emo vs. goth

[James Blast]

possible, yet unflattering....

[Izzy HaveMercy]

I was gonna ask the Boss for the rank of 'Watcher Of The Skies', but I think 'Old Git' would be more honest. Thanks Iz.

I was thinking more along the lines of 'Old Grumpy Loveable Silver Machine'!

(when you hit the 20k post threshold)

IZ.

[markfiend]

I'm of an age where emo still means :



I'm with Burn in the "Trad" timescale

Me too.

[lazarus corporation]

Both are quite horrible when they become ("sub")cultural phenomenas. Which says nothing of the individuals in either. But still in most cases it does. i mean, a cultural phenomena is basically when something once substantial has been degraded to the level of a meme...

Doesn't Dawkins' concept of a meme include both a "once substantial" idea and a "cultural phenomenon"? A meme is just a transmittable idea which (like the gene from which the concept was extrapolated) may be successful or not - the term doesn't carry any inherent connotations of quality.

Anyhow (jet lag induced blathering aside), judging by the bands categorised as either/both of those terms these days, they're both crap.

[King of Byblos]

I'm of an age where emo still means :



I'm with Burn in the "Trad" timescale

that's what i thought too, till i saw them on t'tele WTF! it's nowt to do with the Gothic

[King of Byblos]

I'm still debating whether it's a cause or just a symptom of all that's wrong with the world at the moment... I'll get back to you when I do...

symptom i think; suddenly there are these things called emotions and then taking it out on the world-around-them for having them sees good.
i could be really cynical and suggest that they have grown up in households with little mature emotional life.
...oh and the marketing £leverage gained by grouping vunerable teenagers and selling a 'lifestyle' choice to them

[or have i just undermined my argument ]

however, i think the emo kids probably have more chance of growing up human than the robots society wants to turn out

[Dead_Rock]

This is def. my heartland

I'd go for Emo too, I've developed a profound aversion against them.
Not goth, not faggot - Faggoth... worst of both combined in a whimpering teen. The worst: My Ex's new boyfriend is a mid 20s ( ) Emo... gotta love those uniform hair style and clothes....

[Ahráyeph]

If only I knew what emo sounds like...

[Carpathian Psychonaut]

I always get very anal when it comes to polls like this.

I see the choice and my brain starts with things like "Is that old school goth or that new not-really-goth Goth ?" and "Have I got a proper handle on emo or am I thinking of the wrong thing ?"

Based on that befuddlement, and the fact I love loads of the old school (ie before many of the current bands were born ), I've voted emo.

Actually, thinking about it, there were many flavours of "goff" even just back then in yon olden days.........

{wanders off muttering to self about how confusing it is these days....}

[Dead_Rock]

Emo is less music than fashion and style... That's what's pissing me off so much

[Maisey]

Its a whole package. Its just very manufactured.

Goth tend to strive for indivuality but often get accused of being clones. Its nice to have people how really ARE clones to laugh at.

[canon docre]

so far no one could explain to me what exactly emo-music is and who makes it. I heard though they sing about emotions, that's why it's called emo. Well, everyone sings about emotions. Is Barry Manilow emo too? I mean I found "Mandy" pretty touching and who didn't?

Is Marilyn Manson emo because he wears makeup? Or the guys from Slipknot? I really dont get it. Can someone please name a band I heard of as an example?

[Maisey]

I can help!

Ok, let me break it down for you.

First there was punk. Then, punk became all frill and no balls, so the 'real' punks made oi!

They moved to the US (mostly) and called themselves hardcore.

They played their instuments loud and fast and with agression. It was really hardcore.

Hardcore artists where typically pretty butch, with pretty butch angry lyrical content.

Some bands wanted to sing about personal stuff. Which is normal in most genres, but not hardcore. They became emotional hardcore. I am reliabley informed such a band is fugazi.

These bands would occansionally break down and cry due to the sheer personalness of the shows, thus the nancy boy stereotype.

This kind of watered down hardcore was more accessable, and soon the kids were listening to it.

It had a sence of fashion.

Apply the sence of fashion to pop music, you get emotional hardcore, minus the hardcore.

What you are left with is an origonal idea, that started out pretty useless, raped and beaten and washed out.

You are left with Emo. All label and fashion product, pretty much minus the inaccessable aggression of hardcore.

Recently it has been found, if you make any genre of music more soppy and accessable to kids that are trained to here whiney teenage agnst, and add the correct hair do, you can add "core" to the end of the genre, and therefore make it acceptable by the new wave of emos.
Thus "metalcore" being essentially a type of emo, though it bears little resemblance to the origonal genre.

[canon docre]

Pretty disturbing story you tell me here, Maisey. All I can say is that my friend John Joseph would never ever cry onstage.


hardcore
- hard
+makeup
+ crying onstage
= emo

sounds all pretty goth to me.

[James Blast]

I can help!

Ok, let me break it down for you.

First there was punk. Then, punk became all frill and no balls, so the 'real' punks made oi!

They moved to the US (mostly) and called themselves hardcore.

They played their instuments loud and fast and with agression. It was really hardcore.

Hardcore artists where typically pretty butch, with pretty butch angry lyrical content.

Some bands wanted to sing about personal stuff. Which is normal in most genres, but not hardcore. They became emotional hardcore. I am reliabley informed such a band is fugazi.

These bands would occansionally break down and cry due to the sheer personalness of the shows, thus the nancy boy stereotype.

Sorry Maisey, you're young and don't have a feckin' clue!

and I do not want to be the bad man here, but you really aren't even close

[Zuma]

Was it not Garry Bushell who tried to create "Oi" as an ego trip a long time ago in Sounds and it fell on its' arse?

[Stumpy Pete]

Emo is simply music by and for people who don't know how to f**k. It's not complicated.

[James Blast]

Was it not Garry Bushell who tried to create "Oi" as an ego trip a long time ago in Sounds and it fell on its' arse?

Yes, and he now is a bigshot on The Sun (not the planet/star tho' that might be a start...). He was always one of the music journos I avoided because he could write the sentences, but talked complete and utter shite!

A Complete and Utter Khunt!

IMO

[eotunun]

Emo is simply music by and for people who don't know how to f**k. It's not complicated.

They do know! They don´t do it to protest against the parents!
You know, being against things isn´t what it used to be..

[Dead_Rock]

I find this to be very informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo_%28music%29

[Eden]

Goth has no boundaries and actually means something. Goth is the most real music out there with music and lyrics that actually mean something not to be tainted by emo's typical "I cry at sunsets blah blah blah", emo is just a bastardized mainstream corporate version of Goth.

[weebleswobble]

F*ck 'em All

[boudicca]

I think the thing that inspires the loathing of emo is just the level of self-pity it represents.

Yeah, of course getting incredibly angsty about not-very-much-at-all has been a feature of Being A Teenager since Being A Teenager was invented. And emo is not the first pop culture phenomenon to cash in on that - nu-metal, grunge and others already set the template. But I don't think it's ever been taken to such an extreme.

I see a great difference between emo and gothic, despite both genres' tendency to deal with the - shall we say, less cheerful side of life . To my mind, goth tends to approach things with much more maturity. A lot of bands may tackle grim subjects or the darker aspects of the human condition, but for the most part, don't wallow or glory in uselessness and misery. Subjects which are often very disturbing are actually looked at with objectivity and wry humour at times. This is also the case in some other genres that can cross over with goth... industrial, some metal, even country...

Emo, on the other hand, bleats and wails. It is not moving - quite the contrary. It's not the soul-splitting sound of an abandoned child howling alone in the dark, it's the impossibly irritating sound of a spolit child having a tantrum in a supermarket.
The inspiration is usually far less worthy of emotion than your average gothic ditty. While Nick Cave might croon with a gleam in his eye about psychotic obsessions and brutal murders, emo kids flail and scream about the standard ups and downs of being 15 and the girl you fancy not fancying you back 'cos you're not very popular.

It's a misnomer really, because the emotional scope of emo is extremely limited. These kids are raising their mundane personal difficulties to the level of apocalyptic drama... the world does not extend beyond their own self-important horizons.

Emo appeals to a more exclusively young age group than goth because most adults have seen enough of the world to realise that, at times, painful emotion has to be restrained. Adults can hopefully see far enough outside their own little horizons to realise there's rape, murder, famine, illness, horrific cruelty and death in the world. We realise that when really bad stuff touches a person's life, they have to hold back their tears sometimes, or else they might never stop crying.

Emo angers me because I see it as discouraging emotional maturity and discouraging its teenage adherents from learning to cope with their less pleasant feelings in life. It glamourizes victimhood and normalizes an incredible level of self-obsession and self-indulgence.

Oh and they have stupid hair. That's what it's all about, really

[nick the stripper]

Don’t ask me, disliking the idea of asserting your 'individuality' via sporting a silly haircut with slightly differing highlights to everyone else's, I currently dress like Woody Allen to purposely appear bland.

[markfiend]

Emo = "poor me poor me poor me".

Pour me another