If you've spent any significant time in the punk underground, no doubt you've been forced to draw your own personal "Emo Line," i.e., the line your Superior Musical Taste™ won't allow you to cross when the music gets too pop, too pouty, or too un-punk to admit liking in public. This defensive border was probably first enforced circa 1985 — that's when Guy Picciotto formed Rites of Spring, his future Fugazi bandmate Ian MacKaye followed up a hardcore-defining stint in Minor Threat with the more introspective band Embrace, and suddenly punk gigs featured almost as much crying as they did crashing around like blind chimpanzees on PCP. Mid-'90s scenesters encountered new worries in the post-Nirvana era, when alt-rock crossed over and suddenly everyone's favorite bands began jumping into the mainstream: If you listen closely enough, you can still hear Jawbreaker fans sobbing as they clutch a tear-stained copy of the 24 Hour Revenge Therapy LP to their bosom while vociferously denying the very existence of the band's overproduced major-label swan song, Dear You. Today some punters will approve emo on specific indie labels (acceptable: DeSoto, Deep Elm, Jade Tree) while scoffing at others (unacceptable: Vagrant, Drive-Thru, Epitaph). And even the screamo subgenre — a genre whose very name came from its nigh-indistinguishable vocal blurs — has its share of semantic hair-splitting, with hardliners arguing that Heroin built the holy foundations, but the Blood Brothers might be a little too fey, and Attack Attack! do not fucking count and should probably be killed for the sake of the future scene's gene pool.
So, after all this, where does the Diary night draw its Emo Line? Answer: probably somewhere different than your own — but that may be because your Superior Musical Taste™ is sometimes also Your Own Worst Enemy™. Diary describes itself as "a nostalgic night of emo, screamo, and pop punk," and you're almost always bound to hear at least a few songs deemed uncool by your internal defense mechanisms. You might be talking Pilot to Gunner, but the DJs are on Jets to Brazil. You wanna hang out with Swing Kids, but the Get Up Kids arrive instead. You dig that Angel Hair style, but you end up with a Braid. So be it. Diary doesn't exist to confirm that your own individual Emo Line is drawn in the proper place, so you're better off dropping any pretentious expectations in advance. Simply order a drink, pull up a corner seat, and weep if you must. Hell, it's an emo party! You wouldn't want to actually leave happy, would you?
