Josh Dempsey

“Buddy Nielsen: One reason I think 2000s emo got so big was because it was kind of inappropriate to have party music as the background to two wars and probably the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. The response was music that captured the energy of the youth, which was this fucked-up world we're living in . . . In 2008, there's a generation of kids that may not remember 9/11 in the same way, and it switches to a different style of music that reflects the zeitgeist. It's just what happens with popular music.”
― Chris Payne, Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008

“Maria Sherman: ...I also wonder if people who are loyalists to this music--ride or die Warped Tour every year--I imagine at a certain point they were sick of seeing bands they love blow up to an enormous size and no longer feel like their own. Not that you have to be younger to experience that but . . . there's such a feeling of ownership of this music that you connect to deeply. And after a while it's like, 'Okay, well it got too big. I'm out.”
― Chris Payne, Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008

“Matthew Ismael Ruiz: ...There might be people to this day who think In Reverie is important, but to me it was important in understanding the way music fandom works. I felt like they had a responsibility to not be awful because they were my favorite band, they were some of my friends' favorite band. Like, I can't even go to your show, because you'll play most of this new record, and I'll get maybe three or four songs that I actually like. This sucks.
But the more distance you put from that, you realize, how can you expect a band to stay the same way they were when they were fifteen, sixteen? Or twenty? Or twenty-three, twenty-five?”
― Chris Payne, Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008

“Zoom in and obsess. Zoom out and observe. We get to choose.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being