On the book debut by established music writer, Chris Payne, he weaves a tangled web of quotes from bands/artists, writers, and other personalities who made the emo explosion such an exciting time period. Through his exploration of what made this scene so popular through its early days, all the way to the eventual fizzling out of most of these band’s mainstream popularity, he takes this monumental project all in stride with veteran ease. The best way to describe this time period was through the lens of people who were most closely surrounded in this scene, and that’s exactly what Payne did through his vast number of interviews. Where Are Your Boys Tonight? tackles a familiar topic, and yet there’s plenty of stories in these pages that I had never heard anywhere before. From placing the scene juggernauts, My Chemical Romance, on the cover to naming the book after one of Fall Out Boy’s biggest songs, everything clicks perfectly into place through this 464-page opus.
Chris Payne level sets in his introductory essay about the meteoric rise of key bands and personalities in this scene, and makes a few brief remarks in the epilogue and acknowledgement sections, but other than that, he allows these stories to come to life for themselves. Payne could have interjected his voice throughout this oral history to bring additional context to the series of interviews, but he instead chose a more difficult path forward of trying to connect these quotes in a way that invited the reader closer into “the rooms where it happened.” In the end, this choice was the right one, and makes for an ultra-enjoyable reading experience.
One of my favorite quotes, in a book that is filled with so many memorable ones, is when Andy Greenwald describes the moment when Dashboard Confessional won their first MTV Video Music Award: “It felt like a rubber band: How far could you stretch this music, which was predicated on a very intimate connection between performer and audience?” That’s a great analogy to describe the boom of emo; it really felt like every band was becoming larger than life at the exact same moment in time, and the music that has been left behind is still some of my favorite records to date.
The book does have some occasional missteps, but they’re well-hidden. I thought that Gabe Laporta (Midtown/Cobra Starship) was used in the book a bit more than I was originally expecting, since I personally don’t find that his projects had the same trajectory of say Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional. It does a decent job of dealing with band controversies, especially with Brand New, and cautions the reader appropriately when discussing heavier subjects like drug use and suicide. Payne explains the reasoning behind this in his introduction, and I found that to be right from the heart.
The highlights of the book are vast. I really enjoyed hearing Geoff Rickly’s takes on bands and albums, and he, in my mind, cemented his status as a legend in the scene because of his insight and dedication to ensuring the music’s longevity. Mikey Way plays an important role in telling the rise of My Chemical Romance, while all the original members of The Used explained the fractured relationship between Bert and Gerard with poise and grace. Pete Wentz is showcased as a larger-than-life persona and pop culture icon in this book, and for good reason: he has always had a great mind on marketing and enabling the music to seem as big as it could be. The quotes from Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional) and Jim Adkins (Jimmy Eat World) are all placed in just the right context to get the best emotional response, while the bickering between Taking Back Sunday and Brand New put me right back into that time period of the music.
Much like in my interview with Chris Payne, where he pitched this book as a collection of stories that many have not heard before, he delivers the goods in a way I was not anticipating when I first sat down to read this. It was a book that I simply couldn’t put down, and it made me remember all of these key bands and records that I needed to revisit to re-capture that spirit of this exciting time period of music. Payne got the best out of each personality in these interviews by making them feel open enough to tell their story, and the book benefits greatly from this trust. Book debuts don’t usually come with this much fanfare, but when the content and execution is this crisp, it’s really hard to not give credit where it’s due. I look forward to seeing wherever Chris Payne decides to take his talents next.