Its 3:20 am and I'm

Its 3:20 am and I'm still up so...
Counterpoint: ;)

First of all, nobody is making millions of dollars and selling out by being emo. Chris Carrabba sent me a poster when I bought it off their website. It came from Dashboard Confessional, not vagrant records, not artist direct... Dashboard. Small Business/Residential area type Boca Raton address (i checked). They still play little clubs and are just starting to get limited national recognition on TV and stuff after establishing a huge, militant underground fanbase by struggling though all the small clubs. Granted, thats what virtually all REAL bands (i.e. NOT creed, puddle of mudd, etc) do, but those are also the ones that stay "true to the movement." None of the real emo bands have really progressed past that point yet (dashboard, Jimmy Eat World, probably some other quasi-emo acts that i cant think of are starting to though) so to say they're making money being emo is assuming that their popularity among a select crowd (the group of so called "emo buffs") makes them inherently rich. Besides that, everyone has problems in their lives, so becoming rich doesn't exclude them from being human. Emo is short for Emotion[al[punk/hardcore]] and simply means that the music allows them to express their emotions. Even the rich and famous have emotions. Is chris carrabba "still depressed?" probably not. Does he still get depressed and dumped and everything? probably not. He can still write songs about his experiences though. And actually the latest dashboard stuff hasn't been as much about the depressing experiences as the positive ones. The latest EP has 4 songs about fairly successful relationships. The fact that he can still write about his honest emotions pretty much shows that he's not trying to conform to some standard mold of teenage angst and depression. emo and depression are not the same exact thing all the time.

Also, to say that dashboard is part of some emo "movement" as well is a little bit incorrect. The emo movement started back in the mid 80s in Washington DC when punk bands started rejecting the "hardcore" movement and letting their emotions out. Rites of Spring is considered the first emo band and the reason most people have probably never heard of them is because they were the bleeding edge of a movement. 15 years down the road it cant really be called so much of a movement anymore. However, 2 rites of spring members went on to work with fugazi who is still around, so the movement has definitely not died. Similarly, Dan Hoerner of Sunny Day Real Estate, one of the big names in early/mid 90s emo, is now playing in dashboard. If you want real emo music go dig up some of the old stuff or at least hit fugazi, SDRE, The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids, Mineral, Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil, Modest Mouse, Even Jimmy Eat World, Box Car Racer (Blink 182 gone emo sort of!)
Earlier emo bands were 100% doing it for the movement. the modern underground, local, unsigned bands are still doing it for the movement.

So the original question: Does Dashboard know they're emo? I'm sure they're aware that their music is classified as "emo" but they aren't writing music with the sole intent of having their 7" placed in the emo bin at the record store. I can assume such because Dashboard does not, as i said before, specifically mold themselves to some emo template. The depressive lyrics are typical of the emo genre, but the musical style actually is not directly patterned after the earlier emo bands. Dashboard is a primarily acoustic band with only a loose musical connection to the early punk/hardcore emo wheras the earlier bands were punk/hardcore only slowed down and more minor chords. In the same way, the intent of the early emo bands was specifically to reject any existing genre and write the music that they wanted to write. the fact that they displayed such emotion in a hardcore world where emotion was synonymous with weakness did not make them popular, but i guess thats how every movement starts. Good movements only gain popularity over time.

-Grant-

P.S. dont insult emo it makes me cry ;)

geez its 20 til 4.. time for sleep.
"when all his work was done he put on side one boxcar sang him to sleep locked away in an emo dream"