FOB Primer: Part One
Somehow, I’ve been tapped by Miss Kitten to do part of a primer on Fall Out Boy. Now, I’ve been a fan of this band for… I don’t know. Six months? So I am sure there are folks even in this comm better equipped to do this than I. I think I was asked mainly because the mod a) likes my style, b) thinks I am a better fan then I am, and c) is unable to form a coherent thought since she is seeing the band on SATURDAY.
What I do have is an INSANE love of the band. All of them. And an insane need for more fic. So this primer will cover the basics of our boys, and how they met, and all the ways we can put them in small spaces with each other.
This is Part One of the primer. addictedkitten (probably with beatpropx's help) will do the images and media Primer later. This is just INFORMATION:
Fall Out Boy is:
Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III - bass, backing “vocals”, Lyrical Poet, 26
Patrick Stump(h) - vocals and lead guitar, Musical Mastermind, 21
Joseph Trohman - rhythm guitar, Spin Doctor, 21
Andrew John Hurley - Drummer Extraordinaire, 26
A pic, and I don't have them labeled, but you can see my icon if you have questions.
A quick band history:
The Spin article is great for backstory, and I’m hoping one of you fine people have it somewhere because if not, I have to SCAN it and that takes TIME. Bah. Most of the info in this thing comes from the articles listed at the bottom, and my rabid recollection of Spin, and the Q&A/journal on the FOB website.
Anyway. In a nutshell:
1994
Pete is a bored 14 year old kid with wealthy parents and a fucked up emo brain. He gives himself a tattoo in study hall and listens to lots of Morrissey and somehow goes hardcore in high school. Hardcore!Pete has really bad hair, and screams a lot. We don’t like to speak of him.
1998
While a fixture in the hardcore scene in Chicago, going from band to band (presumably because he’s both a drama queen AND a pretty crap bass player), he meets Andy. Andy is a great drummer who can’t find a band that sticks.
2001
Joe Trohman is a gawky Jew-fro sporting high school kid who hits the hardcore scene as Pete is being crowned Prince. He worships Pete. He wants to BE Pete. When Pete loses his license, Joe chauffeurs him around the city. When Pete wants to start a new band, Joe says “pick me! I can play! And spin around and stuff!” So Joe’s in. (Edit: It was totally Joe's idea to start FOB. Which make me thing Joe is either a lot smarter or a lot crazier than i used to give him credit for. Also, SO IN LOVE WITH PETE.)
Also 2001
Joe meets a bespeckled kid in a Borders music shop named Patrick Stumph. (I can’t for the life of me figure out how or why they started talking, and what about, and how Joe because friends with him, but its WONDERFUL FODDER for future fic.) Patrick’s dad was a folk singer, and he was raised on music. He spends hours in his room listening and writing and recording on GarageBand. Joe thinks Patrick is really effing cool, and when Pete starts making noise about needing a singer/musician for his new band, Joe volunteers Patrick.
The story of Pete and Patrick’s first meeting is one of those that they have told so much it’s fallen into legend. Pete shows up at Patrick’s house and Patrick is wearing argyle kneesocks and shorts. They jam for about a song and a half before Pete looks at him and something CLICKS, and they are best friends forever. Also, Pete notes that he had to be friends with Patrick just so he could make fun of him every day for the rest of his life. Seriously. Kneesocks. And. Shorts. (Edit: apparently, the socks were, in fact BLACK and the argyle was the SWEATER he was wearing with the shorts and black kneesocks. Which kinda makes this better. or worse. but mostly better in an adorable Patrick way.)
The band needs a drummer, and Andy is tapped “for the time being”. He’s in about two other bands at the same time, for a few months, I think, before he goes full-time Fall Out Boy. The lineup has never changed (unless you count guest bass playing by Mikey Way on Warped Tour. Pete likes to crowd surf.)
The group starts touring before Joe and Patrick are out of high school, and once they are, they basically move into their van. (FIC ALERT! They LIVED out of this VAN for a few YEARS!) Jaime is their driver/bodyguard. Still is, actually. (FOB likes to collect people and keep them around. See: Dirty, Hey Chris, Korean Tom Cruise)
Songwriting becomes this EVENT, wherein Pete writes heartwrenching and/or disturbingly angry and/or perversely sexual poems about his breakups and emails them to Patrick, or slips them under his door. Patrick takes all of Pete’s FEELINGS and makes them into pop songs. Which he sings himself. (FIC ALERT! Fics where Patrick knows all sorts of things about Pete from his lyrics are GOLDEN, people!) Songs arrive at rehearsals pretty much done, as Patrick knows every instrument in the band and recorded half the demo by himself.
Tour Tour Tour. Others have the dates down better than I. They meet MCR and Pete thinks William Beckett is a god, and Ryan of Panic sends Pete a demo and yadda yadda. You know this stuff. Also, this is rambly and I want to move on!
Items of note, by Boy:
Patrick: Patrick hates the spotlight. Patrick hates his hair. Patrick hates his body. Patrick is a girl sometimes. Patrick is also a little musical genius with a healthy sense of self and a great sense of humor. He has no tattoos. He is never ever in the history of EVER seen without a hat. (If you want a perfect body image ‘n’awwww’ moment of Patrick, watch the MTV New Year’s Eve performance of Dance, Dance. Pete tackles him at the end, and his hat falls off ON NATIONAL TV, and Patrick flails like a big flaily thing and throws his arm over his hair. *ruffles what’s left of it *) Is a vegetarian. (Damn you Hurley.)
Patrick and Pete are the kind of friends that make no sense to anyone but each other. That’s what makes them perfect.
Joe: Joe is INSANE onstage. He once gave Pete 4 stitches from throwing his guitar at him in concert. By accident, obviously. Joe drinks. Joe admits to smoking a fair bit of weed. Joe has a nice girl back home in Chicago. Joe thinks kiwi birds are “darling”. Joe likes heavy metal bands. Joe is a vegetarian, but I blame Andy (because otherwise it makes no sense). Joe is an all around Good Guy. There need to be more Joe girls out there…
Andy: I love Andy Hurley. It makes no sense. He is not my type at ALL. Andy is skinny and has long hair and is covered in tattoos. Andy is a RABID VEGAN who has dragged most of his band along with him. Andy doesn’t talk much. However, Andy is also wonderfully erudite when he does talk, and his tattoos are incredibly hot, and he’s been friends with crazy Pete Wentz for eight years, so that has to count for something in the loyalty column. According to Pete, he exists only on Mountain Dew and potato chips, which I support. Also, I think he can kick my ass. And he’s the ladies man of the tour, if you believe that. Which I FIRMLY DO. (Ask Sky and I to tell you about the AU in which he shares an apartment with Trohman and bangs every girl in the greater Chicago area.)
Pete: There isn’t much to say about Pete that he hasn’t said himself. He’s a GOD of the internet, and replies to all the Q&A at the FOB website himself. Pete is a rare combo of eager puppy and Tasmanian devil, with a dash of emo heartbreak thrown in. He had a good life, and loves his parents, and knows he’s lucky. He takes Xanax. He takes pills to sleep. During the recording of FUCT, he took a handful of Atavan in his sister’s car in the Best Buy parking lot near his house. He called his mom to say he loved her, and fell asleep. He was in the hospital for a week. Now he’s in some serious therapy. He still lives at home.
No notes on Pete’s sexuality. I’ll let him deal with that: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gdgw0aReD8U
A handful of quotes by Pete about his boys:
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
updates for the fellas who arent as romantically involved with the internet as i am:
so joe just bought a house. he is currently filling it with odds and ends and beautiful babies. i think he just got endorsed by washbourn guitars and i hear he is building some insane axe for all your pretty mouths to "oooh" and "ahhhhh" at. i am currently trying to convince him to grow the fro back- i think it would increase his superpowers. maybe start a petition so we can get this thing rolling.
andrew john hurley is working on a comic book with our friend tyler. from what i read of it looks pretty insane. he pretty much owns the city of milwaukee by now. he sustains his sweet little figure on a strict diet of mountain dew and potato chips. ladies, he is always looking for new additions to his myspace top eight- sike. but really he is designing a new drum kit with c&c drums for the black clouds tour.
p.m.s. is splitting his time between the hushsound record and the gym class heroes record. both sound sickmoshbro. he is still cute as a button in case you were wondering. if your lucky you can see him running around the suburbs of chicago or new york city rifling through records to add to his intense vinyl collection.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
i heard fall out boy on the radio for pretty much one of the first times ever last night. it made me once again realize that 99 percent of the reason anyone will ever like this band is because patrick has the best voice on the planet. that kid is the golden ticket.
Friday, November 18, 2005
fall out boy friend appreciation day:
andy: ive known andy the longest of anyone in fall out boy. i can set my clock by this kid. he comes off as the quietest member but when he's around people he knows he is the loudest- many nights i have been woken up by him screaming in the front lounge. he is one of the few kids i know who is still vegan sxe- he lives and dies by his beliefs. he also looks like animal when he plays drums. id trust any secret ive ever had with him forever. ladies watch out when hes around. hehe.
joe: joe is actually the kid who started fob. it was his brilliant idea to get all of us maniacs together and he introduced me and patrick. he tends to be the glue that holds it all together. he is also pretty much the most interesting part of a fall out boy live show. i, with everyone in the crowd often find myself watching this kid spin around and kick holes in walls. ive also been in way too many sketchy situations with this kid, where we can only look at each other and laugh. including the time we got in a huge fight at a party at his apartment which resulted in some asshole getting a bottle broken over his head. i plead the fifth on anymore knowledge. but i know i could come to joe with any problem ive ever had.
patrick: probably my best friend in the whole world. we can finish eachothers sentences. its strange cause ive never had a relationship like the one we have with a friend, ever. people try to make a big deal of him and my interactions and relationship. but honestly at the end of the day when the spotlights and flashes go away this kid is still gonna be here, and we'll still be friends. i could give a fuck what you say, this is one of the only people in the world that i would take a bullet for. and he has more talent in his little finger than i have in my entire body.
Other people to know:
Hey Chris: of askheychris fame. Friend of the band from way back, he’s Hey Chris because of the song “Grenade Jumper” where they tell him they love him a lot for being their only friend. It’s funny now, since Chris and Pete had a SERIOUS falling out a few months back over the notion that Pete tried to steal Chris’s girl. Which he probably did.
Dirty: FOB roadie. COMPLETELY INSANE. Has Pete’s name tattooed on his toes, and Pete himself BRANDED his own initials into Dirty’s ass with a coat hanger. The man will do anything. I don’t know if I like him, but he’s their own personal court jester.
Korean Tom Cruise: Still does their merch, I think. Still Korean. Still hot.
Glossary:
FBR: Fueled By Ramen. The little label that could. Based in Florida, it has rocketed to fame entirely on the coattails Pete’s plan of world domination. Seem like nice folks.
Decaydance: Pete’s uber-label, and part of FRB. He’s signed a handful of bands so far including Panic and the Hush Sound. (TAI is not on Decaydance, much to Pete’s chagrin. Though Pete would then be William’s boss.) Decaydance also puts out clothes and jewelry and soon a new BOOK, written by Pete and William Beckett. I want to pre-order this thing NOW.
Wanggate: Pete + digital camera on his Sidekick + gayness + ego = bad ideas and NAKED PICTURES. (Which, if you haven’t seen them, are awesome. There is a Morrissey poster in his room! Also, Pete has a Morrissey tattoo. It says “There is a light that never goes out.” Gayest man alive, y’all) Wanggate may have seemed like a bad idea, but trust Pete to turn it into gold. From “Team Naked Pics” t-shirts, to a stint on MTV, to Best Week Ever, to an article in the New York Times (SEE BELOW AND THANK YOU SKY), if you didn’t know Pete before he put his penis on the internet, you certainly do now.
Articles:
The FOB official band history: http://www6.falloutboyrock.com/falloutboy/bio.php
Rolling Stone (A MUST READ, if just for Patrick cursing a lot and talking about his weight): http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9363682/lets_hear_it_for_fall_out_boy?rnd=1144153984569&has-player=true
Scans of the SPIN article can be found here: http://drop-a-heart.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=60
I also give you schuyler’s review of the article on her music website: (Note the bit with the COOKIES! He lives at HOME! Also, COOKIES!)
Fall Out Boy: It's a Holiday in Suburbia - The splash photo is of the band around a dinner table set for Thanksgiving. Patrick has apparently been eating mashed potatoes with his hands, Joe's hands are full of stuffing, but the best part of the photo is all the way to the right, where Pete (who appears to have also poured gravy over the cranberry jelly) is drinking directly from the gravy boat and Andy is looking on as if to say, "Oh god, don't tell me you're ... that's disgusting!" Please do not laugh, but Megan and I just might fall in love with this band. Pete Wentz would sound calculating if his masterplan wasn't so exactly what I would do in his shoes. He's the sort of genius that's learned from Livejournal and Baby Phat and all the rest. And then it's just cuteness! The article is written from the inside, as it were, explaining his schemes and plans and his dark sides for what they are, but you still can't help but like him. And then, on the other side of the coin, you have to feel a little bad for the rest of the band (Patrick especially) for living in his shadow. But I must admit that I like Pete for admitting that his life wasn't particularly hard and he was depressed and gothy because he was bored. The last bit is so wonderful that I must excerpt. "After a time, Mrs. Wentz [Pete still lives with his parents] brings out cold drinks and a box of cookies. Soon, our chat is interrupted for good by a trio of fans who have set up camp just on the other side of the front gate. Wentz gives me a slight eye-roll, then steels himself. He knows what he has to do. It's something that Jay-z -- with all his street hustling and international fame -- has surely never done. With a giant smile, Wentz walks over and opens the gate. The girls look like they're about to faint. And then, Pete Wentz, their new hero, says, "You guys want a cookie?"
A very rare Patrick only audio interview!:
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/04/fall_out_boy_co.html
NYTimes: reprinted here verbatim, as the times site wants us to pay to see it, and I love you too much for that.
The Glamour (Sigh, Whine) of Heartbreak
by Kelefa Sanneh
NYT, March 26, 2006
Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic high-school kids, emo bands are everywhere; plaintive punk has become the soundtrack of white adolescence. Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic downloaders, sexually explicit images of celebrities are everywhere, too. And last week these two trends finally collided, as Web sites began posting a series of extraordinarily revealing photographs of Pete Wentz, the bassist and lyricist for the emo band Fall Out Boy.
In one, he is merely looking soulfully at the camera. (It could be a camera phone, a device that seems to have been invented for the express purpose of humiliating celebrities.) But in the most infamous shot, Mr. Wentz is clearly overexposed. These pictures aren't just something for blog readers to snicker about. They also help capture the emergence of a new (maybe not-so-new) kind of rock star. Outspoken and insecure and glamorous (is that eyeliner?), Mr. Wentz is one of a handful of stars who represent emo's face. (And as of last week, much more.) A genre that was once mocked for its supposed earnestness is now home to some of the most flamboyant boys in rock 'n' roll.
Fall Out Boy has sold almost two million copies of its current album, "From Under the Cork Tree" (Island Def Jam); the record company celebrated by rereleasing it on Tuesday, with bonus tracks and remixes. And if any emo sex symbol is more popular than Mr. Wentz it is Gerard Way, the singer for My Chemical Romance, an even more exciting band with a similarly successful CD, "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" (Reprise/Warner), as well as a live album due out next week. Mr. Way is more theatrical than Mr. Wentz: his songs are more turbulent, and he wears enough makeup to blur the line between beauty queen and corpse. Thanks to them and dozens more, emo bands are doing something unlikely: they're reviving the fierce, fey spirit of glam rock, complete (sometimes) with eyeliner and lipstick.
This isn't the second coming of glam, though - it's more like the third or the ninth. In "Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music" (University of Michigan Press), Philip Auslander assays the music and imagery of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry and others. He carefully (almost apologetically) notes that "glam offered no substantial challenge to the conventions of rock as a traditionally male-dominated form." And yet he shows how these heavily made-up British rock stars played with sex and sexuality without forsaking rock 'n' roll machismo.
The book doesn't follow glam to Los Angeles, where it was reborn - tougher, meaner, straighter - in the 1980's. For the members of Mötley Crüe, Poison and many more, makeup and hairspray and tight pants were merely part of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, alongside alcohol and drugs and, most of all, groupies. Famously obsessed with "girls, girls, girls," these hunters dressed up like their prey.
Like Mr. Wentz, some of those 80's stars have had private moments made public. But unlike Mr. Wentz, Tommy Lee (from Mötley Crüe) and Bret Michaels (from Poison) seemed not altogether unproud of their sudden notoriety. Then again, their situations were different from his: each was caught in bed with a curvy blonde. (The same one, in fact.)
By contrast, the Pete Wentz photographs constitute a masterpiece of emo porn. For starters, he is alone. He looks sad. And you can glimpse a record in the background: it seems to be Morrissey's ultra-melancholy single, "Everyday Is Like Sunday." When Mr. Wentz finally responded to the pictures, he did so with a fascinating note on the Fall Out Boy Web site. There was a trace of self-loathing when he wondered why anybody would want to see pictures of some "dirty boy." And instead of bragging or threatening (he says the images were stolen), he added a provocative afterthought. ("OMG! gaaah. i forgot the most important part.") He said he was upset that Chloe Dao had won the fashion reality show "Project Runway," instead of Santino Rice: "I could have understood if daniel won but her? blah."
When they're not rooting for Mr. Rice, the boys of emo are obsessed with girls, too, but not in the same way Mötley Crüe was. The central female figure in an emo song is less likely to be a groupie than an ex-girlfriend. In an influential essay called "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't," Jessica Hopper reduced the genre to its brutal archetype. "Girls in emo songs today do not have names," she wrote, adding, "We leave bruises on boy-hearts but make no other mark." She called the genre "a high stakes game of control - of 'winning' or 'losing' possession of the girl."
Maybe some emo bands have noticed this, too, though they have responded not by repenting but by redoubling, pushing their stylized songs toward hyperbole. They use terms like "sugar" and "honey" to underscore arch lyrics about boys who claim to hate themselves almost as much as they hate their exes. My Chemical Romance writes grand, crashing allegories full of allusions to death and violence. (The video for "Helena" shows a funeral stocked with choreographed mourners.) And Fall Out Boy's current single is "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More 'Touch Me,' " which matches its ridiculous title (and infectious tune) with hopeful and spiteful lyrics: "I don't blame you for being you/ But you can't blame me for hating it." Deliberately overripe songs like this blur the line between earnest lament and theatrical parody.
There's plenty of anxiety in performances like these: anxiety about being a boy who sings about (and, often, to) girls, as well as a related anxiety about going pop. (These songs are full of self-conscious jokes about selling out.) But if you're going to be on the main stage, you might as well act the part, as many of these singers do. Adam Lazzara, from Taking Back Sunday, is known for treating concert stages like catwalks, prancing and sashaying while singing his lovelorn lyrics.
Meanwhile, emerging bands like Panic! at the Disco (which has a charmless hit with "I Write Sins Not Tragedies") and Aiden have helped ensure that Mr. Way is no anomaly: drawing as well from goth and new wave, they seem to spend just as much time in a dressing room as the members of Mötley Crüe did. (Although they probably find fewer creative uses for it.) And on an impressive new album called, "Heroine" (Epitaph), the members of From First to Last make a big, rousing racket, playing widescreen emo full of screaming horror stories ("Relax, baby, that's a good girl/ You're like my work of art") and suicidal fantasies ("I can't eat anything/ Without shoving my hands down my throat"). If you're wondering, the answer is yes: the lead singer, Sonny Moore, paints his face. Indeed, a recent Alternative Press story found the members sharing a Mötley Crüe moment: taking turns "in the bus bathroom applying their stage makeup."
As Mr. Auslander concedes - and as Mötley Crüe energetically proved - glam imagery needn't upend rock 'n' roll conventions. Maybe it's a mistake to take lipsticked rock stars too seriously. A few emo singers have talked about kissing guys or dating them, but that's not really the point: the genre is still ruled by avowedly straight boys singing about winning and losing girls. Still, no one can claim that these emo boys aren't putting on an enormously entertaining show. Here's hoping that, somewhere in America, a budding pop star is watching it all, and taking all of it much too seriously.
Fan sites:
http://brandnewfashion.com/
http://www.drop-a-heart.com/index2.php
Pete’s buzznet site: http://clandestine.buzznet.com/user/
What I do have is an INSANE love of the band. All of them. And an insane need for more fic. So this primer will cover the basics of our boys, and how they met, and all the ways we can put them in small spaces with each other.
This is Part One of the primer. addictedkitten (probably with beatpropx's help) will do the images and media Primer later. This is just INFORMATION:
Fall Out Boy is:
Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III - bass, backing “vocals”, Lyrical Poet, 26
Patrick Stump(h) - vocals and lead guitar, Musical Mastermind, 21
Joseph Trohman - rhythm guitar, Spin Doctor, 21
Andrew John Hurley - Drummer Extraordinaire, 26
A pic, and I don't have them labeled, but you can see my icon if you have questions.
A quick band history:
The Spin article is great for backstory, and I’m hoping one of you fine people have it somewhere because if not, I have to SCAN it and that takes TIME. Bah. Most of the info in this thing comes from the articles listed at the bottom, and my rabid recollection of Spin, and the Q&A/journal on the FOB website.
Anyway. In a nutshell:
1994
Pete is a bored 14 year old kid with wealthy parents and a fucked up emo brain. He gives himself a tattoo in study hall and listens to lots of Morrissey and somehow goes hardcore in high school. Hardcore!Pete has really bad hair, and screams a lot. We don’t like to speak of him.
1998
While a fixture in the hardcore scene in Chicago, going from band to band (presumably because he’s both a drama queen AND a pretty crap bass player), he meets Andy. Andy is a great drummer who can’t find a band that sticks.
2001
Joe Trohman is a gawky Jew-fro sporting high school kid who hits the hardcore scene as Pete is being crowned Prince. He worships Pete. He wants to BE Pete. When Pete loses his license, Joe chauffeurs him around the city. When Pete wants to start a new band, Joe says “pick me! I can play! And spin around and stuff!” So Joe’s in. (Edit: It was totally Joe's idea to start FOB. Which make me thing Joe is either a lot smarter or a lot crazier than i used to give him credit for. Also, SO IN LOVE WITH PETE.)
Also 2001
Joe meets a bespeckled kid in a Borders music shop named Patrick Stumph. (I can’t for the life of me figure out how or why they started talking, and what about, and how Joe because friends with him, but its WONDERFUL FODDER for future fic.) Patrick’s dad was a folk singer, and he was raised on music. He spends hours in his room listening and writing and recording on GarageBand. Joe thinks Patrick is really effing cool, and when Pete starts making noise about needing a singer/musician for his new band, Joe volunteers Patrick.
The story of Pete and Patrick’s first meeting is one of those that they have told so much it’s fallen into legend. Pete shows up at Patrick’s house and Patrick is wearing argyle kneesocks and shorts. They jam for about a song and a half before Pete looks at him and something CLICKS, and they are best friends forever. Also, Pete notes that he had to be friends with Patrick just so he could make fun of him every day for the rest of his life. Seriously. Kneesocks. And. Shorts. (Edit: apparently, the socks were, in fact BLACK and the argyle was the SWEATER he was wearing with the shorts and black kneesocks. Which kinda makes this better. or worse. but mostly better in an adorable Patrick way.)
The band needs a drummer, and Andy is tapped “for the time being”. He’s in about two other bands at the same time, for a few months, I think, before he goes full-time Fall Out Boy. The lineup has never changed (unless you count guest bass playing by Mikey Way on Warped Tour. Pete likes to crowd surf.)
The group starts touring before Joe and Patrick are out of high school, and once they are, they basically move into their van. (FIC ALERT! They LIVED out of this VAN for a few YEARS!) Jaime is their driver/bodyguard. Still is, actually. (FOB likes to collect people and keep them around. See: Dirty, Hey Chris, Korean Tom Cruise)
Songwriting becomes this EVENT, wherein Pete writes heartwrenching and/or disturbingly angry and/or perversely sexual poems about his breakups and emails them to Patrick, or slips them under his door. Patrick takes all of Pete’s FEELINGS and makes them into pop songs. Which he sings himself. (FIC ALERT! Fics where Patrick knows all sorts of things about Pete from his lyrics are GOLDEN, people!) Songs arrive at rehearsals pretty much done, as Patrick knows every instrument in the band and recorded half the demo by himself.
Tour Tour Tour. Others have the dates down better than I. They meet MCR and Pete thinks William Beckett is a god, and Ryan of Panic sends Pete a demo and yadda yadda. You know this stuff. Also, this is rambly and I want to move on!
Items of note, by Boy:
Patrick: Patrick hates the spotlight. Patrick hates his hair. Patrick hates his body. Patrick is a girl sometimes. Patrick is also a little musical genius with a healthy sense of self and a great sense of humor. He has no tattoos. He is never ever in the history of EVER seen without a hat. (If you want a perfect body image ‘n’awwww’ moment of Patrick, watch the MTV New Year’s Eve performance of Dance, Dance. Pete tackles him at the end, and his hat falls off ON NATIONAL TV, and Patrick flails like a big flaily thing and throws his arm over his hair. *ruffles what’s left of it *) Is a vegetarian. (Damn you Hurley.)
Patrick and Pete are the kind of friends that make no sense to anyone but each other. That’s what makes them perfect.
Joe: Joe is INSANE onstage. He once gave Pete 4 stitches from throwing his guitar at him in concert. By accident, obviously. Joe drinks. Joe admits to smoking a fair bit of weed. Joe has a nice girl back home in Chicago. Joe thinks kiwi birds are “darling”. Joe likes heavy metal bands. Joe is a vegetarian, but I blame Andy (because otherwise it makes no sense). Joe is an all around Good Guy. There need to be more Joe girls out there…
Andy: I love Andy Hurley. It makes no sense. He is not my type at ALL. Andy is skinny and has long hair and is covered in tattoos. Andy is a RABID VEGAN who has dragged most of his band along with him. Andy doesn’t talk much. However, Andy is also wonderfully erudite when he does talk, and his tattoos are incredibly hot, and he’s been friends with crazy Pete Wentz for eight years, so that has to count for something in the loyalty column. According to Pete, he exists only on Mountain Dew and potato chips, which I support. Also, I think he can kick my ass. And he’s the ladies man of the tour, if you believe that. Which I FIRMLY DO. (Ask Sky and I to tell you about the AU in which he shares an apartment with Trohman and bangs every girl in the greater Chicago area.)
Pete: There isn’t much to say about Pete that he hasn’t said himself. He’s a GOD of the internet, and replies to all the Q&A at the FOB website himself. Pete is a rare combo of eager puppy and Tasmanian devil, with a dash of emo heartbreak thrown in. He had a good life, and loves his parents, and knows he’s lucky. He takes Xanax. He takes pills to sleep. During the recording of FUCT, he took a handful of Atavan in his sister’s car in the Best Buy parking lot near his house. He called his mom to say he loved her, and fell asleep. He was in the hospital for a week. Now he’s in some serious therapy. He still lives at home.
No notes on Pete’s sexuality. I’ll let him deal with that: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gdgw0aReD8U
A handful of quotes by Pete about his boys:
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
updates for the fellas who arent as romantically involved with the internet as i am:
so joe just bought a house. he is currently filling it with odds and ends and beautiful babies. i think he just got endorsed by washbourn guitars and i hear he is building some insane axe for all your pretty mouths to "oooh" and "ahhhhh" at. i am currently trying to convince him to grow the fro back- i think it would increase his superpowers. maybe start a petition so we can get this thing rolling.
andrew john hurley is working on a comic book with our friend tyler. from what i read of it looks pretty insane. he pretty much owns the city of milwaukee by now. he sustains his sweet little figure on a strict diet of mountain dew and potato chips. ladies, he is always looking for new additions to his myspace top eight- sike. but really he is designing a new drum kit with c&c drums for the black clouds tour.
p.m.s. is splitting his time between the hushsound record and the gym class heroes record. both sound sickmoshbro. he is still cute as a button in case you were wondering. if your lucky you can see him running around the suburbs of chicago or new york city rifling through records to add to his intense vinyl collection.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
i heard fall out boy on the radio for pretty much one of the first times ever last night. it made me once again realize that 99 percent of the reason anyone will ever like this band is because patrick has the best voice on the planet. that kid is the golden ticket.
Friday, November 18, 2005
fall out boy friend appreciation day:
andy: ive known andy the longest of anyone in fall out boy. i can set my clock by this kid. he comes off as the quietest member but when he's around people he knows he is the loudest- many nights i have been woken up by him screaming in the front lounge. he is one of the few kids i know who is still vegan sxe- he lives and dies by his beliefs. he also looks like animal when he plays drums. id trust any secret ive ever had with him forever. ladies watch out when hes around. hehe.
joe: joe is actually the kid who started fob. it was his brilliant idea to get all of us maniacs together and he introduced me and patrick. he tends to be the glue that holds it all together. he is also pretty much the most interesting part of a fall out boy live show. i, with everyone in the crowd often find myself watching this kid spin around and kick holes in walls. ive also been in way too many sketchy situations with this kid, where we can only look at each other and laugh. including the time we got in a huge fight at a party at his apartment which resulted in some asshole getting a bottle broken over his head. i plead the fifth on anymore knowledge. but i know i could come to joe with any problem ive ever had.
patrick: probably my best friend in the whole world. we can finish eachothers sentences. its strange cause ive never had a relationship like the one we have with a friend, ever. people try to make a big deal of him and my interactions and relationship. but honestly at the end of the day when the spotlights and flashes go away this kid is still gonna be here, and we'll still be friends. i could give a fuck what you say, this is one of the only people in the world that i would take a bullet for. and he has more talent in his little finger than i have in my entire body.
Other people to know:
Hey Chris: of askheychris fame. Friend of the band from way back, he’s Hey Chris because of the song “Grenade Jumper” where they tell him they love him a lot for being their only friend. It’s funny now, since Chris and Pete had a SERIOUS falling out a few months back over the notion that Pete tried to steal Chris’s girl. Which he probably did.
Dirty: FOB roadie. COMPLETELY INSANE. Has Pete’s name tattooed on his toes, and Pete himself BRANDED his own initials into Dirty’s ass with a coat hanger. The man will do anything. I don’t know if I like him, but he’s their own personal court jester.
Korean Tom Cruise: Still does their merch, I think. Still Korean. Still hot.
Glossary:
FBR: Fueled By Ramen. The little label that could. Based in Florida, it has rocketed to fame entirely on the coattails Pete’s plan of world domination. Seem like nice folks.
Decaydance: Pete’s uber-label, and part of FRB. He’s signed a handful of bands so far including Panic and the Hush Sound. (TAI is not on Decaydance, much to Pete’s chagrin. Though Pete would then be William’s boss.) Decaydance also puts out clothes and jewelry and soon a new BOOK, written by Pete and William Beckett. I want to pre-order this thing NOW.
Wanggate: Pete + digital camera on his Sidekick + gayness + ego = bad ideas and NAKED PICTURES. (Which, if you haven’t seen them, are awesome. There is a Morrissey poster in his room! Also, Pete has a Morrissey tattoo. It says “There is a light that never goes out.” Gayest man alive, y’all) Wanggate may have seemed like a bad idea, but trust Pete to turn it into gold. From “Team Naked Pics” t-shirts, to a stint on MTV, to Best Week Ever, to an article in the New York Times (SEE BELOW AND THANK YOU SKY), if you didn’t know Pete before he put his penis on the internet, you certainly do now.
Articles:
The FOB official band history: http://www6.falloutboyrock.com/falloutboy/bio.php
Rolling Stone (A MUST READ, if just for Patrick cursing a lot and talking about his weight): http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9363682/lets_hear_it_for_fall_out_boy?rnd=1144153984569&has-player=true
Scans of the SPIN article can be found here: http://drop-a-heart.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=60
I also give you schuyler’s review of the article on her music website: (Note the bit with the COOKIES! He lives at HOME! Also, COOKIES!)
Fall Out Boy: It's a Holiday in Suburbia - The splash photo is of the band around a dinner table set for Thanksgiving. Patrick has apparently been eating mashed potatoes with his hands, Joe's hands are full of stuffing, but the best part of the photo is all the way to the right, where Pete (who appears to have also poured gravy over the cranberry jelly) is drinking directly from the gravy boat and Andy is looking on as if to say, "Oh god, don't tell me you're ... that's disgusting!" Please do not laugh, but Megan and I just might fall in love with this band. Pete Wentz would sound calculating if his masterplan wasn't so exactly what I would do in his shoes. He's the sort of genius that's learned from Livejournal and Baby Phat and all the rest. And then it's just cuteness! The article is written from the inside, as it were, explaining his schemes and plans and his dark sides for what they are, but you still can't help but like him. And then, on the other side of the coin, you have to feel a little bad for the rest of the band (Patrick especially) for living in his shadow. But I must admit that I like Pete for admitting that his life wasn't particularly hard and he was depressed and gothy because he was bored. The last bit is so wonderful that I must excerpt. "After a time, Mrs. Wentz [Pete still lives with his parents] brings out cold drinks and a box of cookies. Soon, our chat is interrupted for good by a trio of fans who have set up camp just on the other side of the front gate. Wentz gives me a slight eye-roll, then steels himself. He knows what he has to do. It's something that Jay-z -- with all his street hustling and international fame -- has surely never done. With a giant smile, Wentz walks over and opens the gate. The girls look like they're about to faint. And then, Pete Wentz, their new hero, says, "You guys want a cookie?"
A very rare Patrick only audio interview!:
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/04/fall_out_boy_co.html
NYTimes: reprinted here verbatim, as the times site wants us to pay to see it, and I love you too much for that.
The Glamour (Sigh, Whine) of Heartbreak
by Kelefa Sanneh
NYT, March 26, 2006
Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic high-school kids, emo bands are everywhere; plaintive punk has become the soundtrack of white adolescence. Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic downloaders, sexually explicit images of celebrities are everywhere, too. And last week these two trends finally collided, as Web sites began posting a series of extraordinarily revealing photographs of Pete Wentz, the bassist and lyricist for the emo band Fall Out Boy.
In one, he is merely looking soulfully at the camera. (It could be a camera phone, a device that seems to have been invented for the express purpose of humiliating celebrities.) But in the most infamous shot, Mr. Wentz is clearly overexposed. These pictures aren't just something for blog readers to snicker about. They also help capture the emergence of a new (maybe not-so-new) kind of rock star. Outspoken and insecure and glamorous (is that eyeliner?), Mr. Wentz is one of a handful of stars who represent emo's face. (And as of last week, much more.) A genre that was once mocked for its supposed earnestness is now home to some of the most flamboyant boys in rock 'n' roll.
Fall Out Boy has sold almost two million copies of its current album, "From Under the Cork Tree" (Island Def Jam); the record company celebrated by rereleasing it on Tuesday, with bonus tracks and remixes. And if any emo sex symbol is more popular than Mr. Wentz it is Gerard Way, the singer for My Chemical Romance, an even more exciting band with a similarly successful CD, "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" (Reprise/Warner), as well as a live album due out next week. Mr. Way is more theatrical than Mr. Wentz: his songs are more turbulent, and he wears enough makeup to blur the line between beauty queen and corpse. Thanks to them and dozens more, emo bands are doing something unlikely: they're reviving the fierce, fey spirit of glam rock, complete (sometimes) with eyeliner and lipstick.
This isn't the second coming of glam, though - it's more like the third or the ninth. In "Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music" (University of Michigan Press), Philip Auslander assays the music and imagery of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry and others. He carefully (almost apologetically) notes that "glam offered no substantial challenge to the conventions of rock as a traditionally male-dominated form." And yet he shows how these heavily made-up British rock stars played with sex and sexuality without forsaking rock 'n' roll machismo.
The book doesn't follow glam to Los Angeles, where it was reborn - tougher, meaner, straighter - in the 1980's. For the members of Mötley Crüe, Poison and many more, makeup and hairspray and tight pants were merely part of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, alongside alcohol and drugs and, most of all, groupies. Famously obsessed with "girls, girls, girls," these hunters dressed up like their prey.
Like Mr. Wentz, some of those 80's stars have had private moments made public. But unlike Mr. Wentz, Tommy Lee (from Mötley Crüe) and Bret Michaels (from Poison) seemed not altogether unproud of their sudden notoriety. Then again, their situations were different from his: each was caught in bed with a curvy blonde. (The same one, in fact.)
By contrast, the Pete Wentz photographs constitute a masterpiece of emo porn. For starters, he is alone. He looks sad. And you can glimpse a record in the background: it seems to be Morrissey's ultra-melancholy single, "Everyday Is Like Sunday." When Mr. Wentz finally responded to the pictures, he did so with a fascinating note on the Fall Out Boy Web site. There was a trace of self-loathing when he wondered why anybody would want to see pictures of some "dirty boy." And instead of bragging or threatening (he says the images were stolen), he added a provocative afterthought. ("OMG! gaaah. i forgot the most important part.") He said he was upset that Chloe Dao had won the fashion reality show "Project Runway," instead of Santino Rice: "I could have understood if daniel won but her? blah."
When they're not rooting for Mr. Rice, the boys of emo are obsessed with girls, too, but not in the same way Mötley Crüe was. The central female figure in an emo song is less likely to be a groupie than an ex-girlfriend. In an influential essay called "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't," Jessica Hopper reduced the genre to its brutal archetype. "Girls in emo songs today do not have names," she wrote, adding, "We leave bruises on boy-hearts but make no other mark." She called the genre "a high stakes game of control - of 'winning' or 'losing' possession of the girl."
Maybe some emo bands have noticed this, too, though they have responded not by repenting but by redoubling, pushing their stylized songs toward hyperbole. They use terms like "sugar" and "honey" to underscore arch lyrics about boys who claim to hate themselves almost as much as they hate their exes. My Chemical Romance writes grand, crashing allegories full of allusions to death and violence. (The video for "Helena" shows a funeral stocked with choreographed mourners.) And Fall Out Boy's current single is "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More 'Touch Me,' " which matches its ridiculous title (and infectious tune) with hopeful and spiteful lyrics: "I don't blame you for being you/ But you can't blame me for hating it." Deliberately overripe songs like this blur the line between earnest lament and theatrical parody.
There's plenty of anxiety in performances like these: anxiety about being a boy who sings about (and, often, to) girls, as well as a related anxiety about going pop. (These songs are full of self-conscious jokes about selling out.) But if you're going to be on the main stage, you might as well act the part, as many of these singers do. Adam Lazzara, from Taking Back Sunday, is known for treating concert stages like catwalks, prancing and sashaying while singing his lovelorn lyrics.
Meanwhile, emerging bands like Panic! at the Disco (which has a charmless hit with "I Write Sins Not Tragedies") and Aiden have helped ensure that Mr. Way is no anomaly: drawing as well from goth and new wave, they seem to spend just as much time in a dressing room as the members of Mötley Crüe did. (Although they probably find fewer creative uses for it.) And on an impressive new album called, "Heroine" (Epitaph), the members of From First to Last make a big, rousing racket, playing widescreen emo full of screaming horror stories ("Relax, baby, that's a good girl/ You're like my work of art") and suicidal fantasies ("I can't eat anything/ Without shoving my hands down my throat"). If you're wondering, the answer is yes: the lead singer, Sonny Moore, paints his face. Indeed, a recent Alternative Press story found the members sharing a Mötley Crüe moment: taking turns "in the bus bathroom applying their stage makeup."
As Mr. Auslander concedes - and as Mötley Crüe energetically proved - glam imagery needn't upend rock 'n' roll conventions. Maybe it's a mistake to take lipsticked rock stars too seriously. A few emo singers have talked about kissing guys or dating them, but that's not really the point: the genre is still ruled by avowedly straight boys singing about winning and losing girls. Still, no one can claim that these emo boys aren't putting on an enormously entertaining show. Here's hoping that, somewhere in America, a budding pop star is watching it all, and taking all of it much too seriously.
Fan sites:
http://brandnewfashion.com/
http://www.drop-a-heart.com/index2.php
Pete’s buzznet site: http://clandestine.buzznet.com/user/