I'm not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed that I recognized (only) half of the bands in that When We Were Young promo poster.
But I am certainly pissed off that you didn't give The Get-Up Kids their due. SHAME!
Sam makes a really good, and seemingly random, observation about the connection between 9/11 and emo that I never considered before. That was the first, as Eric Weinstein puts it, hiccup in the system, or hole in the narrative, where a LOT of people immediately afterward thought OK... This event is changing our lives in a shit ton of significant ways, and at the same time.... a lot of it feels really fake and ghey. Like, how do towers just neatly collapse into themselves like that rather than falling over? And now I'm just supposed to hate Muslims? And if Osama Bin Laden did it and he's... somewhere, why am I supposed to care about invading Iraq of all places (which I didn't even know where it was on a map), as if it was WW2? The general cultural confusion, pointlessness, and skepticism of everything was definitely a cultural backdrop, that in retrospect, really lent itself to this genre of music coming up. Pile onto that the ascendency of peak far left feminism destroying the norms and expectations in dating, and the confused response of emo becomes inevitable. Bravo, Sam!
My preference was more for the self-criticism than for the Rock Against Bush, but I was completely alienated by the Jackass "fuck a dog in the ass" Blink-182 vibe. Regarding the twinky/queer aspect of pop punk and emo, I saw that as derived from pop (Michael Jackson, George Michael, Davie Bowie). I hope you expand on this topic in the future! Billy Talent, Anime Music Videos, and the use of music in video game montages are all things I'd like to see explored.
Wow. Okay, I told Katherine that I'd listen this to honor my late friend. We listened to alt rock in high school then deviated in the 2000s: I went to J-pop & hip-hop and he was into punk rock and emo. Blink-182 was our common ground and he was so enthusiastic about their projects like Atticus and BCR and A&A. That final bit about MCR hit personally, then.
I really enjoy this episode as a music retrospective. Thank you Katherine, Sam, and Taylor for producing this.
Before Livejournal I was on band forums--you make a great point about how they were both a gathering for serious fans and also a potential opportunity for interacting with band members! I went to falloutboyrock.com daily (just looked up fob's current site and they were able to lose the "rock" haaaa that's good) and I remember that sometimes Pete's journal entries would reference lurking the boards. Once he even wrote he had a crush on one of the posters, which seems insane to me now (this was in 2005...the quote is included in Judith May Fathallah's book Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture, which you would probably love if you haven't read!). Anyway it all felt super exciting. The music was so important to us and made us feel so close to the artists, but how close is close enough?? (taking back sunday reference but also, for real lol).
Really enjoyed this, thank you for sharing!! Wish i could describe the thrill i felt hearing a Slashy Punk Boys reference on this fine day in 2024, i mean wow...blessed <3
I feel down a Slashy Punk Boys rabbit hole a few months ago so had to make sure I brought a few people back down with me. Did you know the biggest band in the community around 2002 was apparently Mest? Full of surprises.
hahaha yes, I actually did! My friend, who is a few years older, educated me! I was on LJ late, like '07-'09, so it was very much like my chem and fueled by ramen bands at the time. Very fun to go back and look through the weird pairings and genres (feel like there was a lot of vampire stuff, which makes sense for the time!)
I came to Panic! late, in 2020. I love it. When I was younger I definitely ran in the Supernatural crowd. I see an overlap at ‘girls who like seeing boys be sad @ each other’. I say this with prickly affection for us.
The K-Pop pipeline I think is related to fan service, narrative and parasociality. K-pop land was perfecting this when MCR were still in rehearsals. I peaced out from MCR fandom when Bob Bryar left the band because it shattered the illusion of them as a unit, if you move into K-pop land the illusions are strictly maintained. It's also why so many 1D fans migrated to BTS: when the source material is running thin, they go towards the space that is feeding them. (At least, that's my theory!)
Bandom was my jam! Initially, I think it was driven in part by these super hetero dudes being able to be publicly vulnerable/loving to their male friends. Which, of course, many fans ran with. I didn't realize until YEARS later that people actually believed (and still do) that Frank and Gerard were actually together. There were some weird interactions between various people that have left me shrugging in "maybe" but the conviction was new to me, and kind of pointless. It's kind of why I think they were part of the trifecta that normalized the real person slash (along with LOTR and Supernatural). There's also still a very active corner of MCR fandom that still projects a queer identity on MCR, specifically.
There's one particular on-stage fight they had at Projekt Revolution in 2007 where Frank tries to hug Gerard and Gerard bats him away and then appears to wrestle with him in anger which is like even today pored over by fans as evidence of a kind of public meltdown/lovers tiff. All 7 pixels of the grainy camera footage have been studied relentlessly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQJvg6AiK5c&ab_channel=tennantfan248
I'm not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed that I recognized (only) half of the bands in that When We Were Young promo poster.
But I am certainly pissed off that you didn't give The Get-Up Kids their due. SHAME!
Sam makes a really good, and seemingly random, observation about the connection between 9/11 and emo that I never considered before. That was the first, as Eric Weinstein puts it, hiccup in the system, or hole in the narrative, where a LOT of people immediately afterward thought OK... This event is changing our lives in a shit ton of significant ways, and at the same time.... a lot of it feels really fake and ghey. Like, how do towers just neatly collapse into themselves like that rather than falling over? And now I'm just supposed to hate Muslims? And if Osama Bin Laden did it and he's... somewhere, why am I supposed to care about invading Iraq of all places (which I didn't even know where it was on a map), as if it was WW2? The general cultural confusion, pointlessness, and skepticism of everything was definitely a cultural backdrop, that in retrospect, really lent itself to this genre of music coming up. Pile onto that the ascendency of peak far left feminism destroying the norms and expectations in dating, and the confused response of emo becomes inevitable. Bravo, Sam!
My preference was more for the self-criticism than for the Rock Against Bush, but I was completely alienated by the Jackass "fuck a dog in the ass" Blink-182 vibe. Regarding the twinky/queer aspect of pop punk and emo, I saw that as derived from pop (Michael Jackson, George Michael, Davie Bowie). I hope you expand on this topic in the future! Billy Talent, Anime Music Videos, and the use of music in video game montages are all things I'd like to see explored.
Wow. Okay, I told Katherine that I'd listen this to honor my late friend. We listened to alt rock in high school then deviated in the 2000s: I went to J-pop & hip-hop and he was into punk rock and emo. Blink-182 was our common ground and he was so enthusiastic about their projects like Atticus and BCR and A&A. That final bit about MCR hit personally, then.
I really enjoy this episode as a music retrospective. Thank you Katherine, Sam, and Taylor for producing this.
Thanks Mario, really appreciate it.
Before Livejournal I was on band forums--you make a great point about how they were both a gathering for serious fans and also a potential opportunity for interacting with band members! I went to falloutboyrock.com daily (just looked up fob's current site and they were able to lose the "rock" haaaa that's good) and I remember that sometimes Pete's journal entries would reference lurking the boards. Once he even wrote he had a crush on one of the posters, which seems insane to me now (this was in 2005...the quote is included in Judith May Fathallah's book Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture, which you would probably love if you haven't read!). Anyway it all felt super exciting. The music was so important to us and made us feel so close to the artists, but how close is close enough?? (taking back sunday reference but also, for real lol).
Really enjoyed this, thank you for sharing!! Wish i could describe the thrill i felt hearing a Slashy Punk Boys reference on this fine day in 2024, i mean wow...blessed <3
I feel down a Slashy Punk Boys rabbit hole a few months ago so had to make sure I brought a few people back down with me. Did you know the biggest band in the community around 2002 was apparently Mest? Full of surprises.
hahaha yes, I actually did! My friend, who is a few years older, educated me! I was on LJ late, like '07-'09, so it was very much like my chem and fueled by ramen bands at the time. Very fun to go back and look through the weird pairings and genres (feel like there was a lot of vampire stuff, which makes sense for the time!)
I came to Panic! late, in 2020. I love it. When I was younger I definitely ran in the Supernatural crowd. I see an overlap at ‘girls who like seeing boys be sad @ each other’. I say this with prickly affection for us.
The K-Pop pipeline I think is related to fan service, narrative and parasociality. K-pop land was perfecting this when MCR were still in rehearsals. I peaced out from MCR fandom when Bob Bryar left the band because it shattered the illusion of them as a unit, if you move into K-pop land the illusions are strictly maintained. It's also why so many 1D fans migrated to BTS: when the source material is running thin, they go towards the space that is feeding them. (At least, that's my theory!)
Bandom was my jam! Initially, I think it was driven in part by these super hetero dudes being able to be publicly vulnerable/loving to their male friends. Which, of course, many fans ran with. I didn't realize until YEARS later that people actually believed (and still do) that Frank and Gerard were actually together. There were some weird interactions between various people that have left me shrugging in "maybe" but the conviction was new to me, and kind of pointless. It's kind of why I think they were part of the trifecta that normalized the real person slash (along with LOTR and Supernatural). There's also still a very active corner of MCR fandom that still projects a queer identity on MCR, specifically.
There's one particular on-stage fight they had at Projekt Revolution in 2007 where Frank tries to hug Gerard and Gerard bats him away and then appears to wrestle with him in anger which is like even today pored over by fans as evidence of a kind of public meltdown/lovers tiff. All 7 pixels of the grainy camera footage have been studied relentlessly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQJvg6AiK5c&ab_channel=tennantfan248
Love this!! I’m literally going as black parade era Gerard Way for Halloween so this is a super fun coincidence
Great Halloween costume