Daughter destroys my Life meaning in 5 minutes

 

As was dictated to me by my wife and Marie Kondo, I had to do a deep, deep cleaning of all my things in my apartment.  It was a birthday present for my wife, she asked for it.  I didnt.  But, I had to do it.  I have plans to start a "Marie Kondo sucks" blog soon, but I am getting way off topic even before I start MY topic.  

I got to my CD collection. I had to make a huge investigation of all my CDs and see which ones I REALLY wanted to keep.  I did my whole electro/dance collection with no problems.  I didnt have to listen to much and I had a given space to sort them by style and have them in view to play and look at every day.  This is important for me. 

But then it came to rock.  I had to listen to a lot of stuff because I received so many promo cds in the 90s. Some, or even more than some, I really didnt have any connection to either by taste, label, or even business, but I had to make sure I knew what they sounded like (or remember) for the final test.   I mean I have to either like the cd, or it has to have some special connection like when and where or why I received it, or has to be on a label I really like/d or maybe I sold a lot of them and I have to keep one in rememberance. Or, they were an important band in the evolution and history of the genre and I have to keep it.  Suffice to say I had to look each over carefully.  I had a stack of about 100 cds I had to listen to.... all the way through.  

So I am listening to a lot of music at home and my daughter comes into the living room where I am working and says, "Are you still listening to that EMO music?"  

Now I have to explain.  

I realized a couple weeks ago that the important growth years of my life (say 15 to 28) were dominated by the style of "Indie rock".  I dont want to explain this time period, because I dont want to date myself.  (I will eventually though.)  The term EMO I first heard in about 1993 for the band Sensefield who played "Emotional Hardcore".  The singer was very emotional.  Everything else about the band and label was HARDCORE. But they knew how to use dynamics to make a hard/soft masterpiece.  But they didnt get to the mainstream.  EMO as a style and term didnt enter the mainstream until the new century perhaps associated the most with the band My Chemical Romance which started in 2001.  EMO became a term in the mainstream music from about that time.  

EMO and My Chemical Romance were very much poo pooed by the purists and put down as hipster music for wanna be cool girls who were probably fake.  Namely by the last generations of punks and indie rockers. Namely "my people".  (I say that tongue in cheek because indie rockers and punks dont have any people, they are individualists to the nth degree). (I say that last sentence tongue in cheek also). And the 2000s emo was so whiny fake too.  EMO became a joke for black clothed new goth girls who wanted to kill themselves.  Egads.   Not my thing, though I do have doubts about my life sometimes.  EMO was a hated, frowned upon term and music for us older folks. I cant say My Chemical Romance without thinking "oh THAT band".  Puleese. 

Now, today, 2022 my daughter comes into the room and says, "You re listening to that EMO music".  HUH?   EMO?  This is Jawbreaker.  They are respectable melodic hardcore from 1991.  They rock.  Fugazi: post punk or post rock, the epitomy of the underground in the 90s.  EMO according to my daughter.  AGH.  This isnt possible.  "Yeah dad, listen to them all.  Guitars and screaming and 'I wanna die, oh life is so terrible' EMO".  

I was destroyed in 5 minutes.  All that I had listened to and even based my life on from my formative years into the 90s reduced to a term I eschew, by my teenage daughter who wasnt even alive when EMO was coined the first or second time.   

I tried to listen to other stuff, but there seemed to be an awful lot of screaming and well, of course guitars.  Guitars are a staple to music since Elvis.  How can you escape them?  Yes, the singers often were very emotional, I mean... uh.. how can they not be emotional?  But no, this isnt EMO.  This is ... this is post punk, post rock, melodic hard core, noise rock, no wave, math rock, slow core, lo fi and about twenty other terms we had coined for the alternative scenes.  But not EMO, except for Sensefield.  My daughter demoted a lot of the music I listen to in one sentence.  Sometimes it sucks having kids. 

Ach, I might as well take all my guitar music CDs and throw them in the trash.  Marie Kondo (and my wife for sure too) would agree with folded arms.  

And yet.  As Lou Barlow of Sebadoh says (screams) "Just give me Indie rock."