Emo update

Yesterday was so heavy that I need to not be heavy today, so I thought I would catch up on my Emo listening, where I listen to all of the bands and songs mentioned in Andy Greenwald's Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo.

For my first-time through listening, I am on Chapter 13. For finishing the entire book, there are 39 bands left, including Judas Priest who is playing right now. No, they are not emo, but I always used to think "Highway to Hell" was them; it's AC/DC. I have heard their song "You've Got Another Thing Coming", but I never thought much about whom it was by. I am learning non-emo things too.

Once I have finished those, I will go through the twelve bands listed in an Alternative Press article, as well as listening to Ash and The Saddest Landscape. They have come up with some of the other bands, and I'm not sure how relevant they are, but I like to be thorough.

At some point I will also be listening to a bunch of bands who at one point were very important to my various teen friends. Some of them don't seem that important anymore, and I don't know if that's because they have broken up, or their fans aged out of freaking out over bands, or if some of the fans have aged out of Twitter. It's probably a combination. It was just that I noticed a level of passion that seemed similar to how the fans of the emo bands felt.

The other thing is that I have been keeping a tally of the bands that I think I like, and I will listen to them again to see if I want to do a full review. That list is currently 22 bands long (mostly emo, but also Nelly and The Hives), so that would almost double my recommended list.

On the other side, for posting daily songs from what I have already listened to, I am working on Chapters 9 and 10. I think it will go through to almost the end of summer, and then I will probably have about two months' worth of songs from reviewed bands.

Chapter 8 took the longest to get through, both on the original listen and for doing daily songs. That is because it was in Chapter 8 that Greenwald briefly mentions Deep Elm's series The Emo Diaries and Drive-Thru's Welcome to the Family samplers. I doubt Greenwald has listened to them all, but I have.

In general I found Deep Elm's offerings more interesting. There was definitely more variety. Drive-Thru repeated bands a lot, whereas it appears that Deep Elm didn't need to. That being said, Drive-Thru had Finch, New Found Glory, Allister, Something Corporate, and The Starting Line, which is not a bad roster.

Still, Emo Diaries 10: The Hope I Hide Inside was pretty good. I listened to it again. That being said, it was sandwiched between the two worst ones, following Sad Songs Remind Me and followed by Taking Back What's Ours. It's weird that a genre based so much on emotional openness over musical skill could produce such uneven results.

The worst obstacle was knowing I would need to delve into Dashboard Confessional and just dreading it. Early mentions would involve some listening, but then Chapter 12 is such a love song to Chris Carrabba that it was going to take more. I finally decided to methodically go through each album from Further Seems Forever (Carrabba's other band) and Dashboard Confessional chronologically, doing one a day. I survived, but I did start wondering if he ever got into some kind of therapy. He's touring again, so it would be interesting if he could do that without being so anguished.

The most annoying thing is that delving deeper I am more aware when Greenwald misses something, and some of this is really interesting. I wish there was a better book.

Maybe I will write it.