Teaching kids that were born the year I graduated from high school is sometimes a slightly demoralizing experience. I like to consider myself a relatively “cool” guy – down with the kids, so to speak. But nearly every day my students come up with some bit of slang that just mystifies it entirely. Clearly they aren’t as awed in my presence as they should be or they would be speaking in proper English. After all, I am a university lecturer. I  guess the sad fact is, that I’m just getting old. Verging on that stereotypical aging hipster that you generally find in “Modern Poetry” classrooms at liberal arts universities.

I haven’t been doing much of it lately (primarily because it requires more work than posting pictures of Boy Z or vitriol about the Sunshine State), but I do like to feature new music on this site. I tend to be pretty receptive to new music, and a lot of my favorite acts are made up of musicians that aren’t much older than my students. But a lot of times, and I cringe as I say this, I just don’t get it. Like emo, the much maligned musical and fashion trend that “these kids today” are inclined toward. Thing is, I don’t really understand emo, truthfully I don’t even know what it is.

The other day, Andrew at Concrete Circles posted a review of Joie De Vivre – a Rockford, Illinois emo band. Sensing an opportunity, I left a comment for Andrew professing my ignorance regarding the nature of  “emo”. This elicited an e-mail from Patrick Delehanty, Joie De Vivre’s guitarist, who politely (with the tone that one uses with aging aunties) offered to explain it to me. What a lovely young man.

Patrick was kind enough to sit down on A Free Man’s virtual couch to explain the emo movement in music to me and all my fogey readers:

AFM: I hate to put you in the position to be the spokesman for a genre, but what the hell is emo, really?

PD: There are a lot of misconceptions about what emo is. It’s supposed to music that’s emotional, which to us isn’t really a fair description. Honestly, that’s a pretty big umbrella to place over a genre. Almost anything that’s not a Top 40 single could, by this definition, be “Emo”. But we suppose that’s why the term is used so loosely to describe a band.

AFM: What are the roots of the genre? In your music, I hear a lot of the post-grunge bands of the mid-90s (Built to Spill, maybe a bit of early Modest Mouse or Yo La Tengo), but with a lot more dissonance and atonality. Who are the forefathers of emo?

PD: The roots of the genre go back to the mid-eighties. The term emo became synonymous with the whole post-punk movement (most notably the whole Ian MacKaye/Dischord records scene). The genre back then was quite different to the one most recognize now. It was a lot more raw, honest, and socially aware than the poppy cookie cutter stuff we see on MTV with the label. Later on, bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, The Promise Ring, and Jawbreaker ushered in a more popular (and in our opinion: the best) version of what the genre should be. Now it seems to be taken over by things we always referred to as pop punk which seems a little ridiculous. We should also mention the whole screamo thing here… it’s a real shame that something so lame and fashion based was born from something so honest.

AFM: Another thing I don’t understand is why emo gets slagged off by the music press so much. Is it just aging hipsters like me who don’t get it? Or is there a legitimate beef?

PD: The music industry is very quick to judge all things emo (especially the more traditional style) as being whiny, pretentious, and drony. But, it always seemed more honest and meaningful to us than most “popular” styles of music. Emo music gets shunned by the press because it’s not trendy.

AFM: Do you bristle at the emo label being applied to your band?

PD: Not at all. Most people that like what we do either aren’t too put off by the label or have a firm grasp as to what real emo music was and still is; we’re happy to be influenced by actual emo, and we’re proud to write through it’s great influences.

AFM: OK, enough emo. Let’s find out a little about you guys.. How did Joie De Vivre come to be?

PD: Brandon, Chris, and Steve were in a band for awhile together, which broke apart in September 2007 and wanted to start something a little more traditional, along the lines with their styles. They knew Pat and Zach for awhile from other bands. It really wasn’t a difficult thing. Things fell into place pretty easily.

AFM: You’re a quintet from Rockford, Illinois with one EP under your belt. Where do you go from here?

PD: We’re almost done with our first full length, tentively called “The North End”, we hope to have it done by the end of the year. And hopefully a tour this summer. Things are pretty difficult without a label and it’s hard to keep everything balanced. None of us have degrees and we all have terrible part time jobs so money is always an issue with us. It’s hard to book all your own shows (tours included) and still have a budget for recording and merch. But we’ll see where things go. We’ve been getting a lot a decent press lately and hopefully things will get bigger and better once we finish this record.

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So, there you go gentle readers. Check out a couple of tracks from Joie De Vivre’s latest EP. I’ve got to go and listen to some Dad Rock and work on this ear hair now.

If you like Joie De Vivre’s music, buy their EP, “The Ghost of Kennedy Hill Road” here.

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Images:

Emos

 
icon for podpress  Joie De Vivre - "Sundays" [3:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Joie De Vivre - "That's The Hot Part" [4:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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