recently i had some conversations with friends who, you could safely say, were the more prominent figures in the scene during the mid to late 90's.
for (sort of) old-timers like me, emo will always be the promise ring, the get up kids, texas is the reason, jimmy eat world, jawbox, braid, sensefield, hey mercedes, eliott and the like. then came the likes of grade which defined a turining point in the sound from an indie rock/college rock to a more melodic HC tune.
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then when powerviolence became all the rage, some co opted a more moody/screamy vocals to counter the gazillion beats per minute growling that came to define powerviolence. emoviolence was again, a joke term which got lost in the translation and now is known as screamo.
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my bestfriend's 2 younger sisters had a band and they invited mo to go to this production they were playing. they were quite good considering they're 16 and 18 yeas old and their band had much to improve. but lo and behold, 80% of the bands on the lineup were
TYPECAST COVER BANDS.
yup, you read that right.
one band after another.
almost the same songs.
all these kids looked the same
im not a typecast fan but i enjoy their music once in a while and i think they are really good. but to be in a situation where you see all these highschool kids play was unbrarable.
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we could actually guess what type of music they would play by the way they dressed. and hearing the intro of another minute til ten for the nth time would drive us nuts.
but because the reality is that emo/indierock came from a scene that relied on mailorder distros, writing actual letters, grassroots level communication, and hard to get by zines, it didn't reach the mainstream that quick.
although people consider 2002 as the year emo "broke", early attempts by major labels releasing jimmy eat world, jawbox and the like failed and subsequently they got dropped from the labels.
myspace and the internet helped it boom in recent years and the word "emo", still considered by many as a four letter word, became the next big marketing tag.
so it's understandable that a lot of kids nowadays have a shallow understanding of the genre, especially the mall variety.
