IS
GOD PLAYING EMO TRICKS ON ME?
(hella
vegas kids say hella)
By
Lili Rain
Okay,
so I walk into my local college record store to look for some Jimmy Eat World
CDs, right?
(here, lemme put some clarity on this:
this was my first time in a record store since I left the nice little musical
limbo I fell into about two years ago when I realised all of the "good"
bands had died [SP, RATM, etc]. So I'm
coming into this store just about as newbie as when I had first heard college
radio at 15 [side note: they have no more college radio where I live, I just
came across JEW's Bleed American CD as a fluke at the library].)
So I'm scanning over the catchall
section, you know, where they have the general rock category, with no
luck. Looking up at all the really cool
posters on the wall (SP, Gorillaz, Hole, etc), I was wondering how come a
poster with the fairly recent concert featuring JEW wasn't anywhere to be
found. Briefly it hit my mind that
maybe since they've been played on MTV2 lately that a "cool" store
wouldn't carry them, but that seemed ridiculous considering they had every SP
and NIN title I've ever heard of, and they were hella popular. I kept searching, eventually moving to the
back to peruse the used section.
Naturally, it seemed that anyone who had their CDs has refused to turn
them in. As would I, I figured, if I
could find them!
Suddenly, a light bulb went off over my
head as I remembered an article I'd read some three years ago in a guitar mag
about this new emerging music scene and some of the players in it. As the wave of duh finished washing over me,
a tiny voice said, "hey, ask the chick in the red blouse and Mary Janes,
dufus." I walked over, trying not
to seem as stupid as I know I did anyway, and in the most like, you know,
whatever voice I could muster, asked:
"Um, is there an emo section I'm overlooking, or
something?" She looked over at me,
not condescendingly (which surprised me), and told me that there wasn't much in
the used section, so it would just be lumped with punk (me, thinking:
"dude, what the fuck?"), but as far as new CDs went, it was over in
front of the punk section.
So here goes happy stupid me,
tra-la-la-ing over to the emo section, just to stare at the
pretty packages, 'cause I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I didn't have enough
money to buy any new CDs, and I already looked all over the used section. When I got there, there was a whole section
devoted to Jimmy Eat World, which shocked the hell out of my sheltered
ass. Almost every CD, singles,
imports... everything. I tell ya, I
wanted those CDs so bad I filled out an application at the record store,
figuring if I got hired, not only would I get paid, but I'd get discounts on
music! :D
And that's when I realised
I had fallen in love with an emo band.
Flash to the next day, where I'm
listening to my CD (the popular one) for the like, third time that day, and I
can't help but wonder to myself, why are they emo? My immediate response is because I don't
know what the hell emo is. To which I
immediately answered, nobody knows what the hell emo is. I thought emo was all that twaddle
like Dashboard Confessional and The Anniversary. And don't go a-jumping down my throat ‘cause I haven't heard
them. I've tried to listen to that
stuff, I really have, but usually it just drives me up the wall. But then again, all I have to judge those
bands by is what I've seen on television and heard on the net, since there's no
station that will play anything even remotely like that here.
In search of an answer, I went back to
that article from 1999 to see if anyone back then had a clue. Nope.
None of the bands knew exactly what emo was (JEW incl.), and they were
supposed to be it; the writer was only slightly better, in that he took
everyone else's confusing viewpoint and culled what he could from it all. To make me even more confused, JEW was/is
touring with Green Day and Blink 182, the kings of babypunk. Talk about blurring the lines... what
lines? Why do we need to even classify
music anymore? You need like, 5
adjectives to describe any band anymore, but then I guess that's makes a band
unique, as opposed to just saying, "oh, they're an alternative band,"
or "oh, they're metal/rap-rock/country/whatever."
So then, what's Jimmy Eat World? I don't think that they're emo,
or is it just because I don't want to lump them in with my preconceived notion
of what emo is? To me, they
just play music. Rock music. Good rock music. Am I being harsh on emo? Maybe. Maybe I'm in the
middle of a shift from the closed-minded view of music that I've had in the
past to a new position where I enjoy much more varied forms of music, or maybe
I'm just beginning to enjoy emo. Heaven help us all if it's the latter.
And in that vein, what would Weezer be
considered? In '95 it was just
alt.music, what is it now? Metal?! emo?! Ooh, my head is swimming...
By the way, anyone else that thinks Jim
Adkins (lead singer of Jimmy Eat World) is really cute PLEASE let me know. I don't want to think I'm the only one out
here.