MCR meme days four and five
Jul. 11th, 2010 04:30 pmWhups, missed a day yesterday! Now you get a twofer.
Day 4: Your favorite My Chemical Romance music video.
Okay, seriously, meme, we have to have a talk about this whole 'choose one' thing; it's really getting to be a problem.
The difficulty I have in narrowing my answers is largely due to the fact that I love MCR, but I also draw a lot of creative inspiration from MCR -- so I try to think of which is my favourite video and my brain goes 'well, this bit in I'm Not Okay made you decide to write this, and this bit in Ghost of You gave you this, and...' and so on. Because this band often makes amazing videos.
They give me ideas on top of ideas on top of ideas, every time I watch them, and I've always been someone heavily inspired by music videos in my writing, ever since I was quite young; the first novel-length attempt at prose I ever wrote got started because I really liked a Korn video. No, really.
And, you know. The Wolf House is a pretty clear indicator that I still get epic and huge story ideas from music videos. It's a thing.
So anyway, for writer-me, answering this question is VERY HARD. Because I love pretty much ALL of My Chemical Romance's videos; they ALL give me ideas, and I adore them for that.
So instead of answering as writer-me, I'll answer as just me-me, who is much less complicated.
The story of How Mary Got Into MCR is this: back when Audz and I were first into Fall Out Boy, she downloaded pretty much everything about the band she could find, and stuck it on her ipod. We were watching her collection of music videos on my television one weekend -- Audrey, me, and Claire/![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irradiatedsoup. And in amongst the videos was an awards show where Fall Out Boy's 'Sugar We're Going Down' video had beaten My Chemical Romance's 'Helena', and FOB gave props to MCR in their acceptance speech. (If you're reading this post on livejournal, my icon of Patrick and Gerard hugging is from said awards show.)
And Claire said "yeah, no offence to Fall Out Boy, but the Helena video is fantastic". She then went home (she lived just around the corner from me in those days) and got her copy of 'Life on the Murder Scene', MCR's DVD which has a documentary about them and some of their videos.
She put on 'Helena'.
You know that moment in Velvet Goldmine where Arthur's watching TV and Brian Slade comes out at a press conference, and he imagines himself pointing at the screen and shouting "THAT'S ME, THAT! THAT'S ME!"? That's not quite what happened to me in that moment, but it's close.
Because the paper-pale, black-haired singer who came up on the screen wasn't anything like me, but the sudden feeling I got was like electricity, and the feeling was this: I want to be that. I wanted to dress like that, in black and red, sharp and elegant and dramatic and dangerous and theatrical. I wanted black hair (I bought dye the next day) and I wanted... it wasn't even something I knew the words for, exactly. I just knew that this band were creatures from a world different to the one I was currently living in, and that world... that world might be somewhere I felt at home in, happier in.
So My Chemical Romance may have other videos which are more creative, more ambitious, more full of things I want to turn over in my hands and make into stories. But when it comes to the one which I love the most, which means the most to me? There's only one answer.
My Chemical Romance - Helena
Day 5: Your favorite song My Chemical Romance covered.
I love Bob Dylan. For my 21st birthday, my mother took me to see him in concert. The story I wrote for Lotripping 2004 is heavily Dylan-inspired. I think he's keen.
So when I went crazy and ran away to America for three weeks in April 2008, and went to see MCR in concert in San Francisco the first night I was there even though I hadn't slept for about thirty hours at that point, it filled my heart up with absolute joy when they played a Bob Dylan cover that night.
It was like the perfect cherry of joy on my cake of completely manic irresponsibility (and even with all the shit that happened around that trip, all the terrible choices I made and friendships I hurt or lost, I still don't regret it, I still can't make myself regret those choices or that adventure. I just can't. It just... it was worth it. All of it was worth it.)
So even if I didn't also really enjoy Watchmen (which I do) and like the video they made for the single (which I do) and enjoy the way they re-worked the song from the original (which I do), my answer would still be 'Desolation Row'. Because sometimes you love a song simply because it was the soundtrack for something important that happened to you.
Day 4: Your favorite My Chemical Romance music video.
Okay, seriously, meme, we have to have a talk about this whole 'choose one' thing; it's really getting to be a problem.
The difficulty I have in narrowing my answers is largely due to the fact that I love MCR, but I also draw a lot of creative inspiration from MCR -- so I try to think of which is my favourite video and my brain goes 'well, this bit in I'm Not Okay made you decide to write this, and this bit in Ghost of You gave you this, and...' and so on. Because this band often makes amazing videos.
They give me ideas on top of ideas on top of ideas, every time I watch them, and I've always been someone heavily inspired by music videos in my writing, ever since I was quite young; the first novel-length attempt at prose I ever wrote got started because I really liked a Korn video. No, really.
And, you know. The Wolf House is a pretty clear indicator that I still get epic and huge story ideas from music videos. It's a thing.
So anyway, for writer-me, answering this question is VERY HARD. Because I love pretty much ALL of My Chemical Romance's videos; they ALL give me ideas, and I adore them for that.
So instead of answering as writer-me, I'll answer as just me-me, who is much less complicated.
The story of How Mary Got Into MCR is this: back when Audz and I were first into Fall Out Boy, she downloaded pretty much everything about the band she could find, and stuck it on her ipod. We were watching her collection of music videos on my television one weekend -- Audrey, me, and Claire/
irradiatedsoup. And in amongst the videos was an awards show where Fall Out Boy's 'Sugar We're Going Down' video had beaten My Chemical Romance's 'Helena', and FOB gave props to MCR in their acceptance speech. (If you're reading this post on livejournal, my icon of Patrick and Gerard hugging is from said awards show.)And Claire said "yeah, no offence to Fall Out Boy, but the Helena video is fantastic". She then went home (she lived just around the corner from me in those days) and got her copy of 'Life on the Murder Scene', MCR's DVD which has a documentary about them and some of their videos.
She put on 'Helena'.
You know that moment in Velvet Goldmine where Arthur's watching TV and Brian Slade comes out at a press conference, and he imagines himself pointing at the screen and shouting "THAT'S ME, THAT! THAT'S ME!"? That's not quite what happened to me in that moment, but it's close.
Because the paper-pale, black-haired singer who came up on the screen wasn't anything like me, but the sudden feeling I got was like electricity, and the feeling was this: I want to be that. I wanted to dress like that, in black and red, sharp and elegant and dramatic and dangerous and theatrical. I wanted black hair (I bought dye the next day) and I wanted... it wasn't even something I knew the words for, exactly. I just knew that this band were creatures from a world different to the one I was currently living in, and that world... that world might be somewhere I felt at home in, happier in.
So My Chemical Romance may have other videos which are more creative, more ambitious, more full of things I want to turn over in my hands and make into stories. But when it comes to the one which I love the most, which means the most to me? There's only one answer.
My Chemical Romance - Helena
Day 5: Your favorite song My Chemical Romance covered.
I love Bob Dylan. For my 21st birthday, my mother took me to see him in concert. The story I wrote for Lotripping 2004 is heavily Dylan-inspired. I think he's keen.
So when I went crazy and ran away to America for three weeks in April 2008, and went to see MCR in concert in San Francisco the first night I was there even though I hadn't slept for about thirty hours at that point, it filled my heart up with absolute joy when they played a Bob Dylan cover that night.
It was like the perfect cherry of joy on my cake of completely manic irresponsibility (and even with all the shit that happened around that trip, all the terrible choices I made and friendships I hurt or lost, I still don't regret it, I still can't make myself regret those choices or that adventure. I just can't. It just... it was worth it. All of it was worth it.)
So even if I didn't also really enjoy Watchmen (which I do) and like the video they made for the single (which I do) and enjoy the way they re-worked the song from the original (which I do), my answer would still be 'Desolation Row'. Because sometimes you love a song simply because it was the soundtrack for something important that happened to you.