Pop punk: reviving a dead scene

Pop punk is one of the most storied, oversaturated genres the music world has to offer. Things have come so far from the days of the Descendants and Screeching Weasel being lambasted for being too poppy to play hardcore shows in the 1980's. Somewhere along the way, this thing called Green Day happened and broke the world wide open. Blink-182 followed shortly thereafter and brought with them the New Found Glorys and the Simple Plans and the Sum 41s and all of their many spiky haired clones.

In the early 2000's, it seemed like every single band coming out of California, Florida or New Jersey were hocking the same infectious, bouncy, three chord songs about ex-girlfriends and road trips. It was a very exciting time to be a music fan. As with everything that becomes popular, you eventually get to a point where the imitators have overrun the masters and everything just becomes one big messy, watered down cluster with nautical star tattoos and Dickies shorts.

It got a little rough back there. Somewhere along the line, "emo" morphed from Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World to Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. How the exact definition of the word became so muddled and transfigured is beyond this writer, but eventually we all had to accept that the new school bands were all just going to be shoved under one big blanket and labeled as "emo." Whether they actually deserved to be called "post-hardcore" or "pop punk" was irrelevant. Pop punk as we knew had been killed and buried: Blink went on hiatus, Green Day became mega stars, Midtown and the Starting Line made weird experimental records and Good Charlotte just started to suck. It seemed like maybe the glory days were over, and one of the more honest and endearing groups of bands the punk umbrella had to offer were all but dead and buried.

Luckily, you can't keep a good genre down. Seemingly to coincide perfectly with the return of Blink-182, there are a great crop of pop punk bands brewing in the United States as we speak. Those of us who were raised on Drive-Thru Records back catalog, "Take Off Your Pants & Jacket" and "Nimrod" are now of age to start our own bands and hit the road, and the influences are bleeding through nicely.

I'm not talking about the boy bands with guitars movement populated by We the Boys Like Whatever Neon Colored Logo thing either. I'm talking about emotional, gritty, nasally songs about girls. Yes yes, pop punk is back. Bands like Philadelphia's The Wonder Years, Massachusetts' own Transit, New Jersey's Man Overboard and New York's Such Gold are making great records and putting pop punk back into the forefront of the scene. Detroit pop punkers Fireworks even opened for their idols New Found Glory on their Not Without A Fight Tour last year.

There is an honesty and a hunger that was present in those late 90's and early 2000's bands that are present too in the bands mentioned above, and we can see history repeating itself. Massachusetts label Run For Cover Records (home of Fireworks, Man Overboard and Title Fight) is quickly becoming the new Drive Thru, and the bands are banding together and creating killer package tours akin to those that were common in the genre's heyday.

Go to see one of these bands, and the odds are high that there will be four other great bands opening for them, just like Mest or Fenix Tx had back in the day. The American pop punk scene is rebuilding itself, piece by piece, and there are a lot of great new bands to get excited about. If you grew up singing along to Midtown's "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" CD in your room, it's time to rediscover pop punk. There are some truly awesome students of the genre that would love to have you as a new fan.