Brand New ~ Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades
(written: 25 April 2004)
Let's be honest. I am not an emo kid. I don't weight 120 pounds. Despite attempts to be 'ironic', I don't need thick framed glasses. I like sweaters, but not those kinds of sweaters...
Just like any genre of music once it breaks, emo has been tainted by the stereotypical lifestyle that followed it. Same thing happened to grunge... new wave... disco... It all backs up my theory that you can determine anyone's taste in music based on a thirty second scan of their clothing and demeanour.
With that said, I am trying really hard to see just how I may look through others' eyes. I can maybe think of one appropriate word: "curmudgeon". I smirk instead of smile, and I roll my eyes a lot. I laugh on the inside. To most, it would appear that I am mired in angst.
This is not a livejournal, so my angsty truth about my feelings on angst or truth will not come out. But let's just say that the paragraph above this is only somewhat correct in its assumptions.
But I am drinking a Black Ice, and eating a bowl of Chunky Chicken Soup. The daily minutia of life can make angst seem less edgy, no?
I came home from India expecting to hate everything. Turns out that isn't true; I just hate most things, and love a certain few others more.
My love is predictable. It always has been. You make me happy, I love you. You evoke a feeling inside, I love you. That is the thing; I have been lacking in feeling since my return.
But again, this is getting too personal. Let us just concentrate on music, as music is the one thing where the opposite was true. I spent three months locked in a foreign land with only a thin canon of music, a guy with scabies, a lonely lonely lonely dog, and Dionne Warwick's apprentice on the Psychic Friend's Network. So after that, you can see how I would desperately need some new sounds... and since I was so far out of touch, all the typical new derivitive (s)hits hit me like something fresh.
Enter Brand New. Some emo slash punk slash pop band, as far as I can tell. The guy's got one of those voices; a mono-testicled Billy Joe Armstrong.
This song was all over the radio my first week back. Rooted with throbbing bass stolen from my favourite Poison song, the verses are pure white boy hip hop; sexual frustrations whispered into screams. And the chorus is absolute teen wall-punching: "Die young and save yourself!"
I never got into it, until I really let myself get into it. Sadly, the only reason I ever did was because of the 'transit' imagery. But since then, I can officially declare this the current anthem not only for my lingering angst... but also for my sexual frustration.
It wouldn't be ratpony without sex talk from me, fuckers. But the lyrics are totally poetry2K4... check them out here, and if you get a pop-up, u r not l33t enuf.
But read them from the perspective of used and abused early twenty-somethings, NPCs in your existentialist RPGs.
It's okay to feel that way.
Lord, do I ever need to shut the hell up.
photo by kam