Yesterday, I woke up to an announcement in my Instagram feed: a dream concert in Las Vegas later this year in October. Headlined by My Chemical Romance and Paramore, and featuring over 60 emo and punk bands over the span of one day, this one-day event is quite mind-blowing. Of course there’s no way I’ll be in Vegas on October 22nd, but this is pretty much my dream concert, other than Cornerstone magically resurrecting. In fact, the concert line-up seems a little too good to be true for many scene fans, leading to online speculation that this is the Emo Fyre festival. I thought it would be fun today to make a playlist for this festival with one song representing each band. I thought it would be fun also to see 1) how many bands I’ve talked about in my blog post, 2) how many I haven’t listened to in years, 3)how many I’m only kind of aware of, and 4)how many I’ve never heard of. And that’s the order we’ll proceed. First of all, I’m sad that Las Vegas-based band The Killers aren’t playing. Although they’ve never been classified with the emo scene, “When You Were Young,” “When We Were Young,” right? Anyway, here’s the Spotify playlist:
I’ll probably run out of energy as I go through this list, and of course the lineup is subject to change. With the bands I’d never heard of, I simply added the first song that came up on Spotify. So, let’s get into it:
Tier 1: Bands I’ve blogged about:
1. “Cold Air” by Acceptance, the song of the day.
2. “Ain’t It Fun” by Paramore, the co-headliner of the festival.
3. “Futures” by Jimmy Eat World, also a headlining act.
4. “Move Along” by The All-American Rejects.
The official poster to the below:
6. “Island” (Float Away) by The Starting Line
7. “Two Graves” by Anberlin
All but Pvris I’ve written about multiple times. I chose the most relevant song I blogged about. “Ain’t It Fun” was Paramore’s biggest hit, though it was not their most Emo song.
Tier 2: Bands I haven’t listened to lately, or haven’t blogged about.
8. “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance is maybe their biggest song.
10. “Cute Without the ‘E’”(Cute from the Team) by Taking Back Sunday. You don’t get more emo than this song.
25. “Face Down” by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. According to an interview with Shane Told, mentioned later, on Lead Singer Syndrome, this band strategically crossed over to Christian Rock later in their career.
26. “The Taste of Ink” by The Used. Yes, I’m a bad emo kid.
30. “In the End” by Black Veil Brides. They’re kind of a polarizing band. Their dark aesthetic is perhaps stereotype-making. But are they the real deal? There’s an interesting episode with their frontman, Andy Black on Lead Singer Syndrome.
31. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Ice Nine Kills. On the list of band concepts that are cool but not for me, Ice Nine Kills’ horror-film-inspired punk/emo/screamo would come in the top ten. This spooky Elvis cover, is kind of cool, though. Perfect for a horror film set in an alternate timeline.
36. “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes
38. “If You Can’t Hang” by Sleeping with Sirens
42. “Drunk Drivers/ Killer Whales” by Car Seat Headrest. This seems more like indie music than punk/emo/screamo, so it’s kind of a nice change up. Of course we can call Death Cab for Cutie and David Bazaan emo. We certainly call Dashboard Confessional emo. So, I guess these guys fit.
44. “Clairvoyant” by The Story So Far is the band’s first acoustic ballad. Their second and third most popular songs are also acoustic. Their 4th and 5th song, I guess sound more like their original style.
57. “overwhelmed” by Royal & the Serpent. Ryan Santiago goes professionally by this moniker.
Mixtapemotions 