Battle of the Bands!

Last night I achieved a life-long dream: I played a screaming Eddie Van Halen-like guitar solo in front of a cheering crowd at a battle of the bands. My brother is a high school teacher, and I sat in with the “teacher band” at his school’s annual “Battle of the Bands.” We had a blast playing classics by the Eagles, Van Morrison, Neil Young and U2. I never got to do this back in high school, both because I wasn’t as good then as I am now, and because I wouldn’t have been allowed to get involved in such a “worldly” thing. 🙂

The most amazing thing about this Battle, though, was the “Emo” group. “Emo” is characterized by machine-gun riffs using drop-D tuning and “singing” that is best characterized as “Cookie Monster growling into a loud PA system.” Fans of Emo “get low,” meaning they dance wildly in front of the band, spinning their arms like dervishes and often bashing into each other (kind of like “moshing,” but that’s so ’90’s.). Emo kids tend to dye their hair jet black and dress androgenously, with the boys wearing girls jeans and black leather boots. There was a vigorous group of Emo kids, some from another school district, at this concert. The school Principal looked horror-stricken as the kids began to “get low” and the decibels rose.

I have to say that the main Emo band that played was remarkably good for a group of high school kids. The guitarist had great tone and timing, the bassist and drummer were tight as, well, a drum, and the singer’s growl was remarkably consistent with the Emo style. Emo isn’t really my thing, but as a musician, I appreciate all kinds of musicianship, and I don’t want to sound like my mom (bless her heart) when I was 13: “THAT’S NOT MUSIC, IT’S NOISE!!!”

But…. my goodness, it’s hard for me to relate to the Emo crowd. The growl-singing just sounds EVIL, and I shudder to think what the lyrics are all about (it’s impossible to make out what the singer is actually growling when the band is playing). And these kids just seemed so lost. I suppose their parents think the kids need their space and freedom to experiment, and maybe there’s something to that, but it seemed so clear to me, taking in the whole scene, that these kids are trapped, not free. They think they’re embracing an honest nihlism that views explosive, angry self-expression as the greatest good and irony as authenticity. The real irony is that, for most of them, it doesn’t seem authentic at all. I wish there was a way, in my music or teaching or writing, that I could introduce them to Jesus, help them feel Aslan’s breath on their faces, see them smile without shame.