While I usually only dissect media pieces on "emo", I can't resist to a piece that opens with the line, "New Jersey-based emo-goth band My Chemical Romance's depressive point of view is jarring in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings."

 

Apparently, the most over-sensitive person on earth works for The Miami Herald, as evidenced by Evelyn McDonnell's review of the recent My Chemical Romance/Muse show in Miami.

 

Shall we begin?

 

 

''Suffer the children,'' Gerard Way sang Sunday during My Chemical Romance's show at Sunrise's BankAtlantic Center. The New Jersey emo-goth band offered a timely window into the damaged psyche of today's troubled youth. With their macabre costumes and depressive lyrics, the quintet speaks to and for the angst of the post 9/11 generation; the band formed in the wake of that national tragedy.

 

Since when did My Chemical Romance's formation have anything to do with the World Trade Center bombing? Is this woman for real? "The post 9/11 generation"? I'd really like to think that my life is defined by something other than a single tragic event -- which, for the record, I watched happen from my office window, as I worked in NYC at the time. What a grandiose stretch, attaching any lyric from The Black Parade to a six-year-old event. Moving on....

 

Their crowd is the trenchcoat-wearing misfits of high school and beyond, with whom last week's gunman said he identified. But while they sing about violence and the occult, MCR vent and channel their frustrations. ''We'd hate to see any of you think to solve your problems with violence,'' Way said. He closed the first half of the band's show by leading the crowd in a genuinely cathartic, if overwrought, chant of ``I am not afraid to keep on living.''
What? Now, I saw this show in New York, and I don't think I saw a single person in a trenchcoat -- and this was on a freezing night in February. I find it hard to believe there were hordes of people in Flordia in April, wearing trenchcoats. That's not even typical "emo" fashion. Hoodies? Possibly. But trenchcoats? Come on.

 

Further -- the occult? Because of the occasional reference to vampires? I'd like to send this lady to a Cradle of Filth or a Deicide show; then we'll see what she has to say about violence and the occult. And, for the record? That shooter in Virginia did not appear to be a My Chemical Romance fan. What a stretch.

"So it was jarring when the gorgeous, dramatically lit black-and-white cityscape of the first set gave way to a backdrop with a giant ''REVENGE'' surrounded by handguns. The graphic predates the Virginia slayings, but it's time to disarm, not alarm. MCR make the mistake of many so-called alternative acts, merely offering a funhouse reflection of society's ills, not a corrective -- they wallow in gore and death as much as the adults they criticize.

Guess she forgot to do research into the fact that the band's second album was called Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and they have been using the gun imagery for years. By the way -- a single shooting is no reason for the rest of the world to change, particularly a band that had nothing whatsoever to do with the event of a couple of weeks ago.

 

And if she bothered to listen to the lyrics, she'd see they're not "wallowing in gore and death." Well -- maybe death a little -- but not in a glorifying murder sort of way. My Chemical Romance is more about coming to terms with mortality and a fact of all of our lives.

 

There's more, but... just... no. This woman is frustratingly ignorant of both the "culture" surrounding a band like My Chemical Romance, as well as music in general, as she called the opening band, Muse, "U2 wannabes."

 

I sit here, in awe, that someone could be so misguided and miss so many marks, looking for secret meanings and tying unrelated events together.


I'd like to suggest one Evelyn McDonnell look into finding ways to define her life -- and the world around her -- by something other than tragedy, darkness, and despair. There's a difference between celebrating and acknowledging the darker side of the state of the world -- and if one becomes obsessed with it, they're far closer to celebrating it than Gerard's lyrics, or the band's imagery, ever could.

 

Is it just me?