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A slight exaggeration, perhaps. I very much doubt that the first caveman to consider what a nice noise rocks made when cracked on his enemies' skulls knew what he was starting. The feud is probably about as old as my interest in alternative music - three or four years - and is rarely formally acknowledged. It's more a quiet, slow-burning hatred born of mutual indifference: a feud like that between Britain and France [who never forgave us for the Hudred Years' War], rather than like that between America and Russia [who never forgave each other for the Cold War]. Continuing with the military metaophor, the British and the French signed the Entente Cordiale, but that doesnt mean they immediately got on: emo and ska are technically united by not being pop, but that doesn't mean they like each other any more. And like the British booze-cruisers and the French school-trippers, members of one occasionally take a brief detour into enemy territory, to return flush with the personal victory that comes of having explored the barren lands beyond their personal borders and brought back souveniers; case in point, the way there is always one skinny boy with all-black clothes and glasses at ska gigs. Like the British and French, they like to think they have nothing at all in common; unlike the British and French, they genuinely don't. A brief and by no means exhaustive comparison of the two reveals the following differences to fight over:
EMO vs SKA =
guitars vs. horns
lyrics vs. tune
side-parting vs. bed head
I Hate Myself And Want To Die vs. I Think I'll Have Myself A Beer
intense head-bobbing vs. skanking
pessimism vs. optimism
unintentionally hilarious vs. trying too hard to be funny
straight-edge vs. drunk
Kurt Cobain vs. Bob Marley
thick black-rimmed glasses for medical reasons vs. thick black-rimmed glasses for fashion reasons
sulking vs. drowning sorrows
black vs. pink
obscure vintage band t-shirts vs. crap slogans
star-cross'd lovers vs. fuck buddies
Marlbro Reds vs. badly-rolled spliffs
hair gel vs. Black And White wax
trucker cap vs. beanie
In fact, the only thing I can find in common between the two is a love of Converse All-Stars, and even that's tempered by the fact that everyone in the Western world appears to own a pair. I think, were anybody to seriously attempt to unite the two genres in their pure form (none of this ska-core/ emo-core/ post-hardcore crap), the result would be disastrous. The musical equivalent of those chemistry experiments where you mix two innocuous substances and end up with a puff of green smoke and an explosion that blows the lab doors off it's hinges: or, possibly, the total opposite. Mix two innocuous substances, expect a reaction, and end up with nothing but a mocking mess. The two styles would cancel each other out totally: we would have lift muzak where once two mighty genres stood. |
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