How To Start An Emo Band In 5 Simple Steps
Let’s face it, if you’re emo you’ll want to start a band in order to express your angst in the most frighteningly inarticulate ways possible. Now I’m ashamed to admit it but I spend a lot of time hanging around Myspace, torturing myself by visiting profiles of amateur emo bands.
I’m informed that this is a real emo band as opposed to a bunch of lepers sentenced to community service in the circus.
It’s kinda like staring a car wreck in the vague hope of spotting some bodies. Only much less irritating (although the start-up music on most of the profiles sounds similar to the cutting device that frees people from the wreckage).
So this got me thinking, what is it that makes an emo band? Is there a way to fast track everything and create a band within a day? Well yes, and here’s how.
1 ) Think of a name
That’s right kid it’s time to think of a name that encapsulates how you’ve always felt throughout your life. The more pretentious your name is the better. Try to make it as long as possible too, remember you want to make it a challenge for fan girls to carve your name into their arms (unless they’re freakishly tall, then either way you’re friar tucked).
Here are a few teasers to get your creative juices flowing..
Razors of Isolation
The Super-Unhappy Lesbians from Mars
The Ball Experiment’s Went Wrong
Cut My Balls Off, Mother
Vodka Tears In Dresden
My Cambodian Colostomy Bag
Fall Out Wank
Acidic Three-O
2) Get a Myspace
Now that you have name it’s important you create a Myspace. Hold your goddamn horses! What about members? What about actually being able to play your instrument? None of that matters. Make it your task to add as many troubled young women to your profile as possible (fat girls with acne and names like Princess Lobotomi). Remember to upload a picture of yourself lying face down on a bed dicking your guitar.
No matter how shit your band is, Tom will ALWAYS be your friend.
Next, spend about a decade compiling your list of musical influences. Only list artists you’ve never heard before otherwise you’re cheating. If you can’t think of anymore artist, make up some! Do you really think people will check to see if your favorite bands are real?
Before moving on add more content to your profile that’ll prove how rock n roll you really are. Your bourbon of choice is Jack Daniels. You want to live fast and die young. Shit happens, so does heroin. You hurt yourself to get pain out. No one will ever understand. Ever. You hate conformists. The religious right sucks ass, as does Bush and the war in Iraq. You hate patriots. You shit on golf courses to raise funds for the feminists. Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not yours.
OK you get the idea. Spend as long as possible on developing your Myspace. It’s more important than actually learning how to play your instrument.
3) Recruiting members
Guitarist
You’re the guitarist and lyricist. Get father to buy you the most expensive model possible from the music store and immediately set about destroying it. Take your razor to it’s body. peel off the paintwork and weep about how you feel as if the instrument is a kindred spirit. Never learn to play it properly, your guitar is for kicking remember? All you need are power chords (if anyone says anything different they’re a Nazi, out to shit on your freedom of expression).
As for the lyrics, write about the alienation you felt as a child and how your parents are complete and utter bastards. Be deliberately ambiguous about your sexuality as this will be a serious turn-on for the emo chicks. Rhyming couplets are cool too, remember? It’s impossible to overuse them. Take this as an example
“I feel I need a cock
As my rock
And as I head
Into the dead
It was said
By Fred
That God is Dead.”
A work of art or what? Be sure to show any prospective girlfriends your lyrics when they are around at yours. If there’s a chance for a shag tell them that ‘no-one’s ever understood me like this’ before unleashing the veined serpent from His cotton quarters.
Drummer
Your drummer should preferably suffer from Parkinson’s disease and at least one major heart aliment. Rhythm must be an alien concept to him (unless he’s Catholic of course). He must pull bizarre sex faces as he plods through your setlist. He must stop at key parts in the number and enter back in 3 minutes after everyone else has. He should be as ugly as a septic cock and smell twice as bad (he’ll make you look cute!).
If only all drummers were this cute….
Bassist
Ideally the bassist should be a failed guitarist with no social skills or talent. He should be someone that you’d feel having a homosexual relationship with so he must be just about as ugly as you (or preferably uglier). Just remind him to clean his ass before each gig.
Singer
It doesn’t matter if he sounds like a ballbag slapping against a rusty radiator, he simply must have a fringe to die for. Besides he can always get singing lessons! He should be cuter than you but unable to play guitar (which shouldn’t stop him holding one). His poetry must suck even worse than yours otherwise there will be a constant power struggle over who writes the words.
4) Practice
Now that you’re a band you should try to practice. Most ’successful’ emo band practices result in squabbling sessions over who has the coolest looking instrument. You’ll be lucky if you manage to produce one decent riff per practice (and if you do it’ll be a direct ripoff of a Rancid B-side).
Invite all of the geeky girls from school to your band practices and spend all of your time looking up their skirts rather than rehearsing.
Ultimately, emo bands have no time for practice, which would explain why they sound so goddamn awful. Worry more about organizing live performances and coping with your own terminal angst.
5) Gigging
Start gigging as soon as possible, especially if you’re hideously unprepared. Remember this is rock n roll! The performance will take care of itself and if it doesn’t you can always kill yourself on stage. If the crowd do start booing, bludgen yourself to death with your guitar.
Aim for your mouth. Ideally you want to smash all of your teeth out and have them rolling about on-stage like white Skittles. Kick them at the audience in disgust. Run over to the drumkit, pick up a cymbal and try to decapitate yourself. If it doesn’t work try to at least sever one or more of your limbs with it.
If you’re still alive by the end of the gig, wail at the audience like a bloated, toothless vampire with a blood beard and blame them for killing you. You must be as hysterical as a drunken mother is to her troublesome child when she’s on the verge of a breakdown. End the show by ordering the drummer to fart in your face. If he’s as smelly as the average percussionist you’ll be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life.
6) Inspiration
That’s all kid, the rest’s up to you! In the meantime, here are a few emo bands that you might want to check out for inspiration.
Aslan’s Volition formed in Fort Wayne, Indiana after all 6 members met at a YMCA-organized gangbang. They specialize in creating music that sounds like a drunken tiger collapsing down a steel staircase.
I don’t know very much about this band, other than they named themselves in tribute to the late Elvis Presley. Apparently they are currently on hiatus thanks to the drummer’s addiction to scat porn.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
wow. you rock. this is not sarcasm, by the way.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:05 am
um no ok go is not an emo band. and why do u think that u know so much about emo anyway? if you dont like emo ppl then why are u even worried about the music or what we wear or do?
July 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
look, that’s not emo and i honestly think/know that this is made by a hater to
kill all emos without him having to get his hands bloody
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:11 am
Emo sucks what is your problem?
September 10th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I find the comments more hilarious than the articles themselves. Are people really taking this site seriously?
October 13th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
thats funny shit
http://tallyterror.blogspot.com/
November 15th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
What the
this is total crap
i hate it when people frickin hate us and don’t even admit to it, god seriously get a life
but thanks for sharing your destane