THE REAL EMO:
emo - emotive hardcore.
A sub genre of hardcore punk formed in Washington D.C in the mid 80's (1985). In 1985 a band called Minor Threat had a an idea, a little side project which a Minor Threat fan heard about and carried it out with his band Rites of Spring. His name was Guy Picciotto. A member from Minor Threat called Ian Makaye became inspired by this sound, became a huge Rites of Spring fan and later formed his own band Embace who became the second emo band after Rites of Spring. They had a similar style (but in my opinion made it better because Embrace are better than Rites of Spring). Fans of the band Rites of Spring use to describe their music as emocore which then became emotive hardcore. The audeince was became an emotional purge in which case they use to weep.
The RoS members, rather mockingly mentioned this in a 1985 issue of Flipsize Magazine. The "emocore" label quickly spread around the Washington, D.C. punk scene and became attached to many of the bands associated with MacKaye's Dischord Records label. Emo bands use to be very short lived and the emo genre only lasted a few years since most of the important emo bands had broken up.
MacKaye and Piccioto, along with Rites of Spring drummer Brendan Canty, went on to form the highly influential Fugazi who, despite sometimes being connected with the term "emo", are not commonly recognized as an emo band.
In the 90's, the emo label had spread across Washingon that other bands became involved in the scene. Instead of passing on the hardcore punk sound these bands mixed indie rock and pop punk together to create a softer, more melodic sound.
Bands such as Sunny Day Real Estate and Texas Is The Reason were involved.
Rites of Spring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge8ucvLYLRc
Embrace:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfQnNphjcWs
Sunny Day Real Estate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41YqzHoCgk4
Some other real emo bands are:
Moss Icon, Gray Matter, Indian Summer Twelve Hour Turn, Amanda Woodward, Jawbreaker, Dag Nasty and Hot Cross.
NEW:
This extention is how the media took the label "emo" and changed it in to something completely different.
In 2000 the media (TV, radio etc) stole the label "emo" and applied it to bands such as My Chemical Romance and Paramore after a former emo band, Jimmy Eat World hit the mainstream. "Real emo" is not meant to be popular, that is one of the main points and they made that happen. When the media found out about this new thing that had cropped up and it suddenly became associated with depression and self harm as loads of teenagers started taking the style of skinny jeans, converse and band shirts on board. Most of these teenagers cut themselves for attention or faked depression just to keep the emo label.
Self harm became associated with emo when a teen called Hannah Bond commited suicide by hanging herself. Her favourite band was My Chemical Romance and when she was alive she criticised the emo label by saying cutting was part of a initiation in emo fashion. Her MySpace page is decorated with a picture of an Emo girl with bloody wrists after slashing herself.
Emo fashion turned in to skinny jeans, band shirts, converse or vans, studded belts and other accessories.
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My thoughts:
I think this was a rather shocking uneeded event. It is sad that she died and that's what emo has become today. You are unhappy when labelling yourself "emo" and it is not a very nice phase to go through. I urge people who call themselves "emo" to actually look it up, otherwise you could fall in to the trap of suicide or self harm just because you think it's "emo". It isn't - it's a serious, sometimes permanent problem which isn't good for you or for your family.
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Emo became a problem, which has faded down a little but there are still people labelling themselves it. That is where scene came in with brightly coloured and patterned skinny jeans, lots of accessories, graphic shirts, converse / vans and colourful back combed hair
THANK YOU FOR READING :)
