"Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture" is a humor book about all things emo. It was written by Leslie Simon, who is the managing editor of Alternative Press, and Trevor Kelley, who is a leading contributor for the magazine. Not only does the book try to answer the time-worn question of "What is emo?," it also hilariously dissects all aspects of emo-ness (the fashion, the books, the Myspace) and serves as a valuable guide to those who might need help navigating the highly dramatic and heavily-eyelined world of emo culture. We sat down with Trevor and Leslie over burgers and cupcakes to get the not-so-skinny on the book...
SG: First of all, I just wanna say that we are currently sitting in a restaurant called Burgers & Cupcakes, which is a safe space where we can just be honest about things. Ok? There's no need to lie about anything here today, so let's just try and be truthful and get through this.
Leslie: (laughs) Yes.
Trevor: Fair enough. We'll try.
SG: Why don't you start by telling me why each of you are so uniquely qualified to write this book about emo.
Trevor: Well, I've been writing about emo for about 10 years now. Hopefully I'm better at it now than I was when i started. I was doing a fanzine in 1998, back when the second--or maybe third?--wave of emo bands like Jets to Brazil and Pedro the Lion started to surface. It's really been within the past five years though that i've been pretty much just totally immersed in it. I think it's also been within the last five years especially that emo has really begun to define itself as an easily discernable culture unto itself.
Leslie: I kind of came late to the party. I didn't really catch on to the whole emo thing until I started working at Alternative Press. Before that....well, I kind of came from the land of jam bands. I'll admit it. I was a hippie. I liked 20 minute guitar solos, drum circles, and I smelled bad. But then I started listening to Ryan Adams and Pete Yorn and for some reason that was kind of my gateway. I was interning at AP and I remember reading this little story on Dashboard Confessional that said he sounded like Elliott Smith--which he doesn't--but at the time Elliott Smith was really huge for me. Even when I was in college and trailing Phish, I was still really into Elliott Smith. In fact, he is the only person--aside from Ian Ziering from Beverly Hills 90210--that I have ever asked for an autograph. So, anyway, I read the thing about Dashboard and it made me want to go see them play. So, I walked into the show late and we opened the door and were nearly knocked over by the sound of all these kids singing along to every word of every song. In fact, the kids were singing so loudly that you almost couldn't even hear Chris Carraba over the crowd. That's when I knew that something was really happening. Soon after, I became friends with someone at Vagrant records and they turned me on to all these bands like The Anniversary and The Get Up Kids....which led to me listening to Thursday, Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day. I felt like I had really discovered something, even if I wasn't sure at the time exactly what it was yet. I felt at home with that culture and that scene. I just happened to befriend a lot of bands who were really small and no one really cared about at the time, many of which went one to become the biggest bands in the scene. Eventually, those would be the bands who'd be on the cover of AP. In fact, the stories that I wrote about those bands would kind of become iconic in the band's backstories. No one had written about Pete Wentz and his quasi suicide attempt in the Best Buy parking lot before then...no one had really written about the addiction and stuff with My Chemical Romance before then. It was a combination of the right time and the right place for everyone involved, but I loved writing those stories. i think they are some of the best things that I've ever done. Sorry, that's a long answer!
Trevor: Jeez.
SG: The book is interesting in that it's very funny and very satirical, but it's also a very loving jab at a culture that a lot of people--including the two of you--really, really love. It's still very much a satire though.
Trevor: I think that Leslie and I both really fell in love with the whole culture...and I think it happened to us at almost exactly the same time. Like Leslie said, she kind of took this very long path to get to that point and I kind of did too. I started writing for AP at just about the same time that Leslie started working there. I think it hit us both in the same sort of way. We were around the same age and it was at that point in our lives when I lot of our friends were moving on to other stuff--like, just listening to Neil Young records or something--so it wasn't this glamorous shift in our lives when I decided to dedicate myself to writing about this specific genre of music. It just sort of happened.
Leslie: I think it's interesting that Trevor and I come from such different backgrounds. I think Trevor really has cornered the market on this stuff, especially in regards to the history of the music itself--where it came from, what it turned into, etc. Where I grew up people didn't really start fanzines. They played field hockey and joined the marching band. That kind of DIY youth/music culture didn't exist, so coming into the scene the way I did was really intimidating. However, I think Trevor and I compliment each other really well. While he's more into the music specifically, I could fill in with stuff about the fashion and lifestyle associated with emo.
Trevor: I think Leslie made me realize how much I actually like the cultural aspect of emo. I think I always wrote about it, but I never seriously thought about the culture and lifestyle surrounding this music until Leslie came and asked me to write this book with her.
Leslie: I feel like music critics are often just not taught to be writers. They are taught to offer up an opinion, not supply any backstory, and just use really amorphous adjectives like "churning" or "searing"....
Trevor: They are taught to write for each other, basically.
Leslie: Music writing also often just degenerates into people trying to out witticize each other in some very juvenile way. Like, I'm more sarcastic than you! No, I'm more sarcastic than you! I myself never pretended to be a music critic myself. In fact, I don't like most critics. That wasn't our goal here.
SG: Were you surprised by how easy it was to write this book? Well, maybe not easy exactly....were you surprised by how much you had to say on the topic after you got started?
Leslie: I kind of always knew that it would be a full-length book and that we'd have plenty of material. i think Trevor took some convincing though. I knew we could do it.
Trevor: Yeah, I was wrong about that. The book could have been even longer, actually.
SG: One of the most successful aspects of the book is the way you address online culture and specifically the phenomenon of Myspace.
Trevor: It would have been easy to get really heady and overly intellectual about that, but it's actually pretty simple.
SG: It's like high school blown over onto the internet.
Leslie: It's like high school, but it's also like the weird transition from high school to college. It's like you can just create a whole new identity for yourself in the online realm. If you were a loser in junior high, no one needs to know about it. Your background is totally irrelevant in a lot of ways. You might not really be able to change who you are, but you can play a new character. Still, the basically idea we went with throughout the book is that being emo is something that you're kind of born with. Either you have it or your don't.
SG: The book is full of very specific and pointed reference to real people and real bands. Have you had any reaction from people who are mentioned in the book?
Trevor: We made a joke about the drummer from Hawthorne Heights and his eyebrows, but it turns out that he is a big fan of the book. I was a little worried about it. I kept saying that the subtitle for the book should be "how to have really awkward conversations when you run into these bands at a bar for the next year of your life"....which, when I think about it, is a pretty good emo song title.
Leslie: I think most of the bands have thought it was really funny. I mean, we're not calling out anything that people don't already know. Plus, I don't really care. People need to have a sense of humor about such things.
Trevor: I agree. I never worry about that the bands will think when I'm writing about them. I think that poisons what we're doing and it keeps you from being honest.
Leslie: I worry about what my grandma might think, but not the bands.
Trevor: I think after a while the primary objective with the book just became entertaining each other. My number one goal would be to crack Leslie up.
SG: You must be able to see a lot of yourselves in the book, right?
Trevor: Yeah. Particularly with the last chapter, which is about emo adulthood.
Leslie: Maybe. I don't really feel like an adult though.
SG: How do you feel about seeing the whole emo genre blow up in such a mainstream way? How that kind of mainstream success bode for the future of the genre?
Leslie: I feel really proud of the bands who have done so well. Partly it's because a lot of those guys are my friends, but it's also because they managed to take a genre that no one initially took all that seriously and they managed to make it hugely successful totally on their own terms. I understand have those protective, territorial feelings about seeing something you love become popular, but I still think it's great that people are hearing this music as opposed to something else with less passion or feeling to it. Most of the people involved with emo are doing it because they love it, not because they think they are suddenly gonna get rich. No one could have ever predicted that....and most people who play in bands learn really quickly that very few bands actually make a lot of money. Most people are lucky to break even and most band member's are just hoping that their job at Radio Shack is still there for them when they get back from tour.
Trevor: I think you can look back at the last ten years in music--rock music in particular--and see that emo will go down as the defining musical movement of the past decade, just like grunge and hip hop were the defining musical movements of the 90's. Unlike something like American Idol, which is ostensibly about the fans having all the power, emo really is a movement shaped and controlled by the kids who love it....whether it be due to the internet or to kids staging shows at VFW halls. It's about kids doing it themselves and sort of forging their own culture, not just accepting something created by marketers and producers. I really do take pride in that...it's about people who have always been on the outside coming in and succeeding in the mainstream.
SG: What do you see as the future of emo? Where does it go from here?
Trevor: I see a lot of bands who are really promising, but I can't say that there is one specific band or a specific direction that things will go. It's interesting to me that, you know, everyone kind of knows what emo looks like and sounds like, but within the genre things are still very eclectic and varied. My Chemical Romance doesn't sound like Dashboard Confessional and Dashboard Confessional doesn't sound like Fallout Boy. It's interesting to see a band like Panic! At the Disco embracing theatricality in their work. That seems like a kind of evolution to me.
SG: Everyone suddenly loves Queen.
Leslie: It will be interesting to see what the next batch of new bands is all about. In a lot of ways, I feel like everything has kind of been pushed as far as it can go in that direction--big theatrical shows and whatever. It almost seems like we're ready to see bands totally stripping everything away and going back to something very simple and direct. Music is usually cyclical in that way. We might see a back-to-basics thing happen.
SG: How does a magazine like AP keep up?
Leslie: Well, I think we've kind of earned our stripes as being a magazine that writes about bands before they get big. We were doing stories on bands like AFI and Fallout Boy back when other magazines wouldn't touch them. Now we're in the interesting position of seeing the underground suddenly become the mainstream. It's a weird thing. As a magazine, you want to take chances and take risks, but now there are so many bands that are kind of performing at the same level, it's not easy to know who to take a risk on....and you can never really predict exactly who is gonna be the next big thing. We also always operate under the pressure to sell magazines. You can't pretend that isn't a concern.
SG: People keep saying that magazines are dying, eventually everything will just be online.
Leslie: I know, but you know what? Magazines have been around for over 100 years and I don't really think they are gonna disappear anytime soon. Plus, you can't really bring a computer with you into the bathroom. I mean, you can, but if you drop it into the bathtub with you then you're dead. You can quote me on that!
Trevor: This is going to turn into a PSA about the dangers of electronic equipment and water. Kids, don't take your Sidekick with you into the shower!
Leslie: Don't do it! We all want to text while we bathe, but sometimes you have to put the Sidekick down.
SG: This seems like a good time to order cupcakes and relax. Take things down a notch.
Trevor: If the cupcakes here were vegan, that waiter would have had me with the lemon meringue.
Leslie: He had me with the lemon meringue.
SG: Thanks for your honesty, guys. I'm gonna need you to pay for my cupcake as well.
Leslie: (sighs) Fine.
Trevor: Done and done.
-T. Cole Rachel
Check out Everybody Hurts on Myspace
Buy Everybody Hurts on Amazon.com
and don't forget to hook up with Soundgirl on Myspace
SG: First of all, I just wanna say that we are currently sitting in a restaurant called Burgers & Cupcakes, which is a safe space where we can just be honest about things. Ok? There's no need to lie about anything here today, so let's just try and be truthful and get through this.
Leslie: (laughs) Yes.
Trevor: Fair enough. We'll try.
SG: Why don't you start by telling me why each of you are so uniquely qualified to write this book about emo.
Trevor: Well, I've been writing about emo for about 10 years now. Hopefully I'm better at it now than I was when i started. I was doing a fanzine in 1998, back when the second--or maybe third?--wave of emo bands like Jets to Brazil and Pedro the Lion started to surface. It's really been within the past five years though that i've been pretty much just totally immersed in it. I think it's also been within the last five years especially that emo has really begun to define itself as an easily discernable culture unto itself.
Leslie: I kind of came late to the party. I didn't really catch on to the whole emo thing until I started working at Alternative Press. Before that....well, I kind of came from the land of jam bands. I'll admit it. I was a hippie. I liked 20 minute guitar solos, drum circles, and I smelled bad. But then I started listening to Ryan Adams and Pete Yorn and for some reason that was kind of my gateway. I was interning at AP and I remember reading this little story on Dashboard Confessional that said he sounded like Elliott Smith--which he doesn't--but at the time Elliott Smith was really huge for me. Even when I was in college and trailing Phish, I was still really into Elliott Smith. In fact, he is the only person--aside from Ian Ziering from Beverly Hills 90210--that I have ever asked for an autograph. So, anyway, I read the thing about Dashboard and it made me want to go see them play. So, I walked into the show late and we opened the door and were nearly knocked over by the sound of all these kids singing along to every word of every song. In fact, the kids were singing so loudly that you almost couldn't even hear Chris Carraba over the crowd. That's when I knew that something was really happening. Soon after, I became friends with someone at Vagrant records and they turned me on to all these bands like The Anniversary and The Get Up Kids....which led to me listening to Thursday, Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day. I felt like I had really discovered something, even if I wasn't sure at the time exactly what it was yet. I felt at home with that culture and that scene. I just happened to befriend a lot of bands who were really small and no one really cared about at the time, many of which went one to become the biggest bands in the scene. Eventually, those would be the bands who'd be on the cover of AP. In fact, the stories that I wrote about those bands would kind of become iconic in the band's backstories. No one had written about Pete Wentz and his quasi suicide attempt in the Best Buy parking lot before then...no one had really written about the addiction and stuff with My Chemical Romance before then. It was a combination of the right time and the right place for everyone involved, but I loved writing those stories. i think they are some of the best things that I've ever done. Sorry, that's a long answer!
Trevor: Jeez.
SG: The book is interesting in that it's very funny and very satirical, but it's also a very loving jab at a culture that a lot of people--including the two of you--really, really love. It's still very much a satire though.
Trevor: I think that Leslie and I both really fell in love with the whole culture...and I think it happened to us at almost exactly the same time. Like Leslie said, she kind of took this very long path to get to that point and I kind of did too. I started writing for AP at just about the same time that Leslie started working there. I think it hit us both in the same sort of way. We were around the same age and it was at that point in our lives when I lot of our friends were moving on to other stuff--like, just listening to Neil Young records or something--so it wasn't this glamorous shift in our lives when I decided to dedicate myself to writing about this specific genre of music. It just sort of happened.
Leslie: I think it's interesting that Trevor and I come from such different backgrounds. I think Trevor really has cornered the market on this stuff, especially in regards to the history of the music itself--where it came from, what it turned into, etc. Where I grew up people didn't really start fanzines. They played field hockey and joined the marching band. That kind of DIY youth/music culture didn't exist, so coming into the scene the way I did was really intimidating. However, I think Trevor and I compliment each other really well. While he's more into the music specifically, I could fill in with stuff about the fashion and lifestyle associated with emo.
Trevor: I think Leslie made me realize how much I actually like the cultural aspect of emo. I think I always wrote about it, but I never seriously thought about the culture and lifestyle surrounding this music until Leslie came and asked me to write this book with her.
Leslie: I feel like music critics are often just not taught to be writers. They are taught to offer up an opinion, not supply any backstory, and just use really amorphous adjectives like "churning" or "searing"....
Trevor: They are taught to write for each other, basically.
Leslie: Music writing also often just degenerates into people trying to out witticize each other in some very juvenile way. Like, I'm more sarcastic than you! No, I'm more sarcastic than you! I myself never pretended to be a music critic myself. In fact, I don't like most critics. That wasn't our goal here.
SG: Were you surprised by how easy it was to write this book? Well, maybe not easy exactly....were you surprised by how much you had to say on the topic after you got started?
Leslie: I kind of always knew that it would be a full-length book and that we'd have plenty of material. i think Trevor took some convincing though. I knew we could do it.
Trevor: Yeah, I was wrong about that. The book could have been even longer, actually.
SG: One of the most successful aspects of the book is the way you address online culture and specifically the phenomenon of Myspace.
Trevor: It would have been easy to get really heady and overly intellectual about that, but it's actually pretty simple.
SG: It's like high school blown over onto the internet.
Leslie: It's like high school, but it's also like the weird transition from high school to college. It's like you can just create a whole new identity for yourself in the online realm. If you were a loser in junior high, no one needs to know about it. Your background is totally irrelevant in a lot of ways. You might not really be able to change who you are, but you can play a new character. Still, the basically idea we went with throughout the book is that being emo is something that you're kind of born with. Either you have it or your don't.
SG: The book is full of very specific and pointed reference to real people and real bands. Have you had any reaction from people who are mentioned in the book?
Trevor: We made a joke about the drummer from Hawthorne Heights and his eyebrows, but it turns out that he is a big fan of the book. I was a little worried about it. I kept saying that the subtitle for the book should be "how to have really awkward conversations when you run into these bands at a bar for the next year of your life"....which, when I think about it, is a pretty good emo song title.
Leslie: I think most of the bands have thought it was really funny. I mean, we're not calling out anything that people don't already know. Plus, I don't really care. People need to have a sense of humor about such things.
Trevor: I agree. I never worry about that the bands will think when I'm writing about them. I think that poisons what we're doing and it keeps you from being honest.
Leslie: I worry about what my grandma might think, but not the bands.
Trevor: I think after a while the primary objective with the book just became entertaining each other. My number one goal would be to crack Leslie up.
SG: You must be able to see a lot of yourselves in the book, right?
Trevor: Yeah. Particularly with the last chapter, which is about emo adulthood.
Leslie: Maybe. I don't really feel like an adult though.
SG: How do you feel about seeing the whole emo genre blow up in such a mainstream way? How that kind of mainstream success bode for the future of the genre?
Leslie: I feel really proud of the bands who have done so well. Partly it's because a lot of those guys are my friends, but it's also because they managed to take a genre that no one initially took all that seriously and they managed to make it hugely successful totally on their own terms. I understand have those protective, territorial feelings about seeing something you love become popular, but I still think it's great that people are hearing this music as opposed to something else with less passion or feeling to it. Most of the people involved with emo are doing it because they love it, not because they think they are suddenly gonna get rich. No one could have ever predicted that....and most people who play in bands learn really quickly that very few bands actually make a lot of money. Most people are lucky to break even and most band member's are just hoping that their job at Radio Shack is still there for them when they get back from tour.
Trevor: I think you can look back at the last ten years in music--rock music in particular--and see that emo will go down as the defining musical movement of the past decade, just like grunge and hip hop were the defining musical movements of the 90's. Unlike something like American Idol, which is ostensibly about the fans having all the power, emo really is a movement shaped and controlled by the kids who love it....whether it be due to the internet or to kids staging shows at VFW halls. It's about kids doing it themselves and sort of forging their own culture, not just accepting something created by marketers and producers. I really do take pride in that...it's about people who have always been on the outside coming in and succeeding in the mainstream.
SG: What do you see as the future of emo? Where does it go from here?
Trevor: I see a lot of bands who are really promising, but I can't say that there is one specific band or a specific direction that things will go. It's interesting to me that, you know, everyone kind of knows what emo looks like and sounds like, but within the genre things are still very eclectic and varied. My Chemical Romance doesn't sound like Dashboard Confessional and Dashboard Confessional doesn't sound like Fallout Boy. It's interesting to see a band like Panic! At the Disco embracing theatricality in their work. That seems like a kind of evolution to me.
SG: Everyone suddenly loves Queen.
Leslie: It will be interesting to see what the next batch of new bands is all about. In a lot of ways, I feel like everything has kind of been pushed as far as it can go in that direction--big theatrical shows and whatever. It almost seems like we're ready to see bands totally stripping everything away and going back to something very simple and direct. Music is usually cyclical in that way. We might see a back-to-basics thing happen.
SG: How does a magazine like AP keep up?
Leslie: Well, I think we've kind of earned our stripes as being a magazine that writes about bands before they get big. We were doing stories on bands like AFI and Fallout Boy back when other magazines wouldn't touch them. Now we're in the interesting position of seeing the underground suddenly become the mainstream. It's a weird thing. As a magazine, you want to take chances and take risks, but now there are so many bands that are kind of performing at the same level, it's not easy to know who to take a risk on....and you can never really predict exactly who is gonna be the next big thing. We also always operate under the pressure to sell magazines. You can't pretend that isn't a concern.
SG: People keep saying that magazines are dying, eventually everything will just be online.
Leslie: I know, but you know what? Magazines have been around for over 100 years and I don't really think they are gonna disappear anytime soon. Plus, you can't really bring a computer with you into the bathroom. I mean, you can, but if you drop it into the bathtub with you then you're dead. You can quote me on that!
Trevor: This is going to turn into a PSA about the dangers of electronic equipment and water. Kids, don't take your Sidekick with you into the shower!
Leslie: Don't do it! We all want to text while we bathe, but sometimes you have to put the Sidekick down.
SG: This seems like a good time to order cupcakes and relax. Take things down a notch.
Trevor: If the cupcakes here were vegan, that waiter would have had me with the lemon meringue.
Leslie: He had me with the lemon meringue.
SG: Thanks for your honesty, guys. I'm gonna need you to pay for my cupcake as well.
Leslie: (sighs) Fine.
Trevor: Done and done.
-T. Cole Rachel
Check out Everybody Hurts on Myspace
Buy Everybody Hurts on Amazon.com
and don't forget to hook up with Soundgirl on Myspace
