No crybabies allowed at Met You On Livejournal

Livejournal is mostly the refuge of spam-bots and underground Russian lo-fi music now (seriously, check it out), but I can clearly remember that time when my after-school job allowed a significant vinyl budget and I spent a lot of energy considering issues related to "girls in the pit," the website was a hang-out which allowed a peek into the lives of friends and strangers alike: a place to chat, express identity, and meet new people — often other music fans.

On Thursday night Met You On Livejournal celebrated its one year anniversary at the Shop. The tantalizing promise "not to play anything after 2006" made it clear that this would be legit (if you get it, you get it, but basically it's a fact that after the mid 00's everything went sour, emo changed connotations for a final, devastating time, and MySpace conquered LJ). When I arrived to the sounds of the Weakerthans, was greeted by a friend in a Mineral t-shirt, and then a (pre-2006) Ataris track came on, damn did it feel totally awesome.

The low-ceilinged, underground Shop at Parts & Labour has a DIY, hardcore-show basement vibe, perfectly suited to concepts like this one. DJs killing_girls, hardcoresnaps and timmcready kept up a steady influx of insider nostalgia all night, but emo cover band Dear Diary stole the show.

Keeping things light and smiling throughout, the energetic dudes in Dear Diary spread out on the floor and captured the spirit of community centre-type shows of the past — multiple singers, voice cracks, and all — as they made their way through what they knew would be crowd favourites, from the Promise Ring's Happiness is all the Rage (confession time, the news TPR are reuniting this year is way more touching to me than similar announcements from Refused and At The Drive-In), to New Found Glory and Jimmy Eat World. 10 Minutes was their chosen the Get Up Kids song.

I was surprised by all the girls who were pumped up to hear Brand New, and not so surprised by the Screaming Infidelities sing-along (don't pretend you don't get this stuck in your head when your special-someone's hair's a mess). The guys were great performers and I don't know what past Met You On Livejournals have had going, but next time, how about some girl-fronted covers — there must be some ladies in Toronto who want to belt it like Rainer Maria.

Met You On Livejournal means no harm, and isn't trying to bring up anyone's embarrassing past. They just know you still rock out to some of these records alone in your apartment from time to time, and they want you to share it, now that your hair is better and you (probably) don't duct-tape your shoes. Ears still ringing, I'll probably spend the rest of the day listening to Pictureplane, but I'll have Piebald stuck in my head.

Writing by Aubrey Jax / Photos by Christian Bobak