Month of August , 2006

I was having a discussion with Billy the other day about the inherent misogyny of emo culture when it occurred to me that emo kids -- emo bands in particular -- rank below guidos on my scale of social acceptance.

Having grown up in the Pasta Triangle (Belleville, Nutley, Bloomfield, NJ) I've been subsumed in guido culture. Normally this involves lots of primping, lots of hair product, lots of house music and lots of money being spent on leased cars and overpriced clubs. However, when it comes to attitudes toward women, the male guido doesn't leave much to the imagination.

He's wearing cologne so he can take you home.

He's buying drinks so he can take you home.

He's hitting the gym every day so he can take you home.

He's tanning so he can take you home.

He's dancing to DJ Denny Tsettos so he can take you home.

Nearly half of his paycheck goes toward leasing a Mercedes-Benz Kompressor to take you home in.

Is this chauvinist? Perhaps, but at least it's honest. In the guido world, he's only doing what generations before him have done to woo women. He doesn't date outside his species and doesn't attempt to approach women who may be smarter than him. He's happy this way, and the Guidettes seem to oblige. While very independent women leading fascinating careers as stenographers, dental office clerks and nail technicians, they don't mind driving up to the valet rope at Joey's and don't mind having someone else splurge for the Cosmos every so often. Any offensive behavior is automatically built into the relationship. You know what you're getting.

With the emo kid, it's all a nice little game of smoke and mirrors. The same guys who sing about how awkward they are and how beautiful girls are will come right back and sing some of the most hateful things about women this side of "bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks." Take Alkaline Trio for example. A big hit among the emo set, one of Alkaline's best and most misogynist songs is "Radio." Check this out:

I've got a big fat fucking bone to pick
with you my darling
in case you haven't heard I'm sick
and tired of trying
I wish you would take my radio to bathe with you
plugged in and ready to fall

Nice, and indicative of the sentiment prevalent throughout emo. It's about assigning blame and reducing women to a subhuman position for having the audacity to break up with them or otherwise break their heart. A common theme is "I can't believe done this to me. You don't understand the hurt I'M going through. I wish nothing but the worst on you from now on, because this proves you are unworthy of love." And the little Hot Topic girls in cheerleader skirts stare adoringly and lap it all up. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's because, from a young age, they're taught that they're worthless emo boy baggage that can be changed easily. Maybe their fear of such heavy handed rejection leads them to overcompensate. Or maybe my worst fears have been confirmed and they're actually sympathizing with these guys and looking to provide some comfort. "Oh, I won't be that girl. I'll love you forever." It's like a Beat Happening record with much darker underpinnings.

Say goodnight, mean goodbye
I know you think my life would stop when you're away

-- The Get Up Kids, "Holiday"

It's all about telling women you're on to their sinister plan. I know you want to hurt me and I know you think you mean the world to me, even if you do, but I'm going to hurt you before you hurt me. Or, even worse, though it pains me to have to do it and I love you so much, I have to leave you and go be my own person... go be free. Free from you, and you can't tell me I'm wrong because it hurts so bad baby -- being a dick, addicted to you. Ech.

There aren't even prerequisites to being emo. At least the guidos have a dress code. As an emo kid, you can wear black T-shirts or cardigans, Nikes or Chucks. Hell, you can even wear white powder makeup and black eyeliner like a goth and sing about how "I'm not okay." It doesn't matter. All you have to be is A) Disaffected, B) Once rejected by a woman, C) Currently harboring animosity toward said woman or the gender as a whole or D) Lonely.

Yet, for some reason, these guys are elevated to a higher social standing than rappers or guidos. What gives? Could it be that they're all mostly clean-cut suburban WHITE BOYS (that's right, there are no colors in the emo rainbow -- whereas there are guidos of nearly every swath -- but the racism is a little more tacit than the sexism). Middle America sees these kids as no threat because they look like the kids skateboarding the cul de sac and "I remember what it was like being heartbroken at their age." Shit, if an R&B singer ever made half of the accusations toward women that these kids do, he'd be either blacklisted or strung up.

The fact is if a guido and an emo kid came up to my door asking to take my sister out, I'd kick the emo kid into the middle of next week and help my sister into the guido's Mitsubishi 3000. There's nothing clean-cut about wishing harm or suffering on women just because you're too weak to hold up your end of the relationship. There's nothing cool about a culture where the only voices are white males and everyone else is made to feel inferior. You don't see emo being emulated in other countries, you don't see people of diverse backgrounds making the music and you don't get the sense that everyone benefits from its creation. With guidism, for lack of a better term, the music is a global phenomenon with male, female, gay and straight artists from Europe and even Southern Asia getting in on the act. And everyone gets to dance and have a decent time... even if the guidos don't go home with the girls in the end.

Can the guidos be hotheads when they get liquored up? Sure. Can they act like idiots, as evidenced by their depiction on "Real Life: Down The Shore"? Absolutely. But they don't put up this front of the hurt and sympathetic figure to disguise a disdain for women that they hope will somehow get them laid.

Tris McCall & The New Jack Trippers
I'm Assuming You're All In Bands
$5 | 2006 | Jersey Beat Music

Hey Hey My My
Untitled EP CD
2006 | Sober & Gentle

Hey Hey My My is a pair of native French indie folksters residing in Paris who have a real penchant for writing very pretty and catchy folk rock tunes that seem to the run the gamut of expected influences, all sung in English.

Honestly, this six track disc is one of the nicer pieces of music we've been sent at Sceneless. The opener, "too much space," gives you a duo of dreamers who are comfortable in lyrical abstractions while dropping sound textures that remind me of quite a few Beatles recordings (think drum kit panned to stereo right, some of the instruments on the left), giving you an aural impression of being present for the performance and also one of, well, spaaaaciouesness. ))))SPAAAAACE(((( Tremolo-ladden guitars float in and out with harmonicas on the top of the mix while a pair of beautiful acoustic guitars pin the song underneath. This is no pair of college roommates who just learned how to play the basic chord forms, these guys are really damn good.

Not content to simply shlep and twang, HHMM keep the songs moving with a light kit and a lot of additional instrumentation. The third track Belle & Julian is a cute little trip into poppy guitar weedly-wee that will warm your icy hipster heart. Many of the vocal tracks and melodies leave my ear expecting some familiar lick by Wilco, Beatles, or Jets to Brazil (all very damn different) and I find myself continuously suprised by where the music goes. Come home from work and put this CD on and curl up and listen to the two Juliens sing "you don't know who I am" on the second track, "inside of yours," and settle into blissful bittersweet.

I've contacted their rep at Sober & Gentle for a little more info on how (and if) this CD is available, as I couldn't find that information on the S&B website (which is pretty cool, btw, if mostly french). I'll update this article with that info as soon as I get it.