Tagged: screamo

#JDHeroes – Converse

JD Sports asked me what my favourite trainers are and why. This is my answer. Click that link above for a chance to win some trainers. You know you want to.

Once upon a time, a basketball player named Charles Taylor (‘Chuck’, to friends) met with a group of men who made shoes. He complained of chronic foot pain, likely a case of a plantar fasciitis similar to the one I recently grappled with, and asked the brand to produce a shoe for him. The resulting shoe was the All Star, a shoe with a silhouette second in star factor only to the Coke bottle.

But all that was a long time ago. So how is it that, more than a hundred years later, someone like me owns somewhere in the region of ten pairs of All Stars? Simple. Somewhere down the line, long before Nike acquired Converse in 2003 and Converse started being worn by everyone from Willow Smith to…my mum (yes, really.), Chuck Taylors became the shoe of choice for skramz bands in the ’90s and onwards, like Off Minor and Fugazi. Even if the pictures are inevitably pretty grainy…skramz kids don’t do Instagram.

Off Minor Converse

Fugazi Converse

Hell, they’re even included in three of the infamous, and massively tongue in cheek, guides to dressing like an emo that make up Your Scene Sucks.

skramz revivalist

To this day, 90% of kids at skramz shows are inevitably wearing either Converse or New Balance trainers. Unless you’re at a Comadre show…there, Vans are pretty much compulsory. Especially if you’re in the band.

Comadre Vans shoes

Anyway. I got to thinking about why Converse shoes have become so prevalent, and I think I’ve figured it out. Skramz has always been, to some degree, pretty anti-fashion. In the same way that glam metal was defined by big hair, make-up and studded leather, skramz fashion looks more like it’s come from Gap -

And you can’t rely on turfing up old skramz merch on eBay – Saetia played their final show to just 40 people and Orchid even had a song called No, We Don’t Have Any T-shirts. I think one of the reasons so many skramz bands and fans wear Converse is because it’s just about the only form of uniform possible. Of course, all that has been diluted from 2000 onwards, with the post hardcore militia and metalcore fans also wearing Converse, not to mention celebrities, mums and One Direction.

Two members of Alexisonfire wearing Converse

And I can’t work out if that’s a good or a bad thing – I have to admit that I can’t help being one of those people who hates it when stuff that they consider to be ‘theirs’ becomes popular. That said, if it means that in another hundreds years my great grandkids will get to wear Converse, I guess it’s a price worth paying.

PREVIEW: Comadre – Cold Rain

To any of you who have read my Twitter bio and asked what skramz is, I finally decided to write something about it. So this is for you.

In 2005, five dudes from Redwood City (a suburb of San Fran, California) started a band called Comadre. As well as having a thoroughly unique sound, they’ve also created a distinctive visual style. Partially because no-one else really has, I thought I’d write something about both.

Although they are part of the skramz revival of the late ’90s and early ’00s, the band is hardly a neat fit with the genre. Jangly American Football-esque guitars sit alongside harsh, occasionally grating vocals, and breakdowns that wouldn’t look out of place in punk and hardcore tracks appear pretty regularly.

As with most great screamo crossover bands, much of Comadre’s brilliance is in their lyrics. Take, for example, their new track, an up tempo track in the vein of Refused (incidentally, I’m absolutely convinced that Comadre are this generation’s Refused). Cold Rain’s lyrics feel as chopped up as anything by William Burroughs and as charged with meaning as any e e cummings poem. While this makes them less easily digestible than La Dispute or Kodan Armada, it does give them a thought provoking charm.

The visual style of the band’s merchandise swings wildly between fairly standard hxcmerch.com stuff, often bearing a lot of similarities to Loma Prieta’s artwork…

…and designs that have much more to them. Take for example one of their latest shirts, bearing a quote from Beau Navire’s drummer that references Jackson Pollock, which is pretty much a deeper version of those jocky ‘what happens on tour stays on tour’ t-shirts.

I also like their Face Tats design a lot. It seems to say a lot about a scene in which people rely on tattoos and fashion to say more than they do with their mouths. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into things. As usual.

It’s kind of appropriate that in the band’s new video they’re wearing shirts emblazoned with everything from the Battle Royale logo to Rocky Votolato (a singer songwriter who’s like an edgier Chris Carrabba) to a Lord of of the Rings reference – the skramz scene is pretty much the only one that places as much stock in t-shirts as the producers of The Big Bang Theory do.

Anyway, Comadre’s new full length (their first in three years) drops in January 2013 and I’m pretty much counting down the days.

The Shape of Punk to Come


Pretty in punk. The punk playlist (one that would make Fat Mike spin in his oversized grave. If he’s dead yet…). ‘Add a touch of punk chic with blah blah blah’. I see it so often, it’s a wonder that the misappropriation and misdefining of the words punk, grunge and emo can even fill me with rage anymore. But, somehow, they do.Once upon a time, punk meant something. No, I don’t mean the sort of pseudo anarchistic bullshit put out by bands like The Sex Pistols (created by manager Malcolm McLaren with the sole intention of creating controversy, with Johnny Rotten leaving the band when he discovered that the band was as big a manufactured fraud as Leona Lewis), which is about as well thought out and meaningful as someone buying a V For Vendetta mask and deciding they’re a member of Anonymous.

Punk was never (just) about making a scene. The motivations behind punk vary from making a statement about gender (c.f. the asexual antics of Joan Jett, who refused to let the fact that she was female define her musical identity) to defying social conventions – here I’m thinking of the cathartic lyrics of Minor Threat and the birth of the straight edge movement. The medium of punk and screamo music may be distorted guitars and tight black clothes, but they are never the message.


From about 2000 onwards, all of that passion and meaning started being stripped away. When Versace released their collection inspired by Fight Club, they took something visceral and counter cultural and turned it into something devoid of substance. While I wouldn’t particularly recommend starting up a fight club or burning a lye kiss onto your hand (both of which men did in droves did after Fight Club was released) I will forever have more respect for those who did that than industry airheads who thought sewing razorblades into a shirt made ‘like, such a statement.’

While there’s something brash and Fight Club-esque about brands like The Ragged Priest (who, admittedly, I kinda like) buying up vintage denim, tie-bleaching it, putting some spikes on it and ripping out the labels, only to export it back to mainstream stores with a hugely inflated price tag, I hate the way it commodifies the DIY ethos of punk and skramz. Almost as much as I hate girls who wear Ramones t-shirts and don’t know any of their songs besides Blitzkrieg Bop.


A couple of years back, Vice published a piece about leather jackets. The piece really resonated with me because of the way each jacket seemed to tell a story, which is (to me) what fashion is all about. Yes, Jeremy Scott’s winged Adidas shoes are pretty out there, but I like them because they remind me of Hermes (that’s the winged messenger god, not the brand). They send an implicit message about the desire to reach new heights, and delivering divine messages. Yes, if I ever manage to scrimp together the cash to buy a pair, I’ll probably joke that they make me feel like a 21st century Hermes with a blog.

The current trend of buying studded…well, everything, completely undermines the impetus behind it. Manufactured studs, spikes and acid washes that come as standard are truly style without substance. And that’s not punk.

REVIEW: Swing Kids/Blue Note @ Underworld, 31/07/2011

My love of screamo has taken me to some ‘interesting’ locations, including basement shows in Cape Cod, bars where everyone gets frisked for knives, and clubs where all the barmen look like they’re in a Misfits tribute band (and probably are).  Although not the craziest, Underworld is definitely one of the stickiest venues I’ve ever been to, making the Roadhouse look like the Ritz.  The girl behind the bar calls me a prettyboy, which probably says a lot about their clientele.

The first band, Warsawwasraw, kicks things off to a depressingly small audience.  Like literally about fifteen people.  I dig the math rock-esque progressions and changes, and the enthusiasm of the drummer (whose inspiration seemed to be The Muppets‘ Animal), but overall it’s not quite my thing.  Fans of un-relenting noise rock screamo stuff like Light in the Attic and Pg. 99 will probably like!

After a short and frantic set, Warsawwasraw are followed by Wolves Like Us.  Thankfully the audience has grown to about 50 kids who all very much resemble the guys on stage, though none look quite as much like Jesus as the bassist does…see below.  Western shirts, flicky fringes and hip facial hair (a phrase that brings a fair bit of traffic to my blog from Google…) are definitely the order of the day.

Big props to Oslo-based Wolves Like Us, who pause briefly to speak about the recent mass shooting in Norway and how its affected them as natives.  I checked out the band a week before the show and love their sound, which is reminiscent of a darker Band of Horses and Lifestory:Monologue.  The audience doesn’t quite ‘get there’ until the last song, which is a shame.  At this point, a heavy set guy with a full beard asks me if I’ll watch his bag while he ‘goes for a tinkle’ and I struggle so much not to laugh I can only nod.

Wolves Like Us
When Swing Kids (performing as Blue Note out of respect for one of the guitarists in their original lineup, who committed suicide in 1998) make their entrance, about 50 kids I can only presume have been hiding in the woodwork somewhere join the crowd and inject some more energy into the proceedings.  A guy who’s wearing a backpack and looks like Stephen Spielberg also appears and proceeds to tear shit up in the mosh pit…not even kidding.
Swing Kids/Blue Note
But things really hit their climax when Justin Pearson, who looks like a cross between Johnny Knoxville and Jared Leto, takes the stage.  His voice is totally different to what it used to be, and is now more in the range of Circa Survive’s Anthony Green and Blood Brothers’ Johnny Whitney.  Along with the new name, you get the feeling that you’re hearing the songs for the first time.  An obvious exception to the rule is their cover of Joy Division’s Warsaw, during which Pearson’s vocals are barely audible over those of the crowd, and there’s a very real feeling that none of us will hear the words sung with more passion except in old videos of Curtis himself.
The evening ends with the whole room chanting ‘just another kid on the beat’, the closing words of the anthemic Forty Three Seconds.  I talk very briefly with Pearson after the show, and he says it’s been an amazing tour – this date is the last of ten back to back shows around Europe.  I’m pretty sure I detect a sadness in his eyes, maybe due to the fact that this will most likely be Swing Kids’ last tour, maybe due to the fact that the turnout wasn’t great.  I’d love to tell him that tonight has made a real impact on the people that were there, one they won’t soon forget about.  Instead I just mutter something lame like ‘it’s been real bro, take it easy’, and head home.