When Ozzy Osbourne declared himself “the prince of fucking darkness” on a 2002 episode of The Osbournes, he may as well have simultaneously relinquished the title. The MTV hit quickly dissolved 30 years’ worth of mystique and danger as it revealed him to be in reality a doddering old family man. But when Ozzy rose to fame in the ’70s, every other rock star had an interest in the occult (or at least Hobbits), and heavy metal was still genuinely thought of as the province of Satanists, not nerdy gearheads. But who could be pop music’s reigning prince of darkness in the era of rock star transparency, when every famous musician has a whiny MySpace blog? Since it’s Halloween, we decided to think of a few options:
The one about the Hold Steady playing a couple of shows in Europe as a support act for Counting Crows, or the one about the new Cure single featuring remixes by 30 Seconds To Mars’ Jared Leto, My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, AFI’s Jade E. Puget, and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump? More »
Many people find it hard to tell the great from the godawful when it comes to 21st-century mainstream rock. To help figure out which is which, here’s “Corporate Rock Still Sells,” where Al “GovernmentNames” Shipley examines what’s good, bad, and ugly in the world of rock and roll. This time around, he gives the year’s rock charts a midway-mark overview.
For the last ten years, former Get Up Kid and current My Chemical Romance tour keyboardist James Dewees has been releasing albums as Reggie & The Full Effect, cavalierly tossing earnest anthems alongside joke tracks credited to Finnish metal band Common Denominator and ’80s dance-pop nightmare Fluxuation. Rumors are spreading that Dewees is now a full-time member of My Chemical Romance, and his decision to say put Reggie to rest after a final tour is only making the speculation louder. Is this tour really the last chance old school Vagrant-heads will have to hear “Congratulations Smack And Katy” and “Mood 4 Luv?” (And man, does the phrase “old school Vagrant-heads” make me feel weird.)
It looks like England’s emo protest movement has achieved something after all. In the Daily Mail coverage of the recent suicide of Sam Leeson, a 13-year-old British My Chemical Romance fan, phrases like “emo suicide cult” are noticeably absent, replaced by references to online bullying the teenager received due to his taste in clothes and bands. Hannah Bond’s “emo initiation” scars are randomly brought up at the end of the piece, but the rest of the article is noticeably more sympathetic to sad children wearing eyeliner, even describing YouTube videos from friends damning Bebo bullies for their treatment of the kid. Maybe the staff doesn’t want to have to risk hearing a youth choir sing “The Black Parade” at them again.
Despite the Daily Mail‘s claims that its reportage on the “emo suicide cult” was “balanced, restrained, and above all, in the public interest,” a small herd of darkly dressed teenagers jumped around and sang My Chemical Romance in a creepy “We love you, Conrad” unison within shouting distance of the paper’s offices on Saturday. A group wearing V For Vendetta masks can be seen, and I’d like to believe that they were the members of My Chemical Romance themselves, watching over their vulnerable flock and debating whether or not to call for their throngs of fans to kill themselves as proof of their devotion to the Black Parade.
