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awsugar · 11 months ago

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best mcr songs and why

ok well my top 5: heaven help us, boy division, deathwish, vampires, famous last words

only the first two are in specific order

heaven help us has been my favorite mcr song for a looooooong time and it’s like. MY song. everyone i know knows what is my song. when i listen to it in the car, before the tour even started, i envision myself on barricade hearing it live and i CRY!! every time, like i’ve cried in a full face of makeup listening to heaven help us on the way to work multiple times. it’s the best….it’s everything. the first time they played it live on tour in europe my friend who i had never spoken to on the phone before CALLED ME AT WORK to tell me about it and i had to go hyperventilate in the bathroom. i held out hope all tour hoping i would get ut at one of my shows and i DIDNT!!! when tour was like over and they played it twice in la i literally was sitting in my bed SOBBING! at like 2am on the east coast…but listen i’m putting out the energy for them to play it at wwwy….surely they will have the time to play the bsides! or at least one of them. i’m serious like ok yes, hearing tbp live in full twice is going to change the trajectory of my life all over again!! i cant even imagine me and all my friends together hearing the heart monitor start without thinking well surely someone is going to projectile vomit…like. it’s that. it’s that serious. i’m going to rethink and grace and shit my pants and cry and scream and i may need to be airlifted out of the las vegas festival grounds. but heaven help us….i cant die until i get heaven help us!!

boy division just. fuck. it slays. i remember when it leaked. like the night before it came out there was a preview of it on like german amazon or something 😭 and i remember i kept listening to those 30 seconds over and over again and CRYING!!!! like sobbing, if i could get my og macbook to turn on i have really embarrassing pics of myself bawling on photo booth FHDEIKEK. but also i remember thinking, when it came out, i ALWAYS thought like oh my god this is going to go so hard live. SO HARD. and then they broke up and every single time i listened to it i thought about how we would never get to hear it live and what a damn fucking shame that was. and then they reunited and i went to the shrine and they played make room and i was like ooooooh. well now there is a REAL chance that i could hear boy division one day. i manifested it for the 2.5 years between that show and the tour and when i saw the eden 1 setlist leak before the show and boy division was on it i actually like almost shat in the office at work. and then yes they played it at my first show on the tour mk1 and like at least half of my shows on the tour i swear i made that happen by sheer force of will.

deathwish. just always been one of my favorites, it goes SO hard, it’s so fun to sing, it really like the melody of it just pulls on my heart it tugs it makes me so melancholy so. i don’t even know what feelings it invokes it just makes me FEEL. this big bubble in my chest. and the lyrics are so good like it’s really a quintessential mcr song for me. no one else writes music like that.

vampires is just like. idk the iconic. the first single. it “locked in that darkness” i remember when they played it for the first time in philly, bc we were all camping for albany which was the next night and we were watching the stream around a someone macbook in the queue and when vampires started ohhhh it was over!!! they played it at my first show in 2011 and even though i have like a horrible memory especially for my childhood/teenage years and i don’t REMEMBER my first mcr show i always like remembered the fact that vampires was like the best live performance of a song i’d ever heard, and i have been to a LOT of shows and i’ve seen a LOT of bands and vampires never fails!

and flw, listen…i know people like to hate on it!!! idgaf. it will never get old. i will never tire of it. it will never not hit me so hard. i remember being a depressed teenager and laying in bed at night not able to sleep just listening to flw over and over and over in order to make it through. plus hearing the crowd sing the bridge at every show ever…it’s the most magical thing in the world to me!!!!

#anonymous #asks

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anthonycrowley · 3 months ago

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my one mcr theory about this go around is that i think there’s gonna be some sort of gecs collab. my money’s on laura and/or dylan as producers of a song/few songs. my evidence is that i thiiiiiiink they’re the only ones who opened for them on the return and are opening for them on the upcoming tour other than their bffs thursday. which is weird right. like that’s a little weird. and when i saw gecs was playing that show i was shocked because like yes when mcr calls you come running and i’m glad the geckos understand that but laura and dylan haven’t done shit publicly At All in like a year there’s been more crickets from them lately than from mcr. (also when i heard the scream in opera i was like why does that sound like something off of 1000 gecs but i do understand that may have been a ‘guy that only listens to gecs hmm getting some gecs vibes’ moment) but most of all i think it would be really funny and make many people angry, so i’m crossing my fingers.

#also. music for me and like four other people.#text #my post #mobi #music:mcr

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thekidsare-not-alright · 2 years ago

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i can't wake my roommates up with my screams of joy so here's a list of Things from the kroq interview

"just when i'm nervous" *shy pete smile*

the rabbit puppet in general ohhhmygdsohdsogdsfjLFDf

"andy you're just rippin it up back there" *spins coyly* SDAJKGHAKJSLFHDSKJALGH ANDREW I LO V E YOU

tired patrick eye rubs lol

patrick checking to make sure his phone is muted

"we're gonna let the rabbit answer"

"we love them we think they're very cool" pete about mcr. yeah okay peter we know. go on tour together already. 3 nights per venue idc about your ""lives"" psshhhh

they played flu game for neal avron before getting him on board

fake out: (8:35) joe finished the song by adding two rhythm guitar layers w/ an acoustic guitar

heaven iowa: joe and patrick spent sooo much time on it, sending each other tons of tracks (joe "I sent many emails that said sorry")

at a kid's birthday party a neighbor was like "so is fall out boy still a band" LMAO imagine small talking w/ patrick stump

"you're scaring the bunny" "i'm scaring the bunny. no no it's okay"

patrick never felt like they had a time where they weren't fall out boy, the hiatus was not them "not being a band"

there are lost stories about music and the hiatus ish (not much don't get excited lol) but um gimme

"feels good" joseph trohman (but he also smiley :)

pete doesn't wanna ruin people's interpretations of his lyrics by giving them backstory SOBBING

once the magic 8 ball spits out a song it can go anywhere.

"doesn't answer the question at all TALK TO THE BUNNY!!!"

andy taking all the bracelets HEART EYES

#fall out boy #fob #pete wentz #patrick stump #joe trohman #andy hurley #smfs #tourdust spoilers

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butchviking · 1 year ago

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could u describe your feelings about Cheerard

ogh man. i am like always going off about this 2 people but u put me on the spot like that i get scared. um.

well. first of all she represents freedom 2 me. gerard has clearly always been kind of a feminine dude, "i was a girl to a lot of people growing up" "i have always identified a fair amount with the female gender" "masculinity has always made me feel like it wasnt right for me".. he expressed this 2 some degree w stage looks, w all the makeup & everything, and sure mcr have always had adoring fans but he also very much has always always been called a fag mcr have always all been called fags on the regular people have not always been kind. and hesitant alien era he was clearly going thru a lot and thinking about a lot. and from that angle it just meant the world to see him like. openly crossdress in the public eye for the first time (we know he's crossdressed before but never in the public eye u know?) and look so HAPPY. with his friends who support him. and u could feel the love u could see it u could almost hold it in ur hands. that was true of the whole tour ofc but it made me wail and cry seeing his buddies giving him a hug and everyone cheering and loving and supporting him. as a gnc person who has also gone thru Gender Issues. and the fact that he was doing it all at 45 with grey hairs and wrinkles and sinewy middle-aged-man legs. there is a future u know. there is a future. and theres happiness there. and he just looked like he was having so much fun and not giving a fuck.. again, vibe of the whole tour, but it was so special 2 see him dancing and jumping and twirling..

also. hm. hard to know how to phrase this one without just copying out a previously written essay. as a woman, who also was once a girl, feminity is something that has often been forced on me. the world has tried to make it a prison for me and i have chewed through the bars kicking and screaming. and over the years ive stubbornly gone very much the other way and eschewed anything that could b considered feminine and viewed all things feminine as evil and as a cage. bc thats what that was to me. but the thing is that not everything deemed feminine is necessarily bad. ive avoided gentleness and vulnerability as much as ive avoided superficial aesthetic markers of femininity like skirts and pink and whatever. (and i have lost some kindness but i was a girl too and you were just like me and i was just like you..) and. hm. you know that thing transmascs sometimes say about looking at transwomen and being like "i forgot that womanhood could be enjoyed i forgot that it isnt the burden to everyone that it was to me"? well obviously i dont agree with that. but as far as feminity rather than womanhood i think thats a fair parallel for how i feel about gerard way. there are things i have run from that i see him enjoy and it makes me see them a different way. and it makes me see that it doesn't have to be a prison and by god i do not have to move myself from one cage to another. i'll never be an aesthetically feminine person it's just not who i am or what i enjoy.. and dresses and skirts are superficial things.. but him doing his silly little twirls in his silly little cheerleader dress is a very visual representation of something more. its very symbolic 2 me. and i'll also never be exceptionally feminine in my behaviours or personality either and that's not a bad thing its who i am and im proud of who i am. sometimes anyway. but. there are traits i could do with letting in. that have been hard for me to let in. he/she (that is gerard/cheerard fjdksk gerard is a he hes a real human man but cheerard is a symbol a concept a character and she's a she to me. sorry i dont make the rules my brain does) is a representation of all of this 2 me.

all of this 2 say gender is fake and u can do what u want and u just have to be yourself and be what u want 2 be and be what makes u happy and what brings love and joy. and u dont have to sit in a hole about it u dont have 2 write emily or drugstore perfume u dont have to wish u could bring her back from the dead or whatever. sometimes u just gotta wear a silly little cheerleader dress and go have fun. metaphor but also very real 2 me i WILL be buying a custom made cheerard dress and it will probably b the only dress i'll ever wear in my adult life fjfkkdj

#thanks fr asking i was actually in a really shitty mood bc i didnt wake up in time 2 go get a cheerard cake printed #getting 2 ramble on abt her has lifted my spirits im on my way 2 buy green food colouring 2 frost some cupcakes instead #everythings coming up cheerard 😁😁😁#ask #anonymous #typed half of this while walking btw and im not rereading it.. hope it makes sense <3 #now everyone go listen to when i was a boy dar williams RIGHT NOW !!!!!!#then maybe listen to not that kind of girl :3

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abovetherainandroses · 11 months ago

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🪲🏜️🌻 for the asks!

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

storm: I always have multiple wips going on and I'm kinda writing a lot of mcr right now (sorry i still feel like i'm cheating on peterick lmfao) BUUUT here is a peterick wip I just added some words to! I can't believe this ask game is making me just put unedited words out there but here ya go

There was a moment when Patrick wondered if time and distance had made strangers of him and Pete. The truth is more complicated. Reading Pete’s lyrics now, it still feels uncomfortably like looking into his soul. It still resonates in a way that he can only explain through music, but it’s like there’s something missing, almost. And then it hits him: whatever these words are about, Patrick wasn’t there for it. And for some reason, that makes him angry at himself.

sprout: hey i actually just started working on a peterick fic! it is, essentially, a place for me to dump my 2ourdust feelings. here's some new words i just wrote:

Just like that, Patrick’s caught in Pete’s pull again. This whole tour has been an exercise in meeting Pete’s whims—it was his idea, after all, for Patrick to have his own little section of the setlist. It was his idea to stop and talk to one another while the piano gets set up, to take a moment to just crack a dumb joke, or talk about the weather, or, sometimes, check in and reassure each other that they’re still here, after everything. Maybe Pete’s been pulling him, bit by bit, to stand in the light together.

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

storm: I greatly appreciate all comments, but I admit I extra love comments that go all unhinged capslock scream-y, and also any comments that talk about my writing itself and not just the content of the story (e.g., complimenting my writing style 🥺)

sprout: all comments are wonderful ofc 💗 i'm especially touched when people point out specific lines or moments in the fic, particularly ones that i didn't expect anyone to notice!

🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

storm here answering for both of us:

@27-royal-teas - you are always super nice in the tags of sprout's art and my fob fics, and thank you for tagging us in that get-to-know meme before! i know we don't talk like at all, but you're so sweet <3

@starrynyxa - we also don't talk at all but WE BOTH LOVE YOUR ART, it is so cute, puppy pete forever, and it was so nice getting to meet you briefly at 2 shows! <3

#ask #anonymous #storm talks #sprout talks

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allnightlongzine · 1 year ago

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The Eternal March of the Black Parade

Twenty years after their debut album and more than a decade after the critics dismissed them, My Chemical Romance stands as one of the greatest rock bands of the 21st century. How did we end up here?

Rob Harvilla | Jul 26, 2022 | theringer.com

Illustration by Brent Schoonover

My Chemical Romance is touring again, Paramore and Jimmy Eat World are headlining a major festival this fall, and there’s a skinny, tattooed white dude with a guitar dominating the charts. In case you haven’t heard, emo is back, baby! In honor of its return to prominence—plus the 20th anniversary of the first MCR album—The Ringer is following Emo Wendy’s lead and tapping into that nostalgia. Welcome to Emo Week, where we’ll explore the scene’s roots, its evolution to the modern-day Fifth Wave, and some of the ephemera around the genre. Grab your Telecasters and Manic Panic and join us in the Black Parade.

Our story starts in New York City on September 11, 2001. It just does. Suspend your disbelief; respect his audacity. But is it really so hard to believe, and is it really so audacious, that Gerard Way—then a 24-year-old New Jersey native, NYC art school graduate, and creatively stifled Cartoon Network intern—would choose that awful, vulnerable, crushingly human moment to reimagine himself as something immortal, someone superheroic? “That felt like the end of the world,” he told Newsweek in 2019. “It felt like the apocalypse. I was surrounded by hundreds of people on a dock on the Hudson River, and we watched the buildings go down, and there was this wave of human anguish that I’ve never felt before. Since then, I’ve continued to think about what we would do at the end of the world if we knew we only had a little time left.”

Standing on that dock, what Gerard decided he would do was channel his shock and grief and newfound sense of immediacy into the ultimate rock-star origin story. “Something just clicked in my head that morning,” he told Spin magazine in 2005. “I literally said to myself, ‘Fuck art. I’ve gotta get out of the basement. I’ve gotta see the world. I’ve gotta make a difference!’” So he hooked up with a drummer friend from high school named Matt Pelissier (the first of several drummers, alas) and wrote an anguished, furious, and yet startlingly tender pop-punk song called “Skylines and Turnstiles.” It starts like this.

You’re not in this alone Let me break this awkward silence Let me go, go on record Be the first to say I’m sorry Hear me out

Gerard sang and played guitar, though he struggled to do both at once. (It’s harder than it looks.) Slowly, he found other bandmates: Ray Toro and Frank Iero on guitars, plus his own younger brother Mikey Way on bass. Thanks to his gig working at Barnes & Noble, Mikey also contributed a band name: My Chemical Romance, an improvement on the title of an Irvine Welsh book. The band signed with a tiny label called Eyeball Records and released, on July 23, 2002, their debut album, called I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, produced by New Jersey punk deity and Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, who’d already mastered the dark art of combining the rawest possible materials into something impossibly gargantuan.

This broken city sky Like butane on my skin Stolen from my eyes Hello angel, tell me Where are you? Tell me where we go from here

“Skylines and Turnstiles” is not, by a long shot, the highlight of MCR’s least-great album. The raw materials are there, of course: the scabrous and shimmering guitars, the breathless downhill-sprint propulsion, the throat-shredding screams to bolster the chorus and punctuate Gerard’s unguarded and brutal horror-flick lyricism. But your first song is never your best. Here, the one called “Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” is better. And the one called “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” and the one called “Demolition Lovers,” and the one called “Drowning Lessons,” and even the one called “Cubicles.” But as an opening salvo, as the gritty first panel in a dense and ludicrously ambitious comic-book-punk saga, as an achingly sincere attempt to break the awkward silence and roll back the wave of human anguish, as a macabre but heartfelt attempt at genuine connection, Gerard Way’s first song got him where he needed to go, which was firmly on the road to leading everyone where they needed to go.

And after seeing what we saw Can we still reclaim our innocence? And if the world needs something better Let’s give them one more reason, now

It’s the rousing, heartbreaking vocal harmony on the words the world needs something better that shows you what Gerard and his vampiric cohort is really about. Look beyond the eyeliner, the hair dye, the ghostly pallor, the extra-macabre marching band outfits, the wholesale mall-goth hijacking of this band’s whole look, its whole ethos. Don’t flinch at the lyrics no matter how gnarly and nihilistic they seem to get; don’t get too wrapped up in the surreal sensationalism of their flames-and-chaos music videos. Buy the album tie-in comic book or don’t. Just never forget that the closer we get to the end of the world, the tighter Gerard Way means to hold us, to make however much time we have left just that much more bearable.

I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love just celebrated its 20th birthday, and inspired some very excellent anniversary pieces despite being, well, MCR’s least-great album. Their next record was a gleaming and snarling major-label-debut colossus that crowned the fellas as Warped Tour royalty; the record after that was a hilariously overblown rock-opera funeral march and consensus masterpiece that now stands among the greatest emo albums ever born, any era, any wave; the record after that is my personal favorite. Then MCR broke up in 2013, to appropriately operatic dismay, going out as close to On Top as a youngish rock band possibly can.

There was no explicit tabloid-roiling catalyst, no real drama, except no drama is not exactly this band’s vibe. Gerard’s farewell letter, posted to Twitter three days after the news broke and titled A Vigil, On Birds and Glass, is my personal favorite Rock Band Breakup Explanation Letter, any subgenre, any era, precisely because it captures this band’s precise and fantastic combination of galactically overwrought and unabashedly intimate.

We were spectacular. Every show I knew this, every show I felt it with or without external confirmation. There were some clunkers, sometimes our secondhand gear broke, sometimes I had no voice- we were still great. It is this belief that made us who we were, but also many other things, all of them vital- And all of the things that made us great were the very things that were going to end us- Fiction. Friction. Creation. Destruction. Opposition. Aggression. Ambition. Heart. Hate. Courage. Spite. Beauty. Desperation. LOVE. Fear. Glamour. Weakness. Hope. Fatalism.

And then he expands on the fatalism part as a way of explaining why, exactly, this band broke up after only 11 years and four albums.

That last one is very important. My Chemical Romance had, built within its core, a fail-safe. A doomsday device, should certain events occur or cease occurring, would detonate. I shared knowledge of this “flaw” within weeks of its inception. Personally, I embraced it because, again, it made us perfect. A perfect machine, beautiful, yet self aware of its system. Under directive to terminate before it becomes compromised. To protect the idea- at all costs. This probably sounds like something ripped from the pages of a four-color comic book, and that’s the point. No compromise. No surrender. No fucking shit. To me that’s rock and roll. And I believe in rock and roll.

He goes on at great length. It’s wild, it’s lovely, it’s absurd, it’s genuinely moving. The fellas found stuff to keep them busy post-breakup, and Gerard most prominently, of course: the solo album, the ongoing and relentlessly off-kilter Netflix series based on his comic book. And then, inevitably, MCR reunited—tentatively in late 2019, and full-throatedly here in 2022, headlining giant festivals and packing arenas as what certainly feels like the first rock-band reunion that anybody’s actually given a shit about in years. Put it this way: If you are a remotely young person who, like Way himself, still believes in rock and roll, My Chemical Romance is very likely why, and it’s worth ruminating on how, exactly, this profoundly strange and desperately necessary band has inspired such belief. Anybody who listened to I Brought You My Bullets in 2002 couldn’t have predicted any of this. But the guys who made it did.

Emo is back, baby! In honor of its return to prominence—plus the 20th anniversary of the first MCR album—we’re diving deep into all things emo.

Grab your Telecasters and Manic Panic and join us for Emo Week.

The most striking song on I Brought You My Bullets—the most Gerard song, the most MCR song, The Most in general—is called “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville.” It begins as a woozy but deceptively gentle waltz but darkens by ominous degrees, and soon Gerard is wailing the line “If I had the guts / To put this to your head,” and maybe you worry for a second that this is the 200,000th uncouth and unnervingly violent post-breakup emo song. And then you find out that Monroeville is in Pennsylvania, and parts of George Romero’s 1978 zombie-flick classic Dawn of the Dead were shot there, and oh, wow, suddenly you realize this is actually a very grim, very romantic song about an inconsolable man realizing he has to kill his no-longer-human wife:

And there’s no room in this hell There’s no room in the next And our memories defeat us And I’ll end this duress

Not the best song, but the most. My Chemical Romance would get truly dangerous, and truly great, when their best and their most intertwined. They signed to a major label; all the coolest kids do. Deal with it. Deal with this, while you’re at it.

“You like D&D, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini, and croquet,” Ray Toro informs Gerard Way at the onset of “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” one of several monster singles from their 2004 Reprise Records debut, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. “You can’t swim, you can’t dance, and you don’t know karate. Face it: You’re never gonna make it.” Cue the high-school-outcast histrionics, the cuddly arena-punk viciousness, Gerard’s destabilizing magnetism as he practically screams in your face, the vintage airbrushed-van metalhead radness of Ray’s guitar solo, and, before the final bone-crushing chorus, a truly bonkers Gerard buildup/breakdown for the ages:

But you really need to listen to me Because I’m telling you the truth I mean this I’m okay (Trust me)

And, boom. There are days when this is the best song ever written. And there are other days when it’s not even the best song on Three Cheers: “Helena” has a majestic Mötley Crüe meets the Misfits chorus, the power chords ascending a stairway to hell, an infinite legion of demons pumping their fists along to every word: So long and good night / So long and good night. Or maybe the power-ballad pyrotechnics of “The Ghost of You” do it for you, the classic quiet-verse-loud-chorus dynamics, Gerard’s unapologetic controlled-screaming melodrama (“At the top of my lungs in my arms / SHE DIES”), the extra-luxe video that recreates D-Day down to the puking soldiers landing on the beach. Tell me these guys aren’t spectacular, and not driven by friction, ambition, LOVE, glamour, and fatalism.

By 2005 MCR are headlining the good ol’ Warped Tour alongside Fall Out Boy, and early-2000s third-wave emo—undaunted in its embrace of pop-punk, of the mall, of teenagers both actual and perpetual—has its very own Queen, and/or Led Zeppelin, and/or Pink Floyd. Suspend your disbelief; respect their audacity. “The main thing that we’ve always wanted to do was to save people’s lives,” Gerard informed the magazine Alternative Press in 2004. “That sounds Mother Teresa–ish and outlandish, but it really does happen. It does make a huge difference. We’ve seen it in action.”

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, by the way, is a semi-derailed concept album involving two lovers, a man and a woman, who both seemingly die in a gunfight: The man goes to hell, is informed by the Devil that the woman is still alive, and agrees to kill 1,000 evil men in exchange for the chance to reunite with her. I say semi-derailed because during the writing process Gerard and Mikey’s beloved grandmother died—“Helena” is about her—and Gerard considered scrapping the whole thing. “When that happened, I was like, ‘Fuck. Oh, God. How am I going to deal with this story? Does it even matter anymore? Is it just fucking pretentious? Is it bullshit?’” he told Alternative Press. “And then I came to grips with it and said, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to write the songs that I want.’” Even the song called “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison” has a certain funereal poignancy to it.

Even for a band already operating at this scale in terms of both ungodly rock-star bombast and naked emotional intimacy—Gerard has gotten increasingly forthright in interviews about his struggles with mental health and substance misuse in this era—My Chemical Romance’s third and biggest and most extravagantly beloved album, 2006’s The Black Parade, struck like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky. There is an awful lot to absorb here; the marching-band outfits are as good a place to start as any.

The Black Parade is a classic leveling-up record, the fairly conventional tale of a young, ferocious rock band hitting its commercial peak (the album debuted at no. 2 on the Billboard album chart, behind a Hannah Montana soundtrack) with the help of some new big-shot collaborators. It was produced by Rob Cavallo, who probably also produced your favorite Green Day album; the screaming-and-fire video for “Famous Last Words” was directed by Samuel Bayer, who also directed your favorite Nirvana video. (I’m just assuming your favorite Nirvana video is “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”) Several members of the band got severely injured while shooting this, by the way, and somehow you can just tell.

The Black Parade is also an unprecedented and not-at-all-conventional narrative flex credibly described by The New York Times as “a stricken tour de force about coming of age in the post-9/11 era.” It’s a not-at-all-derailed concept album about a man (“The Patient”) dying of cancer while wracked by fear and regret; Gerard decided to add to the verisimilitude by cutting his hair short and dying it a stark silver. (“I wanted to appear white and deathlike and gaunt and sick-looking,” he cheerfully told the NYT.) Liza Minnelli (“I love those guys”) drops by to portray a grieving mother; musically, the klezmer parts somehow hit harder than the heavy metal parts. Influences range from David Bowie to KISS to the Beatles; there is also, as the marching-band uniforms might suggest, a marching band. The scale of this, in every sense, is nearly overwhelming, so if you’re new to it all maybe start out by just putting the caustically hilarious goth-blues anthem “Teenagers” on repeat for six hours.

They said, “All teenagers scare the livin’ shit out of me” They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose Maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me

Even five years ago, this record was an easy fan favorite but not necessarily an agreed-upon, era-defining masterwork. “The Black Parade, though well-reviewed at the time, hasn’t accrued the same reputation as other classic albums,” the critic Jeremy Gordon wrote in 2016 in a 10th-anniversary piece for Spin. “It was almost entirely ignored in lists of the best albums of the ’00s run by tastemakers and canon-formers like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Billboard, Paste, Complex, NME, and, yes, Spin.” By this record’s 20th anniversary, however, it might be universally hailed as the pop-punk Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: In 2020, when Rolling Stone unveiled its updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, there was The Black Parade at no. 361, not quite as good as Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, but just a little better than Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much.

You could argue that rock critics ruin everything. You could regard The Black Parade’s steady ascent on lists like this as proof that something essential—a life-affirming secret shared only between MCR and their Day One fans—is being lost. As a Late Pass–holder myself, out of respect/trepidation, I have decided not to argue that the band’s fourth and last album, 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, is actually their best album, even though I love it profoundly for both the reliable audacity of its concept (now MCR are Mad Max–esque rebels battling an evil corporation in postapocalyptic California, with the Gerard-penned comic book to prove it) and the chaotic scope of the songs themselves. Get acclimated by putting the song “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)” on repeat this time.

Danger Days probably includes one too many songs that blatantly reach for Coldplay-style arena-rock uplifting grandeur, but what I will say is that this record’s final attempt at volcanic sentimentality, “The Kids From Yesterday,” totally works, and the album ends with an extra-caustic and extra-hilarious trashing punk tirade called “Vampire Money,” in which Gerard politely declines to contribute a song to the soundtrack of a Twilight movie.

(Come on!) When you wanna be a movie star (Come on!) Play the game and take the band real far (Come on!) Play it right and drive a Volvo car Pick a fight at an airport bar The kids don’t care if you’re alright, honey Pills don’t help, but it sure is funny Give me give me some of that vampire money, come on!

“Originally, what we did was take goth and put it with punk and turn it into something dangerous and sexy,” Gerard explained to the NME. “Back then nobody in the normal punk world was wearing black clothes and eyeliner. We did it because we had one mission: to polarize, to irritate, to contaminate. But then that image gets romanticized and then it gets commoditized.”

This is all delightfully but decidedly rude: There’s an excellent argument that the Twilight universe is every bit as vital and inclusive and life-affirming as any of the rock bands it attempted to romanticize and/or commoditize. But I will laugh at the line Pick a fight at an airport bar forever.

As for MCR’s breakup, and the failsafe doomsday device that triggered it, within a few years Gerard was opening up about it: In 2014 he told the NME that he’d relapsed into alcoholism after Danger Days, and worried that his daughter would grow up without a father; the choice, he concluded, was “Break the band or break me.”

The band first reunited for a single show in 2019 in Los Angeles: “That was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had playing on stage with My Chemical Romance, for sure,” Gerard told the NME, adding that “to me, the new version of My Chemical Romance and the way I want to go about it is exercising less control.” (The NME loves this guy.) The band’s festival-headliner status now is in part a reflection of pop-punk’s bizarrely ascending reputation in the past five years as both a commercial and critical proposition, from Olivia Rodrigo to Machine Gun Kelly to Juice WRLD. But however many sonic and stylistic precedents there might be, there has never been a rock band quite this courageous, spiteful, beautiful, desperate, glamorous, hopeful.

I believe Gerard when he says that this band’s original mission was “to polarize, to irritate, to contaminate,” but that was never their only mission. MCR was born in an apocalypse, and designed to help us all survive it. Us meaning actual teenagers, not critics, but we caught on eventually. We are all bandwagoners on the Black Parade now. Meanwhile, the apocalypse is closer than ever, but at least we can all huddle together in the glow.

#the ringer #outside #swarm

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doueverwonder · 1 year ago

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enough of this 'in as few words as possible' I want the entire history of how your music taste got where it is; i'll start.

so anyway I wasn't allowed to listen to anything besides gospel music (and even then only certain types) till I was like 11-ish. Despite that I was allowed to listen to disney music, so when I was 8 and heard Immortals by imagine dragons in big hero six I lost it. I listened to that song constantly it was always playing. Anyway, 11 year old me found out about the music app having a search bar, i had only ever been allowed to listen to things my dad had predownloaded into the library. So I found fall out boy, and imagine dragons and for months listened to nothing but them. Just me sitting in my room at midnight feeling like i was breaking rules listening to Sugar we're going down and radioactive. Then i found Bastille and 21 Pilots through finding the recommendations tab and then eventually MCR; and the Avril Lavigne And then uh, yeah my music kinda stayed there, it was mainstream pop-kinda-sorta-punk. But it was clean, i literally would not listen to a song that had a single bad word in it bc I don't say those words i'm a good kid. I listened to teenagers through a youtube clean cover like, i was so careful.

Anyway, my mother, the most awesome person i know and i'm not even joking I love her so much. Took me to Hella Mega Tour for my birthday bc I found out fall out boy was going to be there and convinced myself I was going to DIE if i did not see them live.

(Note my mom was 14 when green day got popular, she reasonably could have been listening to them as a teenager. Except that same year my moms parents joined the cult we were in and she was forbidden from listening to that type of music.)

back on topic, fall out boy finished I was PUMPED, i also had school the next morning and it was already getting late. So my mom told me "I've heard of this next band, but I don't really know any of their songs we can leave now if you want" I decided to stay, just to hear the first 2-3 songs and see if i had any interest, they started with American Idiot and halfway through the song it was decided the only way to get me out of that stadium while they were still playing would be kicking and screaming. Billie Joe Armstrong changed the trajectory of my life completely that night and he doesn't even know it.

after that it just kinda? spiraled? Royal & the serpent got me with hearing overwhelmed, Alkaline Trio with Calling All Skeletons, I started listening to Teenagers uncensored ik so scandalous. I found Grandson bc of a norway cosplay tiktok that used Blood//Water (no i'm not joking); and Sabaton bc of a hetalia fic about the winged hussars. My friend introduced me to Des Rocs recently, another friend Sueco, i don't actually remember how i found Ghost :\ And Daisy Grenade opened at the fall out boy concert I went to a few months ago and I love them now <3

And then i stumbled head first into folk punk due to a pinterest comment that referenced Ramshackle Glory, AJJ, Bitch & Animal, Mischief Brew my beloved. Folk punk is my moms least favorite genre i've gotten into. Then a guy told me if i like folk punk to check out Petey and now my favorite song like scream in the car after a bad day song is Pitch A Fit, it's so good man.

but anyway Fall Out Boy is still my favorite band bc they were the first band I ever listened to.

#apersonwhotalks #lonnnnnnggggg #sorry

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miikaji · 2 years ago

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fun fact! 😌✨

my pfp is me from the loona concert last year! i was looking at my recent concert selfies and thought “damn... i do be looking cute sometimes” lol

^ LOONA + KCON 2K22 ^

i wanted to be as colorful as possible when i went to see them! this was actually my day 2 look (see day 1 below). currently, loona is honestly probs one of my ult girl groups of the 4th gen. idk how but i ended up falling in love with a LOT of their discography a little after their official debut. when i heard about their tour (and that chuu wasn’t going to be participating...) i KNEW i had to go. i didn’t want to chance not seeing my girls on their first, and possibly only, tour. i bought VIP and everything for BOTH nights i went....

^ Day 1!!! I’m actually pretty happy I took photos of the few freebies I got (because usually they get destroyed at some point in transit back home... which happened lol)

(backside)

(frontside)

ALSO!!! I met a Once before going to the venue and she gave me some freebies from when she went to Twice’s most recent concert. She only had a few but let me pick out a Momo, Jihyo and Chaeyoung pc 🥺💕

THEE ENTIRE DAY 2 LOOK!!! lol this was the only full lewk snap I got of it. YES, I did wear crocs. The crocs were on my feet when I went into the venue. I made a mistake wearing playform sneakers the day before and I learned the error of my ways. I was SOOOO much more comofrtable night 2 bc tbh I sweated a lot in line day 1 and didn’t have things to freshen up from what the sun had caused. Peep the bags of shit by my feet lol I was READY with extra deo, deo spray, body sprays, wipes, hydration items... ALLTHAT

You see that? That’s me in pure bliss. I was closer night 2 as well?? My feet were still hurting??? My body was in pain??? But Loona cured all that??

night two was the only night i had the photo, but i will literally never regret spending the money i did to have this experience... got to do hi-touch both nights! i didn’t intend on this post getting so long lol but since i’m remembering it all now i remember how lip went “your hair!” when she saw me lol. vivi and yves were like so enthusiastic too when it was my turn... it was so fast though, even though i did it 2 nights in a row, its still like a blur of how crazy pretty they are in person 😭 i thought that was gonna be the last and only time i’d see loona.... then kcon happened 👁👄👁 LOL!! Sadly, for a friend of mine, my homie who was at the con got sick with Covid and didn’t want to waste the night 2 concert ticket... SO SHE GIVES IT TO ME FOR FREE?????

^ my ass RUNNING to the floor bc WTF???

LIKE??????

^ me turning my lightstick green for NCT since I don’t own NCT merch

SPEAKING OF THAT LIGHTSTICK. I ALMOST FORGOT. Shoutout to that random attendee who just gave me batteries for my lightstick once I got to the floor? Kcon was literally at the end of the month (Loona’s concerts were on the 1st and 2nd of the month) so my batteries were def dead lol. BUT BLESS THEM!!! 😭 It was so fun. i screamed a lot.

(also also i can’t believe i was attendance for the iconic “RUN TO YEW” from stacy bskfjkfn)

^ MCR 2K22 ^

BRUH.

First off, this was my first trip to Vegas?? I might make a whole entire separate post for the Vegas pictures and tings (because I wanna document for myself). All I’ll say for this is even with my fro fro out and lazy make up, I still felt very cute seeing MCR for like the 10th time uwu

. . .

AND WITH A HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND WHO LITERALLY NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE??? WHAT???

I MISSED YOU KURT AND I HOPE IT WAS A NIGHT TO REMEMBER SHFBNHKSDBNFSJKNF

^ MM@TA 2K23 ^

OKAY THERE’S SO MUCH I COULD SAY BUT LEMME JUST SAY THIS. I GOT TO SEE THEIR SOUND CHECK?? (See Below)

Literally life changing experience omg hsnfknsjf

Currently, Meet Me @ The Altar is like THEE band for me. Their music is so good?? I knew I HAD to see them!!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺 I’d write more but my brain is shutting down LOL!! I will say, I was kinda sad I couldn’t get my hair done before the show. Them braids was my b-day braids and the way my part looked like moses parted the seas once it was this concert date (mid March, bday was in Jan). So I included a pic below of this actual lewk in all its glory lol.

Bday was lit lol. Edith and I had a moment. I was UP front. TOUCHING the stage. She may or may not be my hair inspo lol

^ RICO NASTY 2K23 ^ THIS YEAR IS LITERALLY INSANE WITH THE CONCERT LINEUPS???

So lemme just say this... bc there was a lot going on for this hbfkdjs

FIRST OFF. PEEP THAT MY HAIR IS BLUE.

I had to get rid of the green and get my hair braided again. My mom mentions “oh hey children I’m getting this life changing award from my sorority and its SUPER IMPORTANT that you show up. this means SO MUCH TO ME.” so me being the OG i am i decided to get my hair done in the colors of her sorority (blue and white, I wanted to get silver but didn’t have enough for the other hair shfnksf). She goes “oh you don’t have to do the blue” and I’m just HUH???

COME TO FIND OUT.

SHE WASN’T GETTING NO AWARD.

MY DAD FINISHED SCHOOL AND HE WAS GRADUATING.

lol but it was cool i actually ended up liking the blue.

ANYWAY.

I was also very excited for this show BECAUSE of the fact that its been FOREVEEEEER since Rico went on her own solo tour!!!!!! Like I love you Rico but I can’t justify paying music festival money just to see YOU do a set for a set amount of time like no. I wanna spend hours with you. So much so... I went to TWO Rico Nasty shows 🧍🏾‍♀️

low quality pic of my messy make uwu

i WISH i was smart enough to check monster energy’s ig. this tour was sponsored by them and when i was in line, they were snapping pics of fans who would accept a free monster (i didn’t want to die so i said yes to the monster lol). rico’s folks also took pics but i have noooo idea where those are... my fit was so cute too 😭 even tho... i’m noticing i keep wearing that same damn pink crop cardigan 💀

^ rico’s reaction when we all started screaming every word to iphone 🥺💕

man.. i was out of BREATH this whole show the way I was jumping and yelling all the lyrics hsnbfksdjnf. my feet were fucking SCREAMING in pain. i felt so bad to the people who were trying to talk to me bc the way i was mentally checked out whenever there wasn’t music going hgbnksnjfd night 2 was WORSE for my feel and social battery but omfg i’d still do it all over again lol my crocs sadly could not save me either show

^ TWICE 2K23 ^

FIRST OFF.

THANK YOU TO MY FRIEND TRIN.

FOR LITERALLY BUYING ME A TICKET TO SEE TWICE THE DAY BEFORE THE SHOW???? 😭😭😭😭😭

My first time finally seeing Twice and you wanna know what I SEE the second I enter the venue?!??!?

HELLO???

LIKE?!?!?

THEY’RE INSANE FOR THIS

LOL

(also thank you for sticking with me if you got this far i by no means meant for this post to be so long hsfkjnf i wish i could have added this videos but i guess the gifs will do)

i didn’t document a lot of the freebies but i did get a LOT!! and the once i met at the loona concert was also here and gave me a LOT of pcs!! 😭💕 (ty kelsey ur like the sweetest hfbksdnf)

my view

the views of me

sadly no full fit pics but a lot of people complimented my outfit 🥺💕 next concert i’m hoping to attend is aespa bc they will be here in a few weeks and the nosebleed seats are like so cheap??? i’m going.

also

i’m seeing beyonce?? with my mom? on beyonce’s birthday for my mom’s birthday gift??? btw my hair is gonna be pink next so i can’t WAIT to see what i do for lewks for these shows uwu

#personal #just a lil ramble about recent concert selfies #i'm still getting back into the swing of blogging again i need to get my tags together #okay wait so this is me from like 5 minutes after typing the tag above #so this post STARTED as a ramble of recent concert selfies #but now its a full fleshed post lol #this is for anyone who cares and that's more than likely me from years from now looking at my archive wondering wtf was i posting #life update #face card

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sigynpenniman · 1 year ago

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does anyone else genuinely wonder how on earth Gerard disappears so completely for such a long stretch of time. Like YES I understand they’re not as recognizable as they used to be. However. I see approximately 3 people a week in MCR shirts. About 10% of those are return tour shirts and a further 30% or so are at least aware of the return tour or went to a show(s). And not everyone who would at least recognize them is a big enough fan to wear a shirt. And not every fan is wearing a shirt every day. So let’s do some simple math and assume if Gerard goes out in public a normal person amount they’re probably running into about 2-3 people a week who would theoretically recognize them as they currently appear. Even if they’re wearing sunglasses or whatever their speaking voice is also INCREDIBLY distinctive. and yeah okay maybe they’re turning down all requests for autographs or photos but do you think we wouldn’t hear about THAT? Like no matter how much it is their right (which it is) there would INEVITABLY be an asshole or three who want to RUN to the internet screaming I MET GERARD WAY AND HE WAS AN ASS. Even if they take photos with people ask them not to post them not everyone is going to listen. SOMEONE is going to disrespect that eventually. and there’s. Nothing. For months. months and months at the time. Gerard Way is one of the more recognizable people on earth and they are better at hiding than your average most wanted list fugitive. Either they literally never ever leave their house (seems unlikely and impractical?) or they’re on some hiding in plain sight shit you’ve never even conceived of bc I cannot wrap my head around how they can move through the world, security or no security, whether they’re talking to fans or straight up turning them down, and leave literally no trace whatsoever

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lsdunesarchive · 2 years ago

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L.s. Dunes: Pandemic "Life Preserver" And Rock's Best New Supergroup

How members of My Chem, Circa Survive, Thursday and Coheed channeled existential dread into explosive emo

Words by Mia Hughes Photo by Nicole Mago

December 13, 2022

Circa Survive and Saosin singer Anthony Green may have made his name fronting two of the most important post-hardcore bands of the Aughts, but it wasn't until the 40-year-old musician formed the new supergroup L.S. Dunes with his pals in My Chemical Romance, Coheed and Cambria and Thursday that he created something that would impress his 10-year-old self.

"I spent a lot of time as a kid listening to music and imagining myself in the band," he tells Revolver today. "I can remember being in the backseat of my mom's car and listening to Core by Stone Temple Pilots and fantasizing that I was the drummer or the guitar player. If I went back in time and played my younger self the L.S. Dunes album my heart would have just exploded with joy. My younger self would be so proud of me."

Indeed, the project's debut album, Past Lives, is the sound of five music lifers rediscovering the joy of rocking out at a time when that pursuit had been cruelly halted. Formed remotely in 2020 after the pandemic stamped out everyone's touring plans, vocalist Green is joined by My Chem's Frank Iero (guitar), Coheed's Travis Stever (guitar) and Thursday's Tim Payne and Tucker Rule (bass and drums, respectively). Across the album, they veer from mathy experimentalism and urgent hardcore heaviness to unabashed rock-star riffing. "It reminds me of everything I love about rock & roll," says Green, "from At the Drive-In to PJ Harvey to Nirvana and the Breeders and Queens of the Stone Age."

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The band members' paths have intertwined for more than two decades, when they all began to dominate the East Coast post-hardcore scene around the turn of the millennium. They've toured together, shared rehearsal spaces and attended each other's kids' birthday parties. Thanks to all of this shared history, L.S. Dunes felt natural and easy from the outset. "We skipped all of the weirdness behind figuring out how everything's gonna work," Green explains, "and everybody just jumped in headfirst."

"To start a band with people that you wanna hang out with regardless is an awesome thing," adds Iero, calling in from the Oakland stop of MCR's massive reunion tour. "Those types of bands are normally ones that you start when you're young, like in high school, and that's what this felt like." Green sums up the feeling with an apt analogy: "It's like when you go on a first date with somebody, and you just expect it to be like, OK, we'll see how this goes … and then you're like, Holy shit, I'm fucking in love. I'm ready to propose!"

L.S. Dunes was also a much-needed source of support and catharsis for the musicians as they all dealt with the myriad uncertainties of the pandemic. "Circa Survive was due to go on tour in three weeks when the [lockdowns started]," Green says. "I was devastated. I have four children, and I didn't know how I was gonna provide for my family. I tried to keep my cool as much as I could, but I really had a breakdown. I couldn't fathom having any hope."

"There was definitely a sense of depression and desperation," confirms Iero, who had been days away from the My Chem tour kickoff in Australia when everything was canceled. "This project was very much like someone throwing [us] a life preserver — [we] clung to it." With no expectations beyond the vital need to make something, the band were able to indulge in pure creativity and freely channel their turbulent emotions into the music. "It was like hitting rock bottom," explains Iero, "and when you hit the bottom, it opens the door to freedom."

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Green recalls the recording of the ripping lead single "Permanent Rebellion" as a key turning point. The singer had initially planned to write a melody for the chorus, but instead he just let loose an intense barrage of screams. It worked perfectly, and the rest of the band was onboard. "Everybody [was] just championing each other's ideas, and that just makes you wanna go even harder," he says of the creation of Past Lives, which was recorded with producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Code Orange).

"I know that I desperately needed a project that was heavier and more aggressive, just because I was feeling all these emotions. It's nice to have a place where I can yell and scream and go wild." Meanwhile, Iero was similarly branching out, incorporating mathy guitar techniques like tapping that he had never used in previous bands. "Something really, really special about this band was that risks we were taking that normally wouldn't end up on a record ended up on this record," he says.

Lyrically, Green explored the panic, mistrust and denial he saw bubbling all across the country as the pandemic became a divisive political issue. "We needed illumination — we needed light being shone on all this fear and hatred around us," he says. Meanwhile, Green describes the record's most personal song, the blistering opener "2022," as "the most fucked-up song I ever wrote." Penned in 2021, it presents Green's grim vision of the future ("If I can't make it 'till 2022/Least we'll see how much I can take") and also refers directly to when he survived an overdose: "I sometimes wish she hadn't found me on the night/I tried to disappear."

"That's a heavy statement, but it's true — and sometimes the truth weighs a ton," says Green. "I feel bad for my family who has to hear that song. Before the song came out, I sat with my kids and I told them, 'Hey, listen, this song is coming out, and I want you to know that you can always talk to me about anything, and that we can get through anything together.' It's really important for me to make sure that they realize that I love them, and that they're worth it."

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Now that Green has reached the year he once feared he wouldn't, "2022" has become a triumphant anthem for the singer. "I'm in such a different place than I was when I wrote that song," he reveals. "So to sing it now feels very victorious." L.S. Dunes realized that celebration at this year's Riot Fest. It was their first show — and only the sixth time they had ever played together in-person as a band, including rehearsals.

"I was so nervous beforehand," says Green of the show, the attendance of which rivaled the singer's set with Circa Survive the previous year. "[But] when I got up there, it felt like our hundredth show. It felt like we had been a band for 10 years. When we played 'Permanent Rebellion,' everybody went nuts, and people were screaming along to the chorus. It's more than you can hope for. I feel so lucky."

"It was, hands down, the best first show I've ever played with any band," adds Iero. "It felt magical."

And as far as L.S. Dunes are concerned, this is just the beginning. Now that the world has opened back up, Green, Iero, Stever, Payne and Rule are all busy as ever with their respective projects, but there are no plans to leave L.S. Dunes behind. "We haven't even begun to experience and experiment with what we have," says Green. "Once we get together in a room to actually write songs or to jam — which we've never done as a band — that shit is going to explode."

#ls dunes #l.s. dunes #m: anthony green #m: frank iero #m: tim payne #m: travis stever #m: tucker rule #t: text #t: photo #misc: interview #ph: nicole mago #p: revolver #lsd: 2022 #in: dec/22 #archive[ane]

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