Right, I suppose I should elaborate on why I asked this question.
The actual "trigger", what got me thinking about it, was a disagreement I had with Vincent about the Foo Fighters and whether they had become more emo. The first problem with using the word "emo" is that it doesn't describe the music's style at all. I think the guitar sounds and songwriting style on 'The Colour And The Shape' are reminiscent of "real" emo bands (ie. bands that were labelled so before it became trendy.) Vincent said the new stuff is emo.
I don't the kind of ego that would have me believe I'm right about it just because I listen to more of that stuff than he does, so I sat down and thought about it, and in the meantime started this thread.
I totally identify with Cyberus' frustration at the trendy kids, although I differ in that he lays the blame at Bad Religion for depoliticising punk rock. The first bands to break away onto the (yet to be labelled) emo path around the mid-eighties actually made a conscious decision to write about personal experiences instead of politics, because as Cyberus points out, political punk/hardcore was already done to death. This happened in parallel with Bad Religion's own "revolution", which is said to have saved the LA punk scene from falling apart in the midst of violence and stabbings at shows.
This was the point at which the punk/hardcore and modern indie-rock scenes amalgamated. It's pretty much all the same scene now.
I lay the blame at major labels. The music marketed as punk and emo in major magazines - Kerrang!, melody Maker/NME etc - just isn't punk and emo (indie). They're pop-bands, venture capitalists with stupid sweeping fringes. But of course, the major labels also pay for much of the advertising space in Kerrang!, so what they say is cool is cool, and people stupid enough to buy Kerrang! and not read the (usually still fairly honest) reviews will go into record shops and ask for "emo" CDs. This is why the real emo kids hate emo ;-)
Because while at first, it was just exceptionally well-written melodic independantly produced rock music, it's become a sound and a look. (Someone came on the Get Up Kids forum the other day and asked about getting an emo haircut. And he wasn't joking.) And everyone seems to have an opinion on it... even though no-one's sure what it even means anymore.
