MCR: A Band and Its People, Or Is It A People and Their Band?

It was a few years back that Brigid (my daughter) introduced me to My Chemical Romance. She did this by having me sit through the full Black Parade album.

It was not a hardship.

I came away impressed. Both lyrically and musically, this was a band doing some pretty amazing things. Still, I am more of the Beatles, Stones, and the Who era, you know? I don’t think it was really until I watched The Umbrella Academy series that I went back to listen to MCR. But, yes, even on first listen they were quite good.

When they came to Vegas as part of the When We Were Young festival, we went to see them, and I got a taste of exactly how close they are to their fan base. But it wasn’t until this weekend that I got the full dose. Or, rather, two full doses in the form of two shows at Dodger Stadium. It was a pretty amazing experience.

I love live music, by the way. I like it because it’s more real. More direct. I like the mistakes and the distortions and the fact that the music comes from the humans who make it. I like live music, too, because it’s the only form that comes with a sensation of the performer’s connection to their audience. A Springsteen connection feels different from a Pearl Jam connection, and those feel different from a Robert Plant connection, which feels different from a Katy Perry vibe. Blah, blah, blah. (On maybe I should say Na, Na, Na, today).

As I think about it, that feeling of connection between artist and absorber (which I like better than consumer or observer, in this case) is something that—as a writer–I like most about running Kickstarters rather than just seeing book sales. There is a deeper feeling to seeing names and interacting directly with readers, and it’s that feeling that makes me want to write even more.

But I digress.

For those of my readers unaware, My Chemical Romance is a band that is hard to categorize. They are maybe a little controversial in that, for such wide success, they are sometimes dismissed or overlooked by some. They tend to be lumped into the Emo category, and they certainly have a flavor there. In fact, many will say they define the genre. But to call them an Emo band feels too constrictive. They are quite broad. Emo, sure, but punk, and metal, and also old-school rock and roll in ways. I recently saw a study that connects up some of their work with classical artists, specifically Pachelbel (talk about strange bedfellows). There’s a theatrical aura of Alice Cooper in there, too, which I enjoyed this weekend, especially because Alice Cooper was my first-ever live concert back in the day. At moments you can feel a pop-based backbone underneath their in-your-face edginess, which I admit feels kind of weird. In the end, though, I’d say that what they are is indelibly authentic to themselves. MCR does not seem to be afraid to make any sound they need to make to put their ideas across.

And, holy hells, but do they have ideas. This tour has them having completely reimagined that already legendary Black Parade into a completely different story—this time one uncomfortably close to the time at hand. The band, it turns out, has ideas inside their ideas, which is a little mind-blowing at times.

And which is probably why they have detractors, too.

MCR seems to me to be unapologetically authentic to themselves, and in that act, thereby makes themselves unapologetically connected to the people who follow them. There is a symbiotic thing going on with My Chemical Romance. I’ve been thinking about this for two full days now, but I am pretty sure that I have never been to a live show wherein members of the band and members of the audience were any closer to each other. My Chemical Romance is their audience, and their audience is My Chemical Romance. The music is dense. It’s angry, too, but, like the band and its collective crowd, undaunted. There are moments when the songs are technically intricate before going full drive punk. Gerard Way’s vocals can sometimes seem to come from another plane of existence, but if they weren’t there, the people would provide them. The guitars are surprisingly dense and even sometimes bluesy despite the fact that My Chem will not be mistaken as a blues band anytime soon.

Which, I suppose, is not the point.

Or maybe it is the point. What do I know?

It seems to me that MCR is that rare kind of thing that is its own category.

And that makes its followers into their own category, too. This is a band and a fanbase that knows beyond any doubt and better than anyone else that this world is broken in ways that make life a real bitch sometimes, but who has decided that the fight is the important part, that living properly is about persevering through the bullshit of a world that is not designed to accept them, and in the end winning by making their lives be as much theirs as they can. Call it anti-establishment, I suppose, but even that bucket seems to be too slim to constrain them. Call it anarchist? Maybe, but no. Call it libertarian? Ha. No, there, too.

Or only in the strangest of ways, maybe.

I’m writing this whole thing because I can’t put my finger on a good way to simplify what this weekend felt like.

It is a unique thing to see a band and a fanbase so tied together. Powerful in very deep ways—especially since, anger and frustration aside, the message that comes from their mere existence is so … positive. These are not mainstream people. These are people who perhaps live at the intersection of Wonderland and Goth Streets. They are, as the song goes (at least kind of), the broken, the beaten, and the damned? It makes sense that MCR is hard to quantify, then, because the band is the people who follow them, and these people who follow the band are people who much of the world does not completely understand.

I can say this, though.

I told Brigid at one point (I think it was at breakfast before driving home) that I believe all people are broken in some way or another, but that most people are deathly afraid of exposing that brokenness by admitting it—sometimes even to themselves. To show our troubles is to feel weak, after all. To need help is to be inadequate.

And yet …

As I sit here thinking about this weekend, I’m struck with this other idea.

Perhaps, when the world forces you to reveal your so very human fears and weaknesses to other people, and when you see those fears and weaknesses get then reflected back to you by those other people in the world who are, truly and at their core, no different from you, that together, you and those who are now, by definition, your people can find a way to claim your space again, and in that way make your life be truly yours.

I dunno, though.

It’s just a thought made while sitting here alone in the quiet of my little office.