Rock and roll rebuttal.

Local non-emo band I Promise To See You Die And I Will.

I received a rather irate email late last night from a young man named Natty Oglethorpe, who is the singer and principal songwriter in the local band I Promised To See You Die And I Will. He took exception with the fact that in yesterday's post on the local rock scene, my assistant Marisha referred to them as "weiney screamo drama queens." In the spirit of the sort of open debate that the "blogosophere" is meant to foster, I offered him space to make a rebuttal. Here is an excerpt from the email he sent.

Your assistant Marisha's ignorant remarks about my band were totally unfounded and unfair. IPTSYDAIW are not "weiney" and certainly not "drama queens." As far as being "screamo," that's just like Marisha to make such a ill-informed judgement. We have been playing our dramatic, engaging brand of music longer than any of these labels like "screamo" and "emo" have even existed. Our music draws on a wide variety of non-emo influences, like the Smiths, the Cure, and Morrissey's solo projects up to "Vauxhall and I." Anyway, if you want to talk about weineys, talk to Billy English Major or whatever his name is in the October Revolutionists. There's a tea-quaffing, lit-crit-reading-for-fun purebreed pinkies-up weiney if there ever was one.

I showed this email to Marisha, who rolled her eyes and told me that she and Oglethorpe dated for several months, and she is now dating Billy Draeger,who is the lead singer and songwriter for the popular local indie band the October Revolutionists, hence Oglethorpe's unkind remarks. Who knew my assistant Marisha was such a rock and roller!

On a personal note, I don't know why bands have such long, complicated names these days. Back in my college rock and roll days, all my favorite bands had short, simple names like The The, R.E.M. and U2. In fact, it is because of U2's hard-hitting anthems of social justice like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" that I was inspired to public service to begin with!

At any rate, this has all been a fascinating trip into the world of local rock music, but with all due respect, I hope this will be the last words on this particular subject. I ask you, the reader: is an online blog really the place for petty arguing about moderately well-known, highly genre-specific local rock bands?