in a part of Florida where, at the time, there were more horses per capita than night clubs. An hour drive to a cookie-cutter nightclub on Pleasure Island was beyond my reach.
A spotlight on the underground genera I dug also meant that I could wear a Rancid t-shirt around and have someone know what it was (not that I'd ever be caught dead in a Rancid t-shirt back then). These were good things, and during that short time period, it made a video on MTV so much more palatable than it was before.
Of course, like every “underground” music scene that surfaces in the mainstream, the “Punk Nouveau-plus-Ska” scene's popularity faded quickly (and with it, all of the mainstream benefits). Especially on MTV. I gave up on that old girl and went back to the traditional ways of finding new music: comps, on-line friends, and going to shows. But then around 2002 I moved back in with my parents. I had been out on my own for a little over 3 years, had moved to Rhode Island, and had a great job. Then September 11th happened, and I got laid off.
Long story short, I spent a lot of time at my parents house watching their DirecTV. They had a channel from Canada called “MuchMusic”. At the time it was actually an US-centric spinoff called “MMUSA”. I caught the channel right as it transitioned from MMUSA to what's now known as the Fuse network. They played stuff that was just on the edge of the mainstream, with enough popular music to round out the edges. It was the best of both worlds. I'd get to hear music that was suited to my taste, but also had enough mainstream recognition that I might actually get a chance to see a band play within a reasonable distance. At the time I had no way of knowing that something so trivial as a cable music station would play a hand in turning something I loved into a source of unyielding frustration.
Enter the “emo” invasion. I saw it coming and didn't even realize it. I was a part of it and I couldn't see where it was taking me. The worst kind of clairvoyance is the kind where you have the vision but are too stupid to realize what you're premonition means. Not ignorant, literally stupid.
Lets step back a bit. In 1998, I had never heard of “emo”. I had heard a lot of “melodic” punk, bands like Millencolin, Unwritten Law, and Blink-182. I wasn't exactly a fan. I saw Blink-182 live that year and was very disappointed. I considered it Skate Punk, and ignored it for the most part. I was holding on to the Ska flag, and the Black Flag, and lots of music that peaked before I was even a teenager. I wanted something different, but something current, and something that still had the energy and drive of the music I loved. I wanted music that had some real feeling behind it.
I went to an Asian Man Records tour in Vero Beach, Florida in December of 1998. I went to see Skiff Dank and MU330. I left with a copy of Alkaline Trio's Goddamnit, that I had to borrow money to buy. I had never bought anything at a show before. My compulsion was evidence that I was blown away by their performance. It wasn't what I expected, nor was it what I was looking for. It was rough and had this streak of emotion that I couldn't really say I understood, but I could relate to. It was out of character for me, but I was drawn to it. I still ask myself why I love that music so much, but the pull is undeniable.
I found out it was “emo” from an online friend of mine (who had apparently been into the music for a long time), and started seeking it out.
I was naive in the mysterious ways of the Emo. Looking back through the lens of what people are calling emo today, I was a brain-damaged infant. I got into bands like The Broadways, the Dillinger Four, the Impossibles, and Fugazi. I got into Boy Sets Fire and Thursday. And then later, as I was exposed to the “indie” side of the genera, and made more friends that were into this sort of music, I was turned on to what I've come to understand is the whole basis for the genera now. Bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, The Getup Kids, Saves The Day. In spite of the bands being less punk and more rock, less emoting and more emotional, they still had a good sound, and the music was still fun. It had that drive that I saw in the bands that I identified with emo. It was the same drive that was the heart and soul of all the bands I loved.
I don't know when it happened. I was probably too busy struggling to get out of my parent's house to see the transition, but the music that I identified with because it was so different started to change. It became homogenized, and became less about real emotions, instead projecting a hollow shell of what real emotions were, like the bands were all on Prozac and Ritalin at the same time. As emo gained more “emotion”, it seemed like it lost all it's heart.
I pulled my head out of my ass after moving to North Carolina, and settling down in Chapel Hill. I started making decent money, bought a house. As I settled I started trying to really get into music again. As I looked around for Bands from the area to go see, all I could find was whiny, depressed music that was calling itself “emo”. Band after band that I checked out on this new thing called “My Space”, and every one almost sounded the same. It sure wasn't the emo I fell in love with when I was 18. It wasn't even the lighter Modest Mouse-style, Piebald stuff I heard later. I was a shell, a sham, it was LAME. I had to look elsewhere, and I turned to my old crutch, Music Television.
I saw Fuse replace Much Music, I saw pop punk go the way of the dinosaur in the mainstream, and I saw the pretty boys on antidepressants take over the music scene. Even bands that I enjoyed before changed their sound, like Taking Back Sunday. Fuse made it a point to target this new brand of music that was becoming a world-wide phenomenon. This meant in watching the channel, I'd move from excitement (seeing Fat Mike or Anit-Flag do an interview), to frustration (how many Dashboard Confessional songs are there, anyway?). There was a single ray of hope. It shone from the crooked smile of a goofy looking guy wearing antlers.
I saw the video for Sugar, We're Going Down, Fall Out Boy's first big single, while channel surfing. This wasn't long after I had written a nasty letter questioning the ethics of Steven's Untitled Rock Show, one of the champions of “... the worlds of indie, punk, hardcore, and all things ROCK!”. I got an equally nasty reply, so I had sworn off the channel.
The video was cleaver, I suppose, but the song is what got me to set my elitism aside. I watched it a couple times more before I sought out their album, From Under The Cork Tree (or as it's affectionately called on the FOB Rock Boards, FUCT...). I liked the song a lot, but the album was so much more than I expected. It was upbeat, it sounded great, and the lyrics, in spite of being kind of silly at times (“a loaded god complex”, huh?), and hard to understand (I could have sworn that the words to “Our Lawyers Made Us Change The Name Of This Song” were 'make then dance like they were shooting methane') were cleaver enough, not depressing, and best of all not too deep. Not deep, but still had an introspective nature that appealed to me. It was back to what I missed from the emo genera. It was almost pop punk, but it was emo, but it was upbeat. It seemed to have that emotion I saw lacking from other bands, but it didn't take itself too seriously. And as an added bonus, the name of the band was a Simpsons reference. It was PERFECT!
My girlfriend (and future wife) Stacy liked them too, and she's traditionally hated “emo” music, and has been known to give me a hard time about it. She had been to thousands of shows (no exaggeration), experienced all the little sub-generas of Punk, hard core, and Ska that came about, as well as music that was just good (How many punks can say they've seen They Might Be Giants every time they came to town?).
She was no scene queen, the type that go to shows just because they're there, just to get drunk and let all bask in her frilly pandering. She didn't see getting to know a band is a badge of superiority to be held over any kid that dares try to have a good time. She wasn't some sort of groupie, getting off on getting off people she idolized.
She was (and is) the shit.
She knew bands, she let bands stay at her house. She would raise hell in the pit and pick you up if you fell down. She didn't care what you wore, how many bands you knew or who you liked. If you were at the show, you were her equal. She'd seen Green Day before they had their big record deal, she'd seen Marlyin Manson in a club as big as an average living room. I'll be the first to admit it: she's more punk than me. She's more punk than most guys in bands, and after meeting her, I can guarantee they'd say the same thing (some have).
Now you can understand why Fall Out Boy became so significant. Stacy's the shit. She's my punk rock goddess... and she likes this Fall Out Boy, this emo band, that I was digging like a dog in a pet cemetery. It was so uncharacteristic of her, but I loved it. I think she saw the same things in them I did. It was a fun band, finally. They were on TV, so they would probably come to our town.
Because of her experience in the scene, she saw some things in the band that I didn't. She saw the loyalty that they professed for their fans, their love of the Internet, and their general accessibility. That's what really set them apart from other bands that they were played with, other bands from their Chicago scene. They represented all of the things that kept her going to show after show, even after breaking her jaw, working a full time job while she was in college, that kept her interested while she watched the Rhode Island music scene slowly disintegrate.
There's something else that's important to mention about Stacy. She has a brain mass that gives her horrible headaches all the time (it's not a tumor, but it puts pressure on her brain). It's around her pituitary gland, so it's inoperable. The doctors said she wouldn't live past 30. I'm happy to say she's stuck to her hard core roots, and told the doctors to get fucked. She just turned 31, and she's still kicking. But the mass has taken it's toll on her over the years, on top of a general sense of disgust at the way people were behaving at the shows. She hasn't been into going to shows much, and it takes a lot to get her excited about anything, especially music. And especially goofy, bipolar fancy boy music.
Against all odds, she got excited about Fall Out Boy. We got “Take This To Your Grave” (which I'd say is a much better record than FUCT, a shame it wasn't recorded better), she started hanging out on the FOB message boards, on their website. It was uncanny how much she got into the whole fan side of the band, where I've never seen her do that before. I was just happy listening to the music, and waiting for a time when they'd come around so I could see them play. I assumed that with their music being so upbeat, and this fan accessibility that Stacy kept telling me about, that they'd put on a killer show. Everything I heard about them or saw them say made them sound like a nice bunch of guys, down to earth, creative, and grateful to their fans.
Back in December, tickets went on sale for the Friends or Enemies Tour, and to my surprise, Stacy was waiting, with her finger on the mouse button, a half hour before they went on sale at ticketmaster.com. We laid down 80 dollars (30 each + 10 for processing and shipping fees), and started making plans.
I'm still a little shocked to have seen her want to go to a show so badly. I was a little skeptical of the show since it was so expensive (the most I had ever spent on a show was 15.50 for Blink-182 in their hayday). But, as I read more about it, with New Found Glory opening for them, the “we want to do a small club tour so we can be close to our fans who have always been there” thesis I kept hearing about, I got excited too.
Stacy went craft-crazy in anticipation for the show. She made her own custom hoody, a vinyl hand bag sporting the Clandestine Industries logo (Pete Wentz's clothing line), and an adorable hand puppet of each member of the band. We found a portable white board that we were going to use to heckle the band, ever so gently, during their set. I took the following day off of work so we could wait around and meet the bands, maybe go get some really bad junk food after words. It was going to be so much fun.
The weather was bad that day, rainy and cold, and the show hadn't sold out. We figured that there wouldn't be as many people there as one might expect. This was a good thing, it meant that we might be able to see Fall Out Boy and New Found Glory in a setting that was closer to the sorts of shows we had been to in the past, shows where there were no more than a few hundred kids, with plenty of room to move around, meet people, and really have a good time. It would be worth the money, the half hour drive, and the potential of being the oldest people at the show. These guys were, after all, an almost idealistic representation of everything we needed in a band. Plus New Found Glory were opening, and they're the sort of band that's known for delivering the goods. There was no way this was going to suck.
We were sadly mistaken. The show took place at a converted warehouse in a somewhat suburban part of Raleigh. The club was situated behind a Cosco, next to a car dealership, on a road called “Industrial Drive”. The neon on the front of the building, and the sign saying “NO LOITERING/NO DRINKING ALCOLHOLIC BEVERAGES IN THE PARKING LOT” were the only indication that this place was even a venue. That, and the line of at least 50 cars circling around looking for parking.... and the line of kids protruding out the front door.
Doors opened at 7, according to every piece of information we could find prior to the show. We got there around 6:30, and to our surprise, were immediately let in... we had followed several hundred people. The scene was a bit dire, not hopeless, but not exactly what we expected. The club had two and a half “levels”. It was two floors, with a sort of raised dance floor in front of the stage. The dance floor was covered with kids, packed in like sardines. The balcony upper floor was packed with kids, also in a very sardine-like fashion. They were all pretty young, which I expected. As we settled into a spot on the right of the stage, (stage-left, in Snagglepuss terms), I noticed something I didn't expect. Moms. One for nearly every kid. And the kids were a lot younger than I thought they would be. They weren't 15-18 year olds, they were 12-14 year olds. And they were twitchy.
When I was a kid, I hated the New Kids on the Block. When I was a teenager, I hated the Backstreet Boys, then N*Sync. That night at the Fall Out Boy show, what I thought was a punk rock show, at a club that served alcohol, where you could smoke, I suddenly felt what it must have been like to go to a NKOTB show in 1989. It wasn't a stadium swarming with mindless estrogen-fueled monsters, but it sure felt like it.
The girls, and yes, all most all of them were girls, were all dressed like they just came from 7th period French class. The older ones were dressed in a fashion hybrid that crossed hoochie-mamma and Glitter Punk. The moms dressed like they just came from soccer practice, but instead of a nice respectable cardigan or polo shirt, they were wearing that low-cut top they used to wear in high school when they used to go to shows... the one that just doesn't fit right anymore, but is an essential garment for living vicariously through their kids.
There was a line formed to our right, leading up to the Fall Out Boy merchandise table. Why a line? Because everyone wanted to meet the band. But, wait, you say, don't you just have to wait around for the band to pack up, maybe help them with their gear, go grab them some fast food, and they'll talk to you? Maybe even go out for a beer with you? Isn't that what all this fan accessibility, punk rock ethics and scenester bullshit is all about?
Sorry boys and girls (or, more accurately, girls and moms), if you want to meet Fall Out Boy, you either have to be a member of their fan club, or pre-order their album. And even then, there's no guarantee. So, all of the kids that couldn't afford the $30 a year to join Over Cast Kids (the fan club) or didn't get picked in the “meet-n-greet” lottery, had to wait in line and pay $15 to pre-order their new album. There were a limited number of kids allowed in the pre-order meet-n-greet. So your 15 bucks and all that waiting could very well be for nothing. And that's if they decided to do a meet-n-greet at all. I've since heard they flaked out at some of the other shows on the tour.
So my hopes of meeting the band and just saying, “thanks for all the awesome music” went up in smoke. But I said to myself, “It'll be OK... I'm going to dance my ass off, heckle the band, have a puppet show, meet some kids, and even if I don't get to say hi to the band I'll have a good time.. We'll have a good time, this won't all be for nothing”.
Again, I was sadly mistaken. As the show started, the little girls that surrounded us closed in a bit, but were at a tolerable distance. A handful sat on the railing around the raised dance floor, which was annoying (particularly to the shorter kids next to me), but they weren't in Stacy's way, or terribly obstructive to my view. Well, they weren't obstructive, but they were pretty distracting. They kept looking over to the one side of the stage, where the bands came out. They looked around like meerkats looking out for hyenas. Like dogs on coffee.
Permanent Me and the Early November started off the show. I wasn't familiar with either band's music, but I liked it. Sadly, I didn't enjoy it. It was well played, well presented, it sounded good, but it was missing something. It was well orchestrated, but you couldn't dance to it. You could barely sway with the harmony, hardly bob your head to the downbeat. Not even the kids that knew all the words seemed to get into it, I guess because it's just not the sort of music that you can get into that way. I kept thinking of how out of place they seemed at a New Found Glory and Fall Out Boy show. How this music would be a lot more suited to a club with tables, or a book store, not a smoky night club that used to be a warehouse, with a wide open dance floor.
I didn't realize how significant that observation was until the ride home.
New Found Glory played, and the kids closed in a bit tighter. In spite of that, I had plenty of room to do my own brand of hard core dancing, with drawn in arms so as not to bludgeon any of the youngsters around me. I didn't lift my feet for fear of stomping a mule or a chuck taylor with my steelcap boots. In spite of this I had a pretty good time. I even started a little slam dancing pit with Stacy, in the hopes that the kids around us would join in. Keeping with the theme of the night, I was again, sadly disappointed.
All in all, New Found Glory were great. I danced as much as I could. They kept the music upbeat, even playing some of their newer, slower music a lot faster than it was on their album. They kept on point the whole time. A true sign of a great band, in spite of the lead singer apologizing for swearing too much to all the moms in the audience. It was almost as if he was as put off by their presence as I was.
In between New Found Glory and Fall Out Boy, the kid next to me, one of the few boys within eyeshot, accompanied by a petite blond girl, who couldn't have been more than 16, said something to me about jumping around and his girlfriend. I could barely hear him because of the hum of the crowd, so I really don't know what he was trying to say, but the fact that he said anything to me was both a thrill and infuriating. I was excited that someone said anything to me. Most of the kids there wouldn't talk to anyone they didn't already know. Stranger-Danger, I suppose.
I was pissed because this is what we do at shows, and he had the balls to tell me to take it easy. We dance at shows, go nuts. That's the whole point. We don't punch kids, or crowd ride, or pick fights. It's a release, it's an excuse to bounce off of complete strangers. Mutual sweat binds us as fans, as human beings. As a crowd, we're bound to the band who loves their music as much as we do. We're all there for the same reason. Or so I thought.
As the lights went down and Fall Out Boy took the stage, I started feeling really claustrophobic. There were kids within inches of me on all sides. I was pissed still, I felt stifled, like someone had made something I felt completely confident about shameful. It made the idea of dancing very unappealing, even if I didn't actually hear him correctly. But it didn't matter, even if I wanted to, I couldn't get into the music. I could barely raise my hand to scratch my nose, let alone wiggle my ass and do the twist. There were young women that were barely through puberty pressed up against me and each other like mannequins loaded into a truck.
Things just got worse once they started playing. Where there would normally be a big circle pit (or several small ones) in the middle of the dance floor, there was nothing but a bunch of teenage girls squealing and pushing toward the front barricade, reaching out, trying to get as close as possible to the band. It was a setting unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. It was unsettling, to say the least.
But I thought, “OK, these guys are going to rock my socks off, and I'll leave feeling like I didn't waste my time, money, and effort”. Par for the course, the disappointment just continued.
The only guy in the band that seemed genuinely into the show was Joe Trohman, lead guitarist. He jumped around, mugged for the cameras, actually smiled. Of all the people on that stage, he was the only one that seemed like he was having a good time.
Patrick Stump, a very accomplished singer and well known musical savant, sounded very off on almost every song, except the two songs off of the afore-mentioned upcoming album. You could actually hear his tone change when they played those two songs. It was uncanny. I'm not sure what that means. Was this whole tour just practice for their upcoming stadium tour? An hour-long advertisement for the new album? Was all of this “it's for the fans” stuff a lie?
I couldn't really see the drummer, Andy Hurley, from my vantage point, so I can't comment too much on his performance. The beat seemed to “go on”, as the old hippy axiom dictates. That's good enough for me.
The icing on the cake of disappointment that the whole show became was the Illustrious Pete Wentz, bassist and “lyrical powerhouse”. He seemed so disinterested in what he was doing, so distracted. Everything he did came off as fake. When he leaned his microphone over the crowd, when he jumped off a speaker stack, even when he did his trademark guitar swing, a move I saw Joe do too, with such ferver he almost knocked himself out, seemed tacked on and forced. Even when he spoke, about a bad experience he had at a show they did in Charlotte the previous year, where an offhand comment about people getting along had a mother boycotting the band for spreading a pro-homosexual agenda, didn't seem like it mattered to him. His face was listless. Maybe it was just because he was on our side of the stage for most of the show, but it seemed like he had better places to be. Even as he yelled “Let me hear you say 'god damn'!”, as a segue between his reminiscing (ruminating?) and “This Ain't a Scene, It's a Goddamn Arms Race” he didn't seem too surprised that very few people were chanting along, if only because they didn't want to swear in front of their moms.
Stacy's Pete puppet couldn't even bring a smile to his face, and he was positioned directly in front of us for the majority of the show. There wasn't room for the whiteboard, but that's probably a good thing, I was so disappointed that I probably would have written something mean.
At one point during the set, that kid next to me was throwing fits of what I think was supposed to be dancing. I couldn't help but smile, in spite of whatever he had said to me before, him being an obvious spaz and the fact that he seemed more into the band than his girlfriend. He leaned over and apologized to me about something. I think he and his girlfriend had moved into my spot as the teenage estrogen wave threw me off to one side. He was offering it back to me, probably because he could see I wasn't getting into the music like I did when New Found Glory played. I told him it didn't matter, but I couldn't really communicate why. I wasn't mad because my spot was gone, or even that mad that I couldn't really dance. I was mad because I felt like this band that I put so much hope in to, betrayed me. I just couldn't get into it. They weren't giving me their all.
Toward what I thought was the middle of their set, but was actually the end, the sardine-packing of the kids around us got to be too much for Stacy, and we were both pretty bummed about how horrible the show was going, so we made our way to the back of the club, to buy water, and sit out the rest of the show. The whole thing was over before 11 o'clock. There was no encore.
In retrospect, I don't think the fact that this show was such a disaster for Stacy and me was all the fault of Fall Out Boy's lackluster performance, or the masses of screaming idiots that seemed to suck all the life out of the night. I think it was that I felt stupid for liking this band so much. I put my money and loyalty on the line, and under false pretenses. I wanted so badly for this band to be the mainstream NOFX or a ska-free version of the Impossibles. What they actually are is a slightly less depressed representative of a very sad, elitist, misguided shell of a facsimile of what the punk scene used to be.
Something broke in American culture. The kids have nothing to be so depressed about, and yet, they keep longing for this wussed out, emotionally stunted music. They eat up contrived “concept albums” like My Chemical Romance's “the Black Parade” as if it was gospel. They want so badly to feel some sort of commiseration with someone, anyone, that they'll let adults who are either mental midgets or faking on a grand scale tell them they understand without ever meaning it. And they love it. I don't know what happened. This longing to connect transcended generas and social standing. These are the kids that would be listening to N*Sync 10 years ago. The immature preppy girls looking for gender confirmation in a group of effeminate young men singing their “hearts” out. Aside from the fact that it's punk roots add a level of individuality, and everyone wants to be different, even the followers, I think it has to be the perception of accessibility that's facilitated this shift from bands that made their fortunes being unattainable, to bands that you can get to know, however superficial that knowledge is.
Now, instead of just dreaming about Jordan Knight, you could take a shot in the dark and maybe say hi to Pete Wentz at a show. It didn't matter if the performance was bad, it was the fact that he was there.
Ultimately, I've betrayed myself. I bought in to an easy answer to my problem. I sought out a band that was poppy, had a strong emotional side, and was accessible. Fall Out Boy was everything I wanted, but it wasn't real. They never sold out. If they ever had genuine intentions behind what they were doing, it ended long before they made their major label debut. The band I wanted them to be, and that others knew on a personal level, was never tangible. It was all a scam.
-Josh
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