The Loop : Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends

Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends (2002)

I highly suggest any of you who were even remotely involved in the early '00's emo/punk scene to see a film called "Bastards of Young". Looking at it from a critical perspective, it's not anything groundbreaking, but it fascinates me in that it serves as a time stamp to that culture before it was completely inundated by the internet. The same goes for the book, "Nothing Feels Good : Punk Rock, Emo and Teenagers" by Andy Greenwald. These were documented in a pre-MySpace world! None of these bands were justifying their existance by their friend count or the amount of plays they got, which I feel has led the music industry down a shallow path. While those kinds of things are a great monitor of a band's reach, I'm far more compelled by how they interact with the fans. And in the Warped Tour/pop punk / neon wearing scene, you have the opportunity to reach fans who are actively reaching out to YOU. That is, until they get too old and too cool and stand in the back of the venues on their Blackberry's instead of in the front getting trampled (I'm looking in the mirror myself here too, friends) At any rate, I posted the trailer for the film below the TBS video, it's on NetFlix instant play if you're interested.

I bring up this film and my rant because Taking Back Sunday was one of the main bands that was focused on. Their scene began outside of a record store where they were supposed to do an in-store, however were forced outside by the fire-marshall because a fan's mom called the cops when her daughter couldn't get in because of capacity. (seriously) They set up their PA outside and played acoustic to fans in the parking lot, many of which had adorned themselves in tshirts with their favorite songs and favorite lyrics. Their fans were like that across the board, relating so heavily to what were some actually really sadistic lyrics.

But at the risk of falling into a pun, this band thrived because everyone was "Telling All Their Friends" (har har har) It was the word of mouth that that scene thrived on for so many years and Taking Back Sunday was one of the lucky ones to have a really great record to back it up. Say what you will about what a characture the Warped Tour culture may have become, this is a fantastic album.

It was a lot angrier than the happy-go-lucky ska or the heart-on-my-sleeve singer songwriters I was ingesting at the time, almost taking me back with bittersweet (and now infamous) lyrics like "You could slit my throat and with my one last gasping breath I'd apolgize for bleeding on your shirt." Heavy stuff for a young-skewing band.

This band didn't apologize for their anger and sometimes tongue-in-cheek music. It was honest (although occasionally melodramatic) but allowed the listener to just face that sometimes love sucks and people are cruel and no matter how much we try and reason with ourselves, life just happens like that sometimes. At least now there's a soundtrack for it.

I was hoping to find the clip from "Bastards of Young", but no dice. But this has Flava Flav and that's still pretty sweet:


Trailer for "Bastards of Young":