As a legion of My Chemical Romance fans prepare to march to the offices of the Daily Mail, Pete Fear looks at why the hell anyone would care. It’s because of the music, man!
My Chemical Romance are the most horrific, potently nasty and unpleasant thing that will ever happen to the Daily Mail: a cranked up rock band that will turn your children into devil worshippers and invite Eastern European asylum seekers into your home.
But forget that, because even the BBC and The Guardian know this. All of the coverage of this Saturday’s Dacre-baiting march has focused on the black hair, the Converse slip-ons, the scars and the straight edge tattoos. No one has mentioned that My Chems are one of the finest rock bands to emerge from the States this decade.
Emerging from the ashes of a Thursday-aping hardcore world (via Eyeball Records’ I Brought You Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love), it was the Lifetime-meets-John Hughes movies sounds of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge that launched MCR as both a damn great band and a sociological case study.
Three Cheers… is a landmark record, a quick-shot blast of sharp turns of phrase and punk rock guitars. From the faux-Spanish tongues and chuggy Radiohead-isms of ‘The Jetset Life Is Going To Kill You’ to the pop-is-pain mega choruses of ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’, Three Cheers… is Fall Out Boy’s From Under The Cork Tree’s less saccharine sister, positioning them as this generation’s Queen to FOB’s Air Supply.
The songs – and more importantly the album as a whole – make the current consternation of the Lord Rothmere-owned organ and its hatebred middle aged readers irrelevant.
The fact that My Chemical Romance have been derided as much as bands such as Kiss (Knights in Satan’s Service) is down to the fact that Three Cheers…, and The Black Parade, with its pompous Mercury/May-influence, are as full of hope and rock stomp as records like Destroyer (Detroooit Rock City!!)
Gerard Way has become a genuine New Jersey success story; not for any crusade against the newspaper backlash, but for being in a band that blows the bloody doors off, every time.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Raz // May 31, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I saw their first ever UK show and I’ve never looked back. I fucking love My Chemical Romance!
2 Andrew // May 31, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Straight edge tattoos? What the hell has that got to do with this, MCR or Emo is general really?
There isn’t gonna be very many of these so called Emo kids calling themselves edge, so please amend this little typo, because you yourself could not have got this any more wrong!
3 stimpson j katz // May 31, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Positioning them as this generation’s Queen to Fall Out Boy’s Air Supply.
aaaaaaaaahahahahahahahah
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA omg omg lol
4 danae // Jun 3, 2008 at 8:04 pm
AMEN! thank you for fucks sake. seriously fainally someone with some sense. this is am amazing article THANK YOU SO MUCH!
oh and by the way “andrew” Grow. The. Fuck. Up. You don’t know shit. Dont pretend you do. Straight edge may have nothing to do with emo but pointing that VERY SMALL mistake out after reading this whole this is disgusting. Your a fucking pig. Get your ass off the internet you bastard and try to make even the slightest bit of sense. Your a waste of time and blog space.
5 Loz // Jun 5, 2008 at 1:01 am
Actually, if you look back to the roots of Emotional Hardcore, (Rites of Spring, Minor Threat to name but a few) you’ll discover that Straight Edge tattoos is very relevant. Plus, a lot of fans or modern ‘emo’ (if you must) bands are indeed straight edge.
Also, a point to be considered; there is no shame in continuing to like music just because it has become popular. Music elitists would have us believe that bands have to spend all their lives on indie labels and never crave any recognition in order to be truly great. Music that is good can come from anywhere, in any form.
Sometimes, for those lucky bands, music that is good…sells. And I bet you any money MCR have sold a lot more albums than you.
Awesome article, much love!xx
6 Serkan // Jun 6, 2008 at 1:02 pm
They are decent. When I first saw them over here there was a real mixed crowd, old, young, black, white, brown, grey but then dare go to another show a few years later and all those little ankle biters are crying in the corner (seriously!!), something happened somewhere at some point. Fact.
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