DAYTONA BEACH — At some point on the evening of May 10, the last of four nights of Welcome to Rockville, the closing act will transform the festival into a parade.
A black parade.
Twenty years after the release of its best-performing single, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” My Chemical Romance will celebrate the record and the album that spawned it, “The Black Parade” in Daytona Beach.
There was breakup in 2013 and a reformation six years later, but lead singer Gerard Way and mates Frank Iero, Ray Toro and Mikey Way, have logged steady road miles, continuing to do shows despite not releasing a proper full-length new album since 2010’s “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.”
What makes ‘The Black Parade’ special?
The song reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 1 on the U.S. alternative airplay chart. The album, “The Black Parade,” reached No. 2 on the Billboard U.S. chart, and has been certified four times platinum.
Gerard Way has cited other bands that have influenced My Chemical Romance, including Smashing Pumpkins and Queen.
He told the “My Turning Point” podcast he wants to give listeners the feeling of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” while also making “Welcome to the Black Parade,” its own thing.
“‘Bohemian Rhapsody was always an influence on this song. Just these big kind of sweeping section changes, and things like that, but at the same time, I realized when we were making it … well, you can’t remake ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ You can be a little inspired by it, but we can’t try to do that.”
Critics cite lineage of ‘The Black Parade’ to Queen’s ‘A Night at the Opera’
Sound Opinions podcaster Jim DeRogatis placed “The Black Parade” in a lineage that dates to German-American composer Kurt Weill and continued with Queen’s “A Night at the Opera,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” and Green Day’s “American Idiot.”
“The Black Parade” is a concept album about The Patient, a teen being treated for cancer who is struggling with post-9/11 doom and regrets about the living he didn’t do.
“This is great, beginning-to-end great album,” DeRogatis said. “I had no expectations for it, and even the parts that aren’t silly and over the top, like you’re saying, they move, they kick. They have great, great rhythms and great melodies. This record really surprised me.”
Sound Opinions co-host Greg Kot said other doom bands of the day, such as Evanescence and AFI offered tracks that were wallowing, but My Chemical Romance was presenting a different take.
“Even though the subject matter is dire and macabre, the music is sarcastic, uplifting … there’s an energy to it that belies the subject matter,” Kot said. “It’s almost like these guys, and Gerard Way in particular, are laughing in the face of death.”
He was critical that some of the songs fall short of the best moments, the theatrical, glam, over-the-top tunes.
“When they pull their punches … they’re just another dull band,” Kot said.
DeRogatis, though, called the entire “Black Parade” album “hard-hitting pop-punk,” and compared it to Meat Loaf’s 1977 debut.
“What this is is ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ for Generation Y. And I don’t mean that as an inferior ‘Bat Out Of Hell II.’ … What the original was was a cartoon and in rock history, there have been great cartoons about teenage, you know, the Wagnerian take on teenage angst,” DeRogatis said. “Start with ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and then go all the way up to ‘Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness’ by the Smashing Pumpkins;. There’s always been these absurd operettas about the misery of being a boo-hoo, poor-you teenager, and this is great.”
Fan: My Chemical Romance is deep in her ‘little emo heart’
Harley Roxx, a deejay on Rock Rage Radio online and Rocket 100.5 FM in Gainesville, is an unabashed fan of My Chemical Romance.
“I’m emo to a core. MCR has just always held a special place in my heart,” she said on the first day of Welcome To Rockville. “I grew up in college listening to them. The music just hits.”
The 20-year anniversary of “The Black Parade” makes it an important time for the band to revisit that material, she said.
“I feel like it doesn’t just stick with the emo subgenre,” Roxx said.
One of MCR’s first hits, “Helena,” from 2005, sounds pop punk, but the video offers the emo dramatics of a beautiful goth ballerina in a coffin as the singer, in a church, seems to be eulogizing her as she rises to dance, wearing a fishnet veil, black bodice and ruffled black and red tulle skirt. It’s inspired by the death of Gerard and Mikey Way’s grandmother, Elena.
“They put on, from what I’ve seen, a fantastic show,” Roxx said. “And I’m eager to see how many girls will be dressed up as Helena, including myself, with the Helena dress from the music video.”
Roxx anticipates the band will close with “Helena” because of the lyrics. A key chorus line: “So long and good night.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: My Chemical Romance will close out Rockville with a little goth
Reporting by Mark Harper, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
