There’s an ongoing theme in Stuff You Will Hate that basically suggests that all awesome or lulziest music has its origins in suburbs. A lot of people want to talk a good game about they’re from [insert major city here], but in reality, they move there after spending hours on Viceland.com, looking Terry Richardson’s awesome tumblr, and picking the local Salvation Army Thrift Store (which is ALWAYS next to a detox center in a strip mall) of everything remotely cool and worn by dead old white women. What’s next than to claim the closest major city as your stomping grounds?
Fortunately, for most of the people that I grew up with, they gave zero fucks about that sort of thing and many of them still live in the suburbs, putting their roots into weekly trips to Best Buy and getting a Costco membership*.
Brier-Terrace is a weird sliver of an unrecognized township in the suburbs of Seattle (basically, if you were in the Bay Area, it would be San Mateo, but with more trees). There’s lots of Asian and white people there and, as is such, it’s the perfect place to create subpar emo, especially in the early 00s!
Kids in the halcyon days of mp3.com and Audiogalaxy had nothing better to do than trade Pedro the Lion or Built to Spill bootlegs and sit there and get all “intellectual” about how Death Cab’s second album was heavily influenced by Kerouac and Sallinger. Unfortunately, these kids started making music. Fortunately, we can look at them 12 years later and laugh at their attempts to make “art.”
Before I write about the hilarious and awkward white/AZNs bands that make up a majority of this, it’s best if I pay a brief homage to Jake One – acclaimed hip-hop producer (credits include De La Soul and 50 Cent!) and notable crate digger. Dude is from Brier-Terrace, even though his song “Home” from his album, “White Van Music” is about the Central District. Don’t worry, Jake, the 425 will always welcome you back with open arms, homie!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZeRlGP6UHQ]
The OG of telling people he’s from Seattle when he’s actually from Brier-Terrace.
Sweet, sad emo: Autumn Poetry
As far back as I can remember, a lot of my friends from Brier-Terrace (I grew up in Lake City, but because all Filipinos know each other, this place became my third home, behind Rainer Valley) LOVED this shit out of this band called Autumn Poetry, made up of two honky twins, a Korean drummer, and a Chamorro bassist. They were pretty much the first Brier-Terrace emo band. In fact, almost every band that I can think of in the mid-00s from the region has ties to this band somehow.
Like most high school bands, they had pretty embarrassing lyrics and aped a popular band that, at this point, is wildly dated. At their apex, they did their damndest to rip off Sunny Day Real Estate and had an awesome song called “Scars,” where one (or both?) of the twins would just yell “SCARS!” over and over again. Lol @ middle class white kids from a stable family singing about emotional trauma.
Even though there’s all sort of jokes to be made, there’s a bunch of bands that probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the inception of this band. Wait, is that a good thing? Let’s be posi and assume that it’s a good thing!
They dumped the AZNs and looked like MySpace version of an emo band…wait…
Screamo-ing: Shoes For Imelda
I’m biased in this inasmuch as I was the bassist in the earliest version of this band and the dude who went on to be their long running bass player is one of my favorite honkies (pause) ever. When you have a band with Filipino dudes who love Jimmy Eat World and Deftones, and start a band in 2000, it’s pretty much a given that it’s going to sound like a fourth generation version of Finch, with vaguely Christian lyrics (because a few of these dudes are into Jesus). My man Sergeant D always talks about how srs Four Year Strong got when they dumped their keyboard player and breakdowns, but this band picked up a keyboard player and got SUPER serious. Infighting and general disinterest to play to 30 people spelled the end of this band…
Abandoned factories are to screamo band photos as brick walls are to Ramones album covers
Yeah x 3mo (see what I did there?): Mon Frere
In short, the AZN chick keyboard player, the white guitar player, and the drummer from Shoes for Imelda formed this tribute to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs called Mon Frere. They were actually pretty popular, but because they shit talked my dudes in SFI, I totally hated them and wrote a song in my shitty hxc band about how they’re like a cocaine-induced nightmare or some shit. Just like in Paramore and, to some extent, Discount, the chick thought she was hot stuff and broke up the band to pursue a solo career, which translated into her jockeying a desk with my ex-girlfriend.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRilec--tL8]
Of all these bands, Mon Frere are the only ones famous enough to have a legit music video back when MTV stopped airing videos.
There are a few bands that are way more noteworthy that I’m going to gloss over: The Myriad (who won some MTV/Mountain Dew contest against better bands like Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer and I Am the Avalanche) and Gatsby’s American Dream (their OG drummer was from Brier), but I think that the best emo came from these bands above. They were equal parts hilarious and entertaining. Even though this might come off as shit talk, that was pretty much the most fun I had as a teen because I didn’t know any better.
[*Costco pizza is super bomb]
Is local emo better than mainstream emo? Does anyone care anymore? Why were high school bands better when dial-up internet was all the rage?
Cringeworthy, entertaining & informative all at once. A+ (I could go on about Chamorro’s being Flips who want to be Poly’s but I don’t have the strength to be offensive at the moment).
My friends and I had to stop buying the take-out Costco pizzas because we could never find an oven big enough to cook them in :(
Also, posing in a carwash after closing for your promo pic is some next level shit.
I scrolled down to see the note about Costco before I continued reading. I just felt like you should know that.
I looked up Chamorro on wikipedia. I just felt like you should know that.
That’s not an abandoned factory; that’s a car wash.
Damn you, I had to struggle to prevent from bursting out roring and waking up my entire famiry. My mind is completely blown. This must be some sort of advanced ironic statement on the concept of taking band photos in cool looking places. No other explanation.
There are no abandoned factories in Snohomish County (via the oldest buildings there being from 1975 and the economy revolving around azns and computers, not white poors who can only do manual labor). I guess a carwash is the grittiest thing they could find.
“That’s not a nun’s laugh, that’s a WHORE’S laugh”
my emo band is from brier…
https://www.facebook.com/silentplanethc
I like ur stuff (srs)…but I do tend to have p shitty taste in muzak
My backyard! <3 seeing snohomish country mentioned on this site.
This post was pretty cool, thx for making it, always like to see new people make them
Good point about the big city jocking
Other notable area residents include:
- KC from Himsa (Brier High class of 1992 or so)
- Everybody from Undertow (including John Pettibone who later sang for Himsa)
- Wil from Aiden (from Northgate, but close enough)
- 3-time UFC champion Randy Couture (from Lynnwood)
- Sergeant D
My pops was good friends with Couture in high school (srs)
Dude is from Brier-Terrace, even though his song “Home” from his album, “White Van Music” is about the Central District
this made me giggle. lol @ desperately clinging to the only part of the Seattle area that’s anywhere close to scary (and truthfully the CD is not actually scary; it would be considered fairly nice by the standards of say Cincinnati)
For srs. I never get hassled down there and my favorite Vietnamese bakery is in the heart. The only time I’ve heard of kids getting mugged are usually hip art students who probably had it coming.
lol: i am actually really digging “autumn poetry” though the name is borderline infuriating.
is the kid dynamite clone SHOOK ONES also from this area? they rule.
@sgt d: I forgot about the pettibone and dave larsen connection! And aldewood zumiez was basically a breeding ground for snoco emo bros.
@jake: Shooks claim Bellingham, but their singer is from lynnwood, so they could also be on this list.
Do the Blood Brothers have anything to do with this?
Super embarrassed at jocking that band hard in the early 2000′s. Saw them like 3 times. Oof.
Blood Brothers are from a different suburb. The brown dudes in the band are friendly and they have one good record IMO. That’s the nicest thing I can say about those turbos.
I’ve been recently diggin’ up those early 00′s pre-fashion emo/post-hc/indie/whatever bands. If anybpdy can rec me somethinf (which can downloaded), I would be p happy.
WOULD that fine Asian Yeah Yeah Yeah’s girl.
But wouldn’t trade the latinas in my area for anything <3
WOULD pumpkin patch bukkake?
http://www.ugo.com/web-culture/mon-frere
Dang, she was a sif?
Was about to 2nd Parker’s comment, no so sure now
Gets worse…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32102828@N07/7174820999/
I prlly still WOULD dough…espclly if she brought me sum JckinBox Tacos & eggrolls.
Lbs. restrictions is a young man’s game….old honeybadgers don’t give a fuck
Holy fucking shit – MAN THE HARPOONS!
I’ve heard fat girls give the best head because they’re hungry… can old honeybadger confirm this?
Historiclly this wuz trOO, but the current/unfortunate Whale Mantra of “my fat ass iz bOOtiFuLL” has ruined the old “try harder/up for anything because I’m a Fatty with low self-esteem” standard. :(
Guessing this espclly trOO for dis narwhal, –> “I an Arteest. I steeell aZ bOOtifUll az when Jenny Craig wuz my Goil!!. I spechul snowflakey! Ewwww, head is soo Groce!”
Could we be seeing the rise of suburban pride, as it becomes painfully obvious that the vast majority of any given music scene has zero claim to metropolitan authenticity?
Title Fight and Stick Together rep Wilkkes Baar p hard, maybe these emo bands rep Brier Terrace, NFG with Coral Springs Florida….
I have always repped Everett/Lynnwood/Edmonds/425 in general, and 100% non-ironically. I genuinely love the Sno-King area, and miss it every day– Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace and Edmonds are some of my favorite places on the planet <3
we <3 u 2 sarge
inb4 More2Pride bro fist u for reppin Lynnwood, even though its the other one
Holy shit Zolof the rol and roll destroyer. I miss that band so fucking much.
Gatsbys American Dream fuckin’ rule.
Not rly sure why it’s a sin to claim x city as your place when you live in x suburb. Via me living in a suburb of a city and being 5 miles from downtown
Mountlake Terrace is, like, 8 minutes from downtown Seattle. So therefore a completely invalid place to call home!
Love Mountlake Terrace. I still rep Funtasia’s batting cages.