a bunch of bands and stuff...

[jcook26]

I take it you're not a big fan of emo then mesaplatonic? Neither am I.
I don't think the emo bands are trying to tell listeners how to feel but are more along the lines of writing songs (or having songs written) based on emotional events such as blondie ditching them for mr moneybags. Rather then release more shite music, I would prefer them to punch a brick wall next time life gets them down.


Then again, they can get more cash by flogging off music to the stupid majority of the public.

[mesaplatonic]

thats right
emo wouldnt even exsist as a title if people werent going to buy it
and the music ffs
why should these normally beutiful chords be subjected to such a dead head redundant idea as money
i doubt these fuckers have enough of anything to sustain their own life let alone thier attepmt on art

[mesaplatonic]

id hate to think some balding ceo is handing out emotion
and people buying
if i knew more id give more
i think i will

[amelia]

i didn't get it today anyway...

i got a pair of cowboy boots, a pair of doc martens (one of the last ever made in england before the factory there closed) and a pair of sandals instead...


i like music that feels something. it doesn't have to be depressed. and it doesn't have to be about a relationship breaking up... i like something a little abstract so that you can fit into it even though it's not specifically about you because it's not specifically about the artist either, but not so abstract that it loses meaning you can grasp... just abstract enough to have possible multiple meanings rather than just one or none. and i like something with a melody and harmony and texture... i also get bored easily with music, so it's gotta hold attention (and i mean, when there's good stuff around, why bother with mediocre stuff that sounds good for a week or two before it gets old? like mothing against pete murray or missy higgins... those cds were both great for a week... and perhaps in a year or two they'll be good for another week again... same with coldplay to an extent.. i guess there is a place for nice heartfelt ballad-y pop music... i just like to have the things that stick better)
also, without an effective active way to express myself creatively, it's cool to be able to do it passively - through someone else's creativity... otherwise i'd just go mad...so it has to be something that i can get right into, that i can feel myself, can understand, to understand myself...
it's not that i want someone to tell me how i feel... i can mostly figure that part out myself. i just don't have an eloquent enough way of expressing it to myself. to get it out. otherwise it's stuck in there until i explode ('cause that's not pretty)
like you hear a song and it just fits, so you can crawl inside it and let it do the screaming and crying for you (or whatever)... does that make sense? just so you can stay sane...
obviously not all emotion can be covered by just one genre either, which is why i like artists who don't align themselves with just one type of music.. ones that can do different emotions in different sounds and who move around.. because static is boring and doesn't mean anything...
some people have that expressive artistic ability, and i don't... so the world and i need those people... or else we'd either all be crazy or the world would be incredibly boring.. or both...


haha.. i just realised what you meant about the laundry detergent deane... it is called emo isn't it? the stuff for front loaders...

yeah... emo is a pretty stupid genre label... i wonder if we could stand not having labels for music though? could we? i mean... it was aristotle wasn't it, who started it all? the systematic disecting and labeling of everything... i mean it went on before that obviously.. but we're all scientists and it seems to be how we try to understand things.. by categorising them. guess our brains aren't as big as we like to think they are... everything has to be chopped up and boxed... all words are labels anyway.. symbols for a category... so without labels we wouldn't be able to communicate would we?

sorry... just typing my train of thought...

[mesaplatonic]

thank you for bringing a smile to an angry mans face
me and a friend recently had a dicusion about how we speak and that everything we do or say is a cliche`
well if thats true then the only real way to be original is how you exress these things
not how well but how
youve opened the flood gates and i dont know how to say what i think
what youve written has given credit to what little feeling this world has
ill be back
prefebly when im not so drunk

[mesaplatonic]

i wish i couldve done what you have
i feel nothing at the momonet
nothing could hurt more thatn wanting to explode with evrything you got and...nothing
i guess there are no last hurahs for people like me
its all in little peices
so many it would take a life time to get through them but then they breed more and more evry time you think about it
at least i have my life time
maybe thats why they do it
all they can touch is just a little bit(the artists)
which is why interpretation is so important or rather the oppourtuninty to intrpret is

i used to like alot of creed and crap and they were good i guess but there had to be something more
right?
which is why i like sfk so much
it was that they gave me oppourtuninty to have more or feel more
i dont know
words and foresight elude me at the moment
but since i started to understand ive always tried to do this with my music.tried to give the oppurtuninty to think,feel and give more than ill ever understand

[amelia]

the way i see it is that the song is just an outline of meaning... you can't fully describe emotion, but you can outline it. so if it's too narrow an outline, you can't fit into it, and if it's too wide you get too lost in it... so you find the ones that fit you... the flexible ones are best...

it's up to you to fill the outline though.
well... that's one aspect anyway...

you'll never fully understand yourself, but expression of peices of it helps... though you probably won't fully understand that either... i don't know... we're all just so infinate... it goes on and on... and i guess it's hard not to get lost... so yeah.. you build the outlines... kinda hazy and fluid, but something a little easier to grasp.

[mesaplatonic]

i know i know
when i was at TAFE me and my friend talked about the same thing
hes a drummer you see and he wrote this song and we were supposed to i dont know improve it or somehting.it was part of a group activity and evryone was just everywher and in the end had nothing to do with the song itself(which is good in most circumstances but not this one)
later he came upto me and apparently i was the only one who got close to what he was trying to say and was the only one who had an idea on wher to take it(im not trying to endorse myself these are the words he spoke)and funnily enough the conversation i had eariler about cliches` was with a person in that group at the time.when i was trying to i dunno.was trying to produce something i and the rest of us were ok with.
well what im trying to say is knowing the artist and knowing your self are equally as important.but i guess if you dont know the artist in person like i had in the situation you would pull out something that isnt quite you.somthing bigger.

like its not about if you agree with what the guy has to say or not but the interpretation.how you get it and how you express it.i luckily had the oppurtuninty to talk to him more and it just got better and i assure you we had no idead we couldve taken it this far.originality breeds originality(with the right people i guess).and i dont extend this arm of of intolerrence every where.there is no garauntee i will feel the same way abotu the same thing over and over again and i try to give everything a chance and understand as much as i can and make a decision

sorry too drunk
dont know where im going now
toooooora la le la da dittaty
toooora la rela re lay

[timbaxterml]

ferris said:

what the hell is emo anyway?

This is a reply to the above comment, a defense of emo (If you haven't listened to something from each group, be careful before you jump on the anti-emo bandwagon because there could easily be something you like), and an emo listening list for those who are curious.

Also, Kim, I hope you can accept that I no longer call you a friend for not pointing this thread out to me earlier. You have now earned the title 'scum sucking not tell about threadser' =P

What is Emo?
This is all questionable, because no-one really knows how it started. However, the version I've heard most often is:
Emo evolved out of the super masculine hardcore bands like Black Flag, etc. Originally, this new branch was dubbed 'emocore'. The idea of it was that these were bands that were just as tough as hardcore bands, but weren't afraid to admit that they have feelings.

Since then, it's evolved and branched out into different areas. The most emo band that's around these days, IMHO, is The Alkaline Trio (with lyrics like 'I shat the bed and laid there in it, thinking of you, wide awake, for days' and 'emma fell like rain into my lap like a heart attack'). These guys are really worth checking out no matter what your musical leaning is. Seriously.

You could call some bands like Sebadoh and Fugazi Emo in the original sense. But this is more on a song by song basis as they're notoriously unpredictable.

There's a brand of emo-ish bands that are more about being thought provoking than emo. Among these are:
Death Cab for Cutie,
Sunny Day Real Estate,
Rainer Maria
(and that will do because these three are incredibly fantastic and you don't need more)

Other branches have gone the (rather shiteful) branch into what can only be termed as pop-punk. They're no less commercial than Avril. Among these are:
good charlotte,
the ataris (did the terrible cover of boys of summer).
Don't bother with any emo that gets airplay on MMM or beyond. It's like hating old school R&B because you've heard Destiny's Child. Others of this type that you may or may not have heard of are:
The Juliana Theory (soppy, flat lyrics, but some okay tunes),
ThinkTank (could be great, aren't yet),
Jets to Brazil (ohmigod could you be soppier? I thought they were joking off the first few songs I heard).

There are some bands that are sound similar to the above ones, but are much less manufactured, and actually have some half-decent lyrics. This is my kind of emo, for the most part. Good bands in this category are:
Taking Back Sunday (driving tunes, lots of catharsis),
Brand New (very cute tunes and less cathartic, for the most part),
Saves the Day (very very fun in a weezer kind of way),
The Starting Line (if you can find their cover of J-Lo's I'm Real, I strongly recommend the download)
Seville (I haven't heard much, but slower than most other emo),
Keepsake (when they're good they're awesome, when they're not, they're a black hole of suck)
Snow Patrol (who hit this branch of emo sometimes),
Rival Schools (not so emo on the lyrics, but very Emo on the sound),
The Cooper Temple Clause (barely Emo on the sound, very on the lyrics),
Far (ditto).

Then there are branches of emo that aren't really emo, but they get lumped into the genre for their attitude. Some of these are:
Bright Eyes (folk, Conor is my saviour)
Dashboard Confessional (acoustic emo, I guess. Can be impossibly soppy, but worth checking out nonetheless),
The Black Heart Procession (100% indie, but so impossibly sad it hurts in all of the right ways),
Broken Social Scene (again, indie, but has emo moments),
Damien Rice (folk / acoustic, but sweet in a very modern emo way),
Onelinedrawing (ditto),
Idlewild (kind of a rock version of emo over the usual punk inspired emo).
AFI (I hate hate hate them, but they are a softcore metal version of emo, and you should check them out if you are checking out emo bands. You might like them).

If you like AFI, I suggest checking out the screamo evolution of emo, but I flatly refuse to recommend screamo bands because I can't stand the very existence of the genre.

Emo is varied as all hell. Anyone who wants an emo crash course, message me and I'll send a mix CD if I get a mix CD of some description back.

[timbaxterml]

ferris said:

i think i'm gonna get a bright eyes one... anyone have ideas about which one is best?

Depends what you want. In order of my preference (top to bottom)...

more misery, sweet and beautiful = 'Fevers and Mirrors'

less misery, and more driving folk = 'Lifted (or "the story is in the soil, keep your ear to the ground")'

Rockier (but less-easy to find and much less misery) = Conor's side-project The Desaparicidos - Read Music (Speak Spanish)

Really rough and quite violent (musically, and for folk) = 'A collection of songs 19...' (whatever to whatever, it's 3:30am)

There are others, but this covers most of the variations of style.

[timbaxterml]

mesaplatonic said:

has anyone heard of the red sun band?
i first read about them in the drum media and they have been going quite well.they even toured with sonic youth a little while back.
ive only only heard a little but im already a bit jealous of thier position.if you read a bit about them and then have a listen youll see what i mean.maybe.

They have earned it imho. There are some incredible songs on Peapod. For a debut on an indie label, it's great work.

and are you referring to the keyboardist / tambourine player still being in high school and unable to attend most tours?

[timbaxterml]

final thoughts for the night:

mesaplatonic
a) have you heard emo? By that I mean proper emo, not the radio / cable TV played bullshit. As I said in another post, disliking emo on the basis of what the radio plays is like disliking classic RnB because you've heard a Destiny's Child song. I will make you a CD if you want.

b) emo is no more about telling people how to feel than Radiohead's OK Computer or SFK's Beautiful Sharks is.

c) emo is about the full range of emotions about the full range of topics. In our culture, love is a pretty big issue for a lot of people. Almost every band I can think of has at least glossed the surface of the topic. Some Emo bands (like bands in any other genre) devote themselves to love, others don't.

d) all bar maybe one or two of the good bands I listed are on independent labels (Saddle Creek, Victory, Sub-Pop, Barsuk, Equal Vision, Fiddler, Triple Crown, Eulogy, and Vagrant to name a few). Even those that aren't independent are on the lesser big-shots like Parlophone. The majority of the bands I've listed you wouldn't find in any commercial stores like HMV or Sanity. Some you wouldn't even find in broader stores like JB HiFi. One or two of them you could only get by ordering on Amazon. To then go on and claim that the genre is all about profit seems kind of foolish, especially given that you're saying it on a forum devoted to a fully-fledged Sony band.

That's all.

[kim-b]

hey, you eventually got around to it didn't you? ;D

I'm looking to hear more of Holly Throsby, New Buffalo, Go! Team and Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker.

Heartbreaker really seems like my kind of music from what i've heard and read from it.

[mesaplatonic]

a/ according to what you have written i might have already listend to alot of emo and not know about since everything is being re-classiffed again with the 'emo' quality.

b/ ok computer and beautiful shraks werent sold on the basis of "emtional quality".they won thier acclaim through word of mouth.and what do you think of kid a?did you get anything out of it?anything at all?i dont think you should be able to talk emo anything without this.are you avant garde radiohead fan?avant garde anything shouldnt be able to talk like this.

c/ so weve gone from country rock to emo ay.sounds like the broad range of our feelings and emotions are being shipped over and covered in another different genre...again.and as i said in another post "i dont extend this arm of intolerance everywhere,i find out what i can and make a decision"(could you be cherry picking what i have said to suit your argument?) i dont hate things on the basis of its title.i try to see it for what it is not what its trying to do to me.and still that depends.

d/ this is just a lame attemp by the record companies to rip a bit out of the artists and sell it..so you would classify a band emo because its writes about emotional stuff.whos to say whats emotional?i could be anything,yeah?so looks like this thing has alotta places to go.and a lotta money to make yet.i believe it is foolish to think that the record copmpanies dont have money in thier sights.id be happy to send you a copy of"the way the music died",a doco on the music indusrty in america. so what is the opposite of emo?the national anthem.no wait that talks about our love of the land.so thats emo ummmmmmm the ice cream van mans song....wait....i love ice cream....EMO.this is a stupid fad.and i have a problem with people telling what im going to feel before i know anything.and i dont understand why this dosnt make you uncomfortable.why didnt you pick the line i wrote "what is it about giving away your rgiht to think".ferris created something farmore emotionally plausible than you wihich goes to show. the truly insane dont know that theyre insane.and the truly emotional dont run around telling evryone it is

[mesaplatonic]

by the way what is 'imho' ?