Our Thoughts On The Break-Up Of My Chemical Romance!

GASP!  It's a Martika song come to life!

I dunno about you, but my world was thrown for a loop on Friday when an all-too-brief statement from their label announced the break-up of My Chemical Romance.

How can you announce the break-up of one of the most acclaimed bands of their generation with a few measly sentences and on a Friday, no less.

Come on, man, that's something you release on a Monday or a Tuesday to give the world the rest of the week to grieve in public, to fill our Facebook and Twitter pages with tearful outbursts and the quoting of horrible lyrics, but NOOOOOOO, MCR just had to go and break-up on a Friday.

In no uncertain terms, it left a nation of lonely goth kids hanging for an entire weekend.  Ge it?  "Hanging"?  A little goth humor, there, sorry.

At first, I greeted the news of the band's break-up with the requisite amount of "yeah whatever", but the truth was I had much bigger fish to contend with at the moment in the form a whole yard of winter dog doo that needed to be picked up before it gets any warmer.  

As I picked up another pile of half-frozen dookie while simultaneously squelching the desire to hurl, I remembered a conversation I'd had many years ago with an A&R exec from the band's label, wherein I was informed that the band's soon-to-be-released album "The Black Parade" would change the world the same way that "Nevermind" and "Siamese Dream" had done a decade earlier.

Had I been sent the wrong album by mistake, I wondered?  The one I heard was a pretentious cacophony of regurgitated riffs and sloganeering all dressed up as "genius" by people who should know better.

Later that day, for reasons I can no longer recall, I found myself at the mall.  As I munched on my last bit of pretzel, I spotted a gaggle of goths as they strolled into the Hot Topic.  Knowing a good thing when I see it, I followed them in and was able to witness the following exchange:

Goth Kid #1(wearing MCR hoodie, no less): Wow, dude, the body's not even cold yet and you guys have their t-shirts in the clearance bin.

Cashier Kid:  Wuh, somebody died?

Goth Kid #2: My Chemical Romance broke up.

Cashier Kid: Pfft.

A few minutes later, after the Goth Kids left, I watched Cashier Kid fish all the My Chemical Romance t-shirts out of the clearance bin and place them on a display table at the front of the store.

I can only imagine where the Goth Kids must have gone after that.  I picture them huddled around a burning trash can underneath a bridge in the bad part of town, eyeliner streaming down their cheeks as they warm their hands. a snot bubble hanging from their left nostril (fittingly, the one that's pierced).  The air is filled with the slight stench of cadaver as a few bums wander over to take part in this goth-lite mourning ritual.

"Whyyyy?" sobs one kid with raccoon eyeliner and pierced tongue after another, eventually driving the homeless dudes away.  Do you know how annoying you have to be to drive a homeless guy away from a burning trash can in the dead of winter?  Now imagine an entire weekend of that. 

In a fleeting thought that, for once, wasn't about him, singer Gerard Way thought of the fans and realized, holy shit, he'd left them all alone for the entire wekkend.was kind enough to elaborate on the band's break-up by unleashing a long-winded TwitLonger diatribe today that, if nothing else, does seem to indicate the break-up has left Way with a lot of time on his hands.

The entire letter can be read HERE.

Having read it in its entirety, I can safely say that his letter is exactly like his music.  It portends to have a point, a direction, a poetic flair that is somehow worthy of note, and then delivers on none of that promise.

Some of my favorite parts of the letter:

"We were spectacular."

Well, sure, when you wear ear plugs.

"(MCR was) a perfect machine, beautiful, yet self aware of it’s system."

If that were truly the case, the band would have disbanded by default the minute the words "rock opera" fell from their lips.  Is there anything that screams "kill me now" louder than a rock opera?  I think not.  Yet MCR went on to release The Black Parade in 2006, 100% convinced that they'd re-invented the wheel when, in fact, they'd merely gone to Discount Tire and bought one.

That's what always annoyed me about MCR.  They honestly thought they had us fooled just because they'd managed to fool themselves into thinking all it took was a pose as long as you really, really meant it.

Thing is, there is no such thing as a heartfelt pose.  It's just a pose.

Gerard describes the moment he knew it was over:

"The show is… good. Not great, not bad, just good. The first thing I notice take me by surprise is not the enormous amount of people in front of us but off to my left- the shore and the vastness of the ocean. Much more blue than I remembered as a boy. The sky is just as vibrant. I perform, semi-automatically, and something is wrong. 

I am acting. I never act on stage, even when it appears that I am, even when I’m hamming it up or delivering a soliloquy. Suddenly, I have become highly self-aware, almost as if waking from a dream. I began to move faster, more frantic, reckless- trying to shake it off- but all it began to create was silence. The amps, the cheers, all began to fade. 

All that what left was the voice inside, and I could hear it clearly. It didn’t have to yell- it whispered, and said to me briefly, plainly, and kindly- what it had to say.

What it said is between me and the voice."

Wait, what?  Gerald, my man, you can't go into some hilariously spiritual wind-up and then refuse to toss the damn ball.  You can't describe that feeling of being on auto-pilot, losing yourself in the beauty of a cool summer breeze, and then not tell us what the voice said.  

In parting, Gerald goes on to say:

"My Chemical Romance is done. But it can never die. 

It is alive in me, in the guys, and it is alive inside all of you. 

I always knew that, and I think you did too."

In other words, "My Chemical Romance Reunion Tour 2015", baby!