[knife_fight]

I hate myself for not having the willpower to resist this thread and what I'm about to say:

A brief synopsis of the history of "emo":
1. Spirit Assembly releases their first Lp in 1993, regarded by many to be the first "emo" record.
2. Most people begin referring to discordant hardcore with odd time signatures as "emo". This includes such famous DC faves as Fugazi, Hoover, and a veritable slew of other screamy bands. It's important to note that, at this point, "emo" was not a negative term. It was an emerging term to describe a type of music that was evolving out of punk and hardcore. It had absolutely nothing to do with crybabies, crying, sweaters, thick black glasses, or any of the other, now trite, stereotypes of what "emo" is.
3. Once the term got around a good bit, a LOT of people who were loosely associated with the indie music scene (i.e. fans of bands like Sunny Day Real Estate) began misusing the term, mainly because they saw some singer-dude cry on stage and thought "this must be that new "emo" thing everybody is talkin about!"

This is, by a LARGE margin, a brief synopsis of the word "emo." Basically, it's a term that was misused by a lot of people who didn't know what they were talking about and eventually it got into Spin magazine to describe some shitbag band like Taking Back Sunday or, as mentioned before, Sunny Day Real Estate. The word has had a LONG and sordid history, one that aging folks who grew up in the punk scene (such as myself) have had a hard time reconciling. Like many words, it's relative. To some, "emo" would be crybaby bands, but to some others who were involved back then, true "emo" is a brand of punk/hardcore typified by Spirit Assembly and any band released on Ebullition records in the early/mid 90s.

I honestly hate this word more than anything that has ever been leaked to the media from the music scene. And I also hate that I couldn't hold myself back from writing this post.

And I also HATE it when people label themselves or others, pigeonholing them into some bullshit genre or stereotype of person. Human beings cannot be thought of that way. I know most of you know that obvious fact, but maybe some people don't (hint hint).