Sunday, September 11, 2011

That Day Ten Years Ago

I'm having a hard time coming up with things/ideas that aren't better put here by smarter people. So go read that Guardian piece if you want insightful commentary.

Instead, I want to talk about three of the good things that have happened around the day of of 11 Sept 01 and then get out. First: My Chemical Romance got started. This may not sound like much and up until the Black Parade, they were an interesting piece of errata, a band that started out in the Ink and Dagger school of goth/punk darkness, so the descent of the scene into badly aging macabre imagery was something they came by honestly.

Then they put out the Black Parade, a record I ignore outside of three songs, the title track for it's Queen-esque bombast, "Teenagers" because it's got a great hook and an even better chorus "teenagers scare the living shit out of me" and the hidden track "Blood" for it's bizarre-ness, even on a record called the Black Parade.

Then...Danger Days and everything changed with Thought Bubble 2010. The dance floor at TB 2010 for "NaNaNaNaNa"was absolutely massive and had me screaming my lungs out. Put simply, that single song restored my faith in adjective-less punk rock. It's a mission statement. It's a threat. It's superhero punk rock for want of a better phrase. When taken with the album intro, Look Alive Sunshine, puts an Invisibles style bounce in my step and deserves to be played as loud as possible from any speaker capable of being jury-rigged and stolen.

Danger Days is My Chemical Romance retooling itself after the scope of ...Parade and finding a different muse in genre playing. When they play the Cure ("Summertime"), it's worthy of the comparison, when they play Bon Jovi, it's done with the two images being a bulletproof heart and a hollow-point smile. With that, how can I resist?

Second, a very good friend of mine proposed one year ago today.

Third, Adorno was born today.

Finally. I'm going to take Ed Brubaker's advice and find something beautiful in my world today. Joy beats oppression, so I've heard...




...but oppression will make you pay. A song called "Paul Robeson" from the World/Inferno Friendship Society's record Red-Eyed Soul.

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