On Emo
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea - The Cure
I picked up the latest copy of Alternative Press magazine this week and found myself totally mystified upon opening it. The whole thing is devoted to emo or screamo or whatever it's called. Now I realize that, hence the title, the magazine is devoted to the alternative music scene. I have heard of a few of these bands, namely Thrice, Thursday, Saves the Day, the Starting Line, and Coheed and Cambria. (If I'm lumping genres together here please forgive me my ignorance.) I've heard Thrice, Thursday, and Coheed and Cambria before, but I'm not familiar with there music. (The only thing that really stood out to me is that the dude who sings for Coheed and Cambria is this big tattooed guy with a really high tenor. When I saw one of their videos that wigged me out, it was so incongruent.) The thing is.....I don't get this kind of music. I don't grasp what it's about or what it means and what the attraction is to it. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate art form, I'm just saying that I missed the boat on this one. Maybe I'm just showing my age, and I'm by no means old. I guess that ten or twelve years ago, when I was the age of a lot of the kids who seem to have embraced these bands, it was the same different story. Then, in the early nineties, people who were the age I am now probably didn't 'get' grunge either. I remember hearing Pearl Jam's Ten and thinking that someone was finally saying everything I thought and felt, and that was a wonderful thing. When Nirvana hit, the reaction was the same. From there I discovered Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone, and the riot girl movement - which I embraced wholeheartedly and still do. Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) was like the anti-Britney Spears for that generation. L7 and Hole were huge influences on me as well. I'm sure that people who were in their mid-twenties and beyond at that time didn't understand the grunge movement. Let's be honest, Nirvana's Nevermind was the final nail in the coffin of hair metal. (Although I still bust out Skid Row's greatest hits CD at times.) Music shifted from wanting to rock and roll all night and party every day to a raspy voiced guy swearing he didn't have a gun. I'm not sure if emo has yet made the impact that grunge did, but then again I may just be way the hell out of the loop.

I find it incredibly sad that two of the most influential musicians of my lifetime are now dead - Kurt Cobain in 1994 and Layne Staley in 2002. (?) (On that note, misanthropy will only get you so far. And a heroin habit the magnitude of Staley's will kill you eventually.) Cobain, Staley, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and the rest of those guys and girls definitely impacted my life, and the lives of others. It was such a beautiful thing that I hope young kids now find that same sort of catharsis and release through today's music, whatever it may be. I'll never forget the first time I heard Ten, the first time I heard Nevermind. (It sucks that Eddie Vedder has grown mumbling and incoherent in the intervening years.) It was literally something that had never, ever been done before, and like it or not, those bands were our voices. We were all able to speak out just by pushing play. I know now that I'm old enough that, musically speaking, that will never again happen for me - but it's great to know that someone's carrying on the torch of change.