I bear little truck with Emo, I was never a big fan for one big reason: it wasn’t melodic enough for my tastes. No wait, two big reasons, the second is that it didn’t have that one towering band that the rest could spread out from.
Everyone was OK, but not much more.
BUT if Emo was to start again from scratch and not be known it would have a Brian Sella amd Brian Sella, the leader of the Front Bottoms, who, with the also excellent So So Glos are opening for one of the most popular emo bands of all time, Say Anything, at Best Buy on June 26th, there might have been a band so great they transcended genre and time.
Brian is just one of those guys, he just knows how to write a song, and, as Helen bach noted, he won’t be second on the bill again and he is my primary reason for going. i don’t think the Front Bottoms are a great band (Mary Magpie does) but Brian has greatness in his DNA the way Cobain had greatness in his DNA. He just is a gifted songwriter, light years ahead of any one else in the genre, miles better than Max Bemis and Max is pretty great in his own right.
This, along with the (sold out) Wonder Years are the two big shows, the coming out party for the bands who have been bubbling under the radar (except here, where Mary has written about them constantly) throughout the 2010s and are not awaiting their turn.
If rock still matters to you, both shows are must sees.
