What Is Punk & Emo??

Question

I dunno what is emo in these days now and either punk...
they said that i'm emo but i'm not so sure..
cuz' i love to listen to punk...
anyway..i consider myself as a unique person ^^

Answer 1

Well technically 'Punk' was/is an anti-establishment movement that came to being in the late 70's. Not a form of music.
Punk Rock however was the music written and performed by said punk's. Bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash were the pioneers of punk music.
Punk itself is an attitude and a way of life that is still strong today (if not now slightly mis-guided)

Emo....as far as I know is an amalgamation of heavy (almost metal) style music but using more harmonised vocals. The lyrical subject tends to be on Love, Anger, Pain and Grief. All the emotional stuff I guess....hence the name Emo.

I could be way off the ball on this one however

Answer 2

Punk is the noise a bow makes when it fires an arrow and emo is a mixed up bird a bit like an ostrich.

Answer 3

Emo has become mainstreamed today and many classify a lot of pop-punk bands like Yellowcard and Taking Back Sunday as Emo. Very not true. Emo is very different to what it is made out to be these days. In fact, it is a very beautiful, very palateable, soulful and tasteful style of music, Not the lame 'I hate my life wah wah' as it is made out to be today.

Answer 4

Not pretty sure of what Punk means but Emo is definitely a music, and not EMO-tional. People have commonly mistook Emo as a trend but its actually a music genre.

Answer 5

Punk is normal...ignore them all, they have nothing to do then just judgement they had. I'm not a punk, I'm a rocker....rock out!

Answer 6

Check out:
http://www.fourfa.com/

Answer 7

Emo is a subgenre of hardcore punk music.

In 1985 in Washington, D.C., Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, veterans of the DC hardcore music scene, decided to shift away from what they saw as the constraints of the basic style of hardcore and the escalating violence within the scene. They took their music in a more personal direction with a far greater sense of experimentation, bringing forth MacKaye's Embrace and Picciotto's Rites of Spring. The style of music developed by Embrace and Rites of Spring soon became its own sound. (Hüsker Dü's 1984 album Zen Arcade is often cited as a major influence for the new sound.) As a result of the renewed spirit of experimentation and musical innovation that developed the new scene, the summer of 1985 soon came to be known in the scene as "Revolution Summer".

Within a short time, the D.C. emo sound began to influence other bands such as Moss Icon, Nation of Ulysses, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think, Fire Party, Marginal Man, and Gray Matter, many of which were released on MacKaye's Dischord Records. The original wave of DC emo finally ended in late 1994 with the collapse of Hoover.

Where the term emo actually originated is uncertain, but members of Rites of Spring mentioned in a 1985 interview in Flipside Magazine that some of their fans had started using the term to describe their music. By the early 90s, it was not uncommon for the early DC scene to be referred to as emo-core, though it's unclear when the term shifted.

As the D.C. scene expanded, other scenes began to develop with a similar sound and DIY ethic. In San Diego in the early 1990s, Gravity Records released a number of records in the hardcore emo style. Bands of the period included Heroin, Indian Summer, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Universal Order of Armageddon, Swing Kids, and Mohinder. Also in California, Ebullition Records released records by bands of the same vein, such as Still Life and Portraits of Past, as well as more traditional hardcore punk bands, all having various social and political themes in common.

At the same time, in the New York/New Jersey area, bands such as Native Nod, Merel, 1.6 Band, Policy of 3, Rye Coalition and Rorschach were feeling the same impulse. Many of these bands were involved with the ABC No Rio club scene in New York, itself a response to the violence and stagnation in the scene and with the bands that played at CBGBs, the only other small venue for hardcore in New York at the time. Much of this wave of emo, particularly the San Diego scene, began to shift towards a more chaotic and aggressive form of emo, nicknamed screamo.

By and large, the more hardcore style of emo began to fade as many of the early era groups disbanded. However, aspects of the sound remained in bands such as Four Hundred Years and Yaphet Kotto. Also, a handful of modern bands continue to reflect emo's hardcore origins, including Circle Takes the Square, Hot Cross, City of Caterpillar, Funeral Diner, and A Day in Black and White.

Back in D.C., following the disbanding of both Rites of Spring and Embrace, MacKaye and Picciotto decided to join forces in a new band, called Fugazi. While Fugazi itself was not categorized as emo, the music it created would soon influence the second major wave of emo.

Early emo's influence

In California, particularly in the Bay Area, bands like Jawbreaker and Samiam began to mix the DC influence with pop punk to come up with their own take on the classic DC emo sound. On Jawbreaker's album Bivouac, singer Blake Schwarzenbach evolved from the traditional hardcore vocal sound into a more melodic crooning, which displayed a more emotional feeling of loss than the desperation and frantic nature of MacKaye's voice. Other bands soon reflected the same sense of rough melody, including Still Life and Long Island's Garden Variety. The style continued to evolve into the 2000s through bands like Avail and Hot Water Music.

Also in the early 90s, bands like Lifetime reacted in their own way to the demise of youth crew styled straight-edge hardcore and desired to seek out a new direction. While their music was often classified as emo, it was also considered to be melodic hardcore. In response to the more metal direction their hardcore peers were taking, Lifetime initially decided to slow down and soften their music, adding more personal lyrics. The band later added a blend of speed, aggression, and melody that defined their sound. Lifetime's sound, lyrics, and style were a virtual blueprint for later bands, including Saves The Day and The Movielife.

Similarly, bands such as Converge, heavily influential on modern metalcore, drew inspiration from East Coast emo bands and added a sense of catharsis and atypically introspective lyrics.

The second wave (1994–2000)

As Fugazi and the Dischord Records scene became more and more popular in the indie underground of the early 1990s, new bands began to spring up. Combining Fugazi with the post-punk influences of Mission of Burma and Hüsker Dü, a new genre of emo emerged.

Perhaps the key moment was the release of the album Diary by Sunny Day Real Estate in 1994. Given Sub Pop's then-recent success with Nirvana and Soundgarden, the label was able to bring much wider attention to the release than the typical indie release, including major advertisements in Rolling Stone. The heavier label support allowed the band to secure performances on TV shows, including The Jon Stewart Show. As a result, the album received widespread national attention.

As more and more people learned about the band, particularly via the fledgling World Wide Web, the band was given the tag emo. Even where Fugazi had not been considered emo, the new generation of fans shifted the tag from the earlier hardcore style to this more indie rock style of emo. It wasn't uncommon for Sunny Day and its peers to be labeled with the full "emo-core". However, when pressed to explain "emo", many fans split the genre into two brands: the "hardcore emo" practiced in the early days and the newer "indie emo".

In the years that followed, several major regions of "indie emo" emerged. The most significant appeared in the Midwest in the mid-90s. Many of the bands were influenced by the same sources, but with an even more tempered sound. This brand of emo was often referred to as "Midwestern emo" given the geographic location of the bands, with several of the best-known bands hailing from the areas around Chicago, Kansas City, and Milwaukee. The initial bands in this category included Boy's Life and Cap'n Jazz. In ensuing years, bands such as The Promise Ring, Braid, Elliott, and The Get Up Kids emerged from the same scene and gained national attention.

The area around Phoenix, Arizona became another major scene for emo. Inspired by Fugazi and Sunny Day Real Estate, former punk rockers Jimmy Eat World began stirring in emo influences into their music, eventually releasing the album Static Prevails in 1996. The album was arguably the first emo record released by a major label, as the band had signed with Capitol Records in 1995.

Other bands that followed the "indie emo" model included Colorado's Christie Front Drive, New York's Texas Is the Reason and Rainer Maria, California's Knapsack and Sense Field, Austin's Mineral, and Boston's Piebald and Jejune.

Strangely, as "indie emo" became more widespread, a number of acts who otherwise would not have been considered part of the "indie emo" scene had their albums referred to as emo because of their similarity to the sound. The hallmark example was Weezer's 1996 album Pinkerton, which, in later years, was considered one of the defining "emo" records of the 90s.

As the wide range of emo bands began to attract notoriety on a national scale, a number of indie labels attempted to document the scene. Many emo bands of the late 90s signed to indie labels including Jade Tree Records, Saddle Creek, and Big Wheel Recreation. California's Crank Records released what many considered the defining compilation of 90s emo in 1997, titled (Don't Forget to) Breathe, which featured tracks by The Promise Ring, Christie Front Drive, Mineral, Knapsack, and Arizona's Seven Storey Mountain. In 1998, Deep Elm Records released the first installment in a series of compilations called Emo Diaries, featuring tracks from Jimmy Eat World, Samiam, and Jejune. In 1999, famed 70s compilation label K-tel even released an emo compilation titled Nowcore: The Punk Rock Evolution, which, regardless of its source, was surprisingly comprehensive. (Nowcore included tracks by Texas Is the Reason, Mineral, The Promise Ring, Knapsack, Braid, At the Drive-In, and Jawbox, among others.)

With the late-90s emo scene being more national than regional, major labels began to turn their attention toward signing emo bands with the hopes of capitalizing on the genre's popularity. Many bands resisted the lure, citing their loyalty to the independent mentality of the scene. Several bands cited what they saw as mistreatment of bands such as Jawbox and Jawbreaker while they were signed to majors as a reason to stay away. The conflict felt within many of the courted emo bands resulted in their break-ups, including Texas Is the Reason and Mineral.

By the end of the decade, the word emo cropped up in mainstream circles. In the summer of 1998, Teen People magazine ran an article declaring "emo" the newest "hip" style of music, with The Promise Ring a band worth watching. The independent nature of the emo scene recoiled at mainstream attention, and many emo bands shifted their sound in an attempt to isolate themselves from the genre. In the years that followed, Sunny Day Real Estate opted to shift to a more prog-rock direction, Jejune aimed for happy pop-rock, and The Get Up Kids and The Promise Ring released lite-rock albums.

While "indie emo" almost completely ceased to exist by the end of the decade, many bands still subscribe to the Fugazi / Hüsker Dü model, including Thursday, The Juliana Theory, and Sparta.

The third wave (2000–Present)

At the end of the 1990s, the underground emo scene had almost entirely disappeared. However, the term emo was still being bandied about in mainstream media, almost always attached to the few remaining 90s emo acts, including Jimmy Eat World.

However, towards the end of the 1990s, Jimmy Eat World had begun to shift in a more mainstream direction. Where Jimmy Eat World had played emocore-style music early in their career, by the time of the release of their 2001 album Bleed American, the band had almost completely removed its emo influences. As the public had become aware of the word emo and knew that Jimmy Eat World was associated with it, the band continued to be referred to as an "emo" band. Newer bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World (and, in some cases, like the more melodic emo bands of the late 90s) were soon included in the genre.

2003 saw the success of Chris Carrabba, the former singer of Further Seems Forever, and his project Dashboard Confessional. Carrabba's music featured lyrics founded in deep diary-like outpourings of emotion. Where earlier emo had featured lyrics of a more dark and painful direction, Carrabba's featured a greater focus on love won and lost and the inability to cope. While certainly emotional, the new "emo" had a far greater appeal amongst teenagers experiencing love for the first time, who found insight and solace in Carrabba's words and music.

With Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World's success, major labels began seeking out similar sounding bands. Just as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the other Seattle scene bands of the early 1990s were unwillingly lumped into the genre "grunge", some record labels wanted to be able to market a new sound under the word emo. Which sound that was didn't particularly matter.

At the same time, use of the term "emo" expanded beyond simply the musical genre, which added to the confusion surrounding the term. The word "emo" became associated with feelings of unashamed emotion. Common fashion styles and attitudes that were becoming idiomatic of fans of similar "emo" bands also began to be referred to as "emo". (For further discussion, see Emo (slang).) As a result, bands that were loosely associated with "emo" trends or simply demonstrated emotion began to be referred to as emo.

In an even more expanded way than in the 90s, emo has come to encompass an extremely wide variety of bands, many of whom have very little in common. The term has become so wide-ranging that it has become nearly impossible to describe what exactly qualifies as "emo".

Correctly or not, emo has often been used to describe such bands as AFI, Alexisonfire, A Static Lullaby, Brand New, Coheed and Cambria, Fall Out Boy, Finch, From Autumn to Ashes, From First to Last, Funeral for a Friend, Hawthorne Heights, Matchbook Romance, My Chemical Romance, Panic! At The Disco, Silverstein, Something Corporate, The Starting Line, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, Thrice, and Thursday. Fans of several of these bands have recoiled at the use of the "emo" tag, and have gone to great lengths to explain why they don't qualify as "emo". In many cases, the term has simply been attached to them because of musical similarites, a common fashion sense, or because of the band's popularity within the "emo" scene, not because the band adheres to emo as a music genre. (The revulsion of some bands from the term emo is not unlike the retreat from the genre by the bands in the indie emo scene near the end of the 90s.)

As a result of the continuing shift of "emo" over the years, a serious schism has emerged between those who relate to particular eras of "emo". Those who were closely attached to the hardcore origins recoil when another type of music is called "emo". Many involved in the independent nature of both 80s and 90s emo are upset at the perceived hijacking of the word emo to sell a new generation of major label music. Regardless, popular culture appears to have embraced the terms of "emo" far beyond its original intentions, out of the control of the independent-minded.

In a strange twist, screamo, a sub-genre of the new emo, has found greater popularity in recent years through bands such as Thrice and Glassjaw. (As a reference, see Jim DeRogatis' November 2002 article about Screamo.) The term screamo, however, was used to describe an entirely different genre in the early 1990s, and the new screamo bands more resemble the emo of the early 1990s. Complicating matters further is that several small scenes devoted to original screamo still exist in the underground. However, the new use of "screamo" demonstrates how the shift in terms connected to "emo" has made the varying genres difficult to categorize.

Even still, the difficulty in defining "emo" as a genre may have started at the very beginning. In a 2003 interview by Mark Prindle, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi and Rites of Spring was asked how he felt about "being the creator of the emo genre". He responded: "I don't recognize that attribution. I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me."

Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music movement which began around 1974–1975 (although transitional forms can be found several years earlier), exemplified by the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, and The Clash. The term is also used to describe subsequent music scenes that share key characteristics with those first-generation "punks," and it is often applied loosely to mean any band with "attitude" or "youthful aggression." The term is sometimes also applied to the fashions, ideology, subculture, or irreverent "DIY" ("do it yourself") attitude associated with this musical movement.



The underground punk movement in the United States and the United Kingdom produced countless bands that either evolved from a punk rock sound or applied its spirit and DIY ethics to a completely different sound. By the end of the 1980s these bands had largely eclipsed their punk forebearers and were termed alternative rock. As alternative bands like Sonic Youth and the Pixies were starting to gain larger audiences, major labels sought to capitalize on a market that had been growing underground for the past 10 years.

In 1991, Nirvana achieved huge commercial success with their album, Nevermind. Nirvana cited punk as a key influence on their music. Although they tended to label themselves as punk rock and championed many unknown punk icons (as did many other alternative rock bands), Nirvana's music was equally akin to other forms of garage or indie rock and heavy metal that had existed for decades. Nirvana's success kick-started the alternative rock boom that had been underway since the late 1980s, and helped define that segment of the 1990s popular music milieu. The subsequent shift in taste among listeners of rock music was chronicled in a film entitled 1991: The Year Punk Broke, which featured Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, and Sonic Youth.

A new movement in the mainstream became visible in the early and mid-1990s, claiming to be a form of punk, this was characterized by the scene at 924 Gilman Street, a venue in Berkeley, California, which featured bands such as Operation Ivy, Green Day, Rancid and later bands including AFI, (though clearly not simultaneously, as Rancid included members of the defunct Operation Ivy). Epitaph Records, an independent record label started by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, would become the home of the "skate punk" sound, characterized by bands like The Offspring, Pennywise, NOFX, and The Suicide Machines. Many bands arose claiming the mantle of the ever-diverse punk label -- some playing a more accessible, pop style and achieving commercial success. The late 1990s also saw another ska punk revival. This revival continued into the 2000s with bands like Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, and Less Than Jake.

The commercial success of alternative rock also gave way to another style which claimed to be a form of "punk", dubbed pop punk or "mall punk" by the press; this new movement garnered mainstream success. Examples of bands labeled "pop punk" by MTV and similar media outlets include: Blink 182, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, and Sum 41. By the late 1990s, punk was so ingrained in Western culture that it was often used to sell commercial bands as "rebels", amid complaints from punk rockers that, by being signed to major labels and appearing on MTV, these bands were buying into the system that punk was created to rebel against, and as a result, could not be considered true punk (though clearly, punk's earliest pioneers also released work via the major labels). This debate continues among young punk acolytes (who, as do most new generations, seek a sense of originality or authenticity) amid the popularity of modern "pop punk" in the early 2000s, and the Grammy success and superstar status in 2005 of Green Day.