For you emo kids, there’s a book out there. It’s called Nothing Feels Good (taken from the title of a Promise Ring album) by Andy Greenwald, a senior contributing writer at Spin.
The book is pretty much a history of the emo movement and most of the bands involved. It explains the whole development of the genre way better than I thought was possible. It does portrays artists like Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional in a positive light, however. So, for those of you who find emo to be played by “spindly young men… playing recycled Byrds songs, mopers and whiners who couldn’t make eye contact with the audience if their lives depended on it” may want to steer clear. Anyhow… I think the point I was going for here is that the book’s an interesting read, written as it is at the height of a musical movement. Even as much as I detest emo, I found it well-written and damn informative.
The quote, by the way, comes from Joe Queenan‘s Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon. While it was originally directed at grunge rock, I think it applies here. Both are catch-all terms for a series of bands that wouldn’t otherwise be related, and they both seem to be musical movements that have caught on with the exact groups they once tried to avoid (i.e., jocks who listen to Dashboard or Nirvana).