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(CNN)—— The sun was setting over the badlands, and Amy Fleischer Madden squinted through her camera’s viewfinder, searching for a figure dressed in head-to-toe black among the red rocks and prairie grass.
It was 1999, and the young photographer had been touring with Saves the Day, four baby-faced kids from Princeton, New Jersey, who had recently released their second album, Through Being Cool. Little did they know, the record would eventually become synonymous with “third wave emo,” a nebulous genre that emerged from America’s suburban garages, church basements and all-ages venues.
Courtesy Amy Fleischer Madden/Chronicle Books
Fleisher Madden captured this photo of Saves The Day drummer Bryan Newman, who captured “the perfect moment as the sun set” against the backlight of a wasteland.
Emo music is both controversial and confessional, a softer approach to hardcore punk, and its soft vocals and evocative lyrics have led other bands to deride it as the sound of “teenage angst.” But that didn’t matter to drummer Brian Newman right now, who was photographed by Fleischer Madden crouching on the ground, lost in the tranquil South Dakota landscape. She pressed the shutter button, knowing that the candid shots were as important to the emo story as the concerts.
“It’s like, ‘This is as much a part of the story as the people on stage,'” Fleischer-Madden said of the spontaneous moments that often occur with the band between sets, whether it’s a silly lounge joke or a crazy joke Jumping into their shabby motel room and taking a shower. Many of these images serve as anchors for her new book, Negatives: An Archive of Emotional Photography (1996-2006). Fleischer-Madden told CNN that more than two decades later, that photo of Newman remains her favorite.
“The whole middle section (of the book) is called ‘Everything and Everyone,’ and that whole section is chaos,” she laughs. “It’s the van, it’s backstage, it’s sleeping in the bathtub, it’s behind the scenes, etc. To me this is pulp. This is the good stuff.”
Paul D’Elia/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
Circa 1998, The Drive In performed at the Manville Elks Lodge in Manville, New Jersey. Fleisher Madden wrote in Negatives that the band’s live performances were “legendary, and to witness a show is to become part of history.” “They paved the way for many other up-and-coming experimental bands to follow.*
Andy Muller/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
A promotional photo for Jimmy Eat World’s 1996 album Static Prevails, taken “somewhere in Arizona.”
Brian Mayanski/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
Ketchup and Cigarettes: Photo of musicians Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio) and Blake Schwarzenbach (Jawbreaker) having breakfast in Chicago circa 1998.
Courtesy Amy Fleischer Madden/Chronicle Books
In 2001, Dashboard Confessional performed at MACROCK in Harrisonburg, Virginia. In the foreword to “Negatives”, the band’s lead singer Chris Carrabba wrote of emo: “Music brings us together and binds us together, just like it always does… At its core, it Still a community – this community has seen some amazing things. If we didn’t have photos to prove it, I’m not sure anyone would believe us.”
Tom Cheney/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
A giant leap forward: Something Corporate performed at Nation in Washington, D.C. in 2004.
Justin Borucki/Courtesy of The Chronicle
Late-night snack shot by Gerald Way (My Chemical Romance) during his 2004 tour, Somewhere on the West Coast.
Paul Drake/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
Fleisher Madden wrote in Negatives: “Jejune is a delicate, soft-spoken band that hits you with complex melodies that then explode into a wall of noise.” Photo of the band in New York in 1997 performance.
Courtesy Amy Fleischer Madden/Chronicle Books
1998 photo with members of The Gray AM on a tour bus. “We won touring bingo in every way,” Fleischer Madden wrote of her experience touring with the band. “The van would break down all the time, we’d go to gigs that didn’t exist, and just before the tour was over, the singer quit the band. Bingo.”
Mark Beemer/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
Members of Texas State run after attending a Dunkin’ Donuts show in Brighton, Massachusetts, 1995.
RJ Shaughnessy/Courtesy Chronicle Books
“Sosin seemed to appear out of nowhere,” Fleischer Marden wrote in “Negatives.” “That’s what happens when a band is able to take advantage of an online platform or leverage some kind of social media movement — we saw it then and we still see it now.” This is the band in 2003 at photographer RJ Shaughnessy’s Los Angeles location Photos taken at home.
Michael Dubin/Courtesy of Chronicle Books
Around 1997, Mineral performed at the VFW Concert Hall in Elkton, Maryland.
Looking back at the bands that helped shape emo after the genre’s first wave emerged in the DC hardcore scene in the ’80s, the “Negatives” Contains hundreds of images drawn from Fleischer-Madden’s own archives as well as the work of other photographers who documented the scene. Some of these musicians are instantly recognizable—Death Cab For Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, Fall Out Boy—others are not. But every band in the book influenced the emo scene in some way, and Fleischer-Madden says it’s her job to figure out each group’s historical and sonic place in emo’s trajectory.
“I asked myself questions like, ‘Why is that band important? Did they inspire future sounds and looks? Are their records part of a legacy?'” Fleischer-Madden explains her process. “There are a lot of bands in the book that I personally don’t like, but they were important and influenced the movement.”
RJ Shaughnessy/Courtesy Chronicle Books
Amy Fleischer Madden
Fleischer-Madden grew up in Miami and was an active member of the local punk scene in the mid-1990s, hosting shows and writing about emerging bands for her magazine, Fiddler Jones. At 16, she founded Fiddler Records and released an album by The Vacant Andys, fronted by Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, before touring, doing A&R work for other labels, and traveling around the country. Photographed many bands. The band featured in her book.
As Fleischer-Madden writes, she was a “fan” of the second wave (circa 1996 to 2000), defined by bands like Bright Eyes, American Football, Cursive, Sunny Day Real Estate and The Get Up Kids, and “participants of the third wave” – a period from 2000 to 2006 that included bands such as Circa Survive, Say Anything and New Found Glory, as well as heavyweights such as Paramore and My Chemical Romance.
While she admits there are plenty of purists willing to quibble with her decision to label a band as “second wave” rather than “third wave” or vice versa, Fleischer-Madden says she tries to Use objective measures to address the question such as “the age of the band members, what they were wearing, what the photo looked like and whether it was on film.” (Other than that, her opinions are her own.)
“I’m a bit like an emotional Sherlock Holmes,” she explains, “I try to find the answers in the details.”
Erin Tatro/Courtesy Chronicle Books
Hayley Williams of Paramore performs during a 2006 tour in San Diego, California. Fleisher Madden wrote in Negative that the band “had to carve their own path in emo,” adding, “Their salad days were filled with microcosms from the male-dominated scene ( and macro) aggression. It’s scary to me because that’s the world we come from, but what I can do now — and encourage all of you to do — is take steps to make sure that’s not the world we’re heading toward.”
According to Fleischer-Madden, emo’s third wave saw the emergence of subgenres such as pop punk, screamo and post-hardcore, which “shared the same emo DNA” and “heart on their sleeves” lyrical style , just louder, faster and more powerful. Since then, the definition of “emo” has continued to expand, much to the chagrin of longtime fans, who lament the “mainstreaming” and “commercialization” of emo music and culture.
Fleischer-Madden counters this criticism, arguing that discovering new music (even if it’s technically “old” music) has long been a rite of passage for teenagers.
Likewise, Emo Nite founder Morgan Fried, whose emo-themed party nights have become a national phenomenon among young fans, echoed the sentiment, noting that emo has spawned dozens of TikTok trends in recent years as well as LiveNation popular music festival.
“This is music to listen to when you’re in the suburbs, on a summer night, sitting on a rooftop in a cul-de-sac drinking beer,” he said, adding that the teenage experience of alienation is universal and timeless — Especially in an increasingly digital world.
“There are always 15-year-olds who need to hold on to something that they can relate to,” Fried said. “This is music for (people) who grew up as outsiders or non-conformists.”
In other words, there is no dispute about the authenticity of Fleischer-Madden’s “negatives.” The book chronicles her own life experiences, and the scene continues to influence pop culture more than two decades later.
chronicle books
Negatives: Emotional Photography Archives (1996-2006)
To her, there’s no room for guarding a “wholesome artifact” for people to “put it on a shelf, show it to their parents or their kids, and say, ‘I’m a part of this.'”
She recalls an “amazing” conversation she had with a 20-something at a recent Los Angeles book event: “He said, ‘I’m not old enough to see these bands in this day and age, but Now I’m integrated into it all. . . I’m catching up and learning, and I use your book as a rulebook,” she said with a smile.
“So I thought, ‘This is awesome,'” she continued. “He said, ‘Here’s a map. Here’s a map of the whole scene.'”
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