The first the best and the last sham 69
Not, like, bitcoin-mining terrible, but not great. Terrible for the environment, this system. Thousands upon thousands of band photos to be filed and later utilized for concert calendars and shit. Absolutely I just named those bands at random once I got halfway through the alphabet, I was like, Why not. The Afghan Whigs, Built to Spill, Corrosion of Conformity, Depeche Mode, E (the guy from the Eels), the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Girls Against Boys, Juliana Hatfield (but not the Juliana Hatfield Three-that goes under J), Ivy, the Juliana Hatfield Three, K’s Choice, Living Colour, Marcy Playground, New Wet Kojak, Orgy, Porno for Pyros, Quasi, Redd Kross, Sham 69, Twisted Sister, Unwound, Versus, the Waterboys, X, Young Marble Giants, and Zebrahead. Alphabetized band photos, if you were lucky. When I started interning for alt-weeklies and magazines, every arts section or music section I worked in had a dusty corner of the office devoted to three to five giant filing cabinets, those triple-stacked, busted-up, military-green, gratuitously rusting, perilously teetering filing cabinets with bullet holes in ’em for some reason, and these filing cabinets were filled to bursting with nothing but band photos. Grab your Telecasters and Manic Panic and join us for Emo Week. Ideally, these photos would also include the band logo-like preferably a death-metal band logo that’s so gnarly you can’t read the name at all, I love that shit-and captions naming the band’s individual members, just to inform you that the bassist is named Doug or whatever.Įmo is back, baby! In honor of its return to prominence-plus the 20th anniversary of the first MCR album-we’re diving deep into all things emo. Drop the needle on the old-timey Victrola record player with the giant horn, my friends, because Uncle Rob’s about to explain another thing from the past: For decades, pre-internet, if a rock band wasn’t plastered all over MTV and Rolling Stone and such, the only way you’d have any idea what they looked like, without buying their records or going to their shows, is if that band physically mailed out 8 1/2-by-11 glossy press photos of themselves to newspapers and alt-weeklies and smaller magazines and such.
I am describing this Sunny Day press photo to you in such arduous detail because, roundabout 1994, this quasi-wedding-band pic was pretty close to the only available public information about the Seattle rock band Sunny Day Real Estate. I played that for you just now for four reasons: One, the synapse thing two, the wedding thing three, it’s a great song (OK, five reasons) four, I hear a lot of Sunny Day Real Estate in early Death Cab for Cutie, especially starting in the late ’90s, a lot of tonal similarities, the erudite arms-length intimacy, a bunch of stuff beyond just the wordy band names that I’m mildly embarrassed to say out loud and the fifth reason, apparently I’m just extra loopy this week. That song’s about being sad at a wedding. Here is a Death Cab for Cutie song from 2000 called “Company Calls Epilogue” that illustrates this alleged abuse of the word synapse: That’s unfair of me: I am not aware of any Sunny Day Real Estate songs that use the word synapse, I just always remember the time I was standing in a chattering circle of cool kids at a bar in San Francisco and my dear friend Nate started ranting about how emo bands shouldn’t be allowed to use the word synapse in their lyrics any more because the word synapse is, quote, “A pre-fucking-Fugazi fucking noun.” End quote. This photo looks like the groomsmen at a wedding became so overcome with emotion that they attacked the wedding band and stole their instruments and commandeered the stage, and now they’re regaling the shocked and confused but also pretty psyched wedding party with fraught and ferocious and super-intimate post-hardcore songs with lyrics that use the word synapse a lot. The fellas are dressed formally: white button-down shirts, ties, a couple suit vests (at least two the drummer’s not really visible back there). This is one of the more Midwestern non-Midwestern bands in rock ‘n’ roll history. Original classic lineup: We got Jeremy Enigk on guitar and vocals, Dan Hoerner on guitar, Nate Mendel on bass, William Goldsmith on drums. It’s a live shot, black-and-white, lush but also, uh, blurry with motion, so as to accentuate their intensity. All right, so I’m looking right now at what was, for several years, the only official press photo of the up-and-coming Seattle rock band Sunny Day Real Estate.