The History of This.Is.Not.Emo
This.is.not.emo was born as a radio show on the campus of The University of Hartford in the early fall of 2001. It was the product of David Apuzzo, who through the UHART radio station broadcasted the sounds of rock and roll to many listeners on and off campus.
The inception of This.is.not.emo.com came shortly after the birth of the radio show, as an outlet for promoting the radio show. Soon after, David (who also booked shows on campus at the University of Hartford Hawk’s Nest) began posting his show dates on the web-site. This helped attract the interest of people off the University of Hartford campus. Early shows including such acts as Taking Back Sunday, Armor For Sleep, Miracle of 86, Hidden In Plainview and more.
Matty B, a long time friend of David had been coming to the Hawk’s Nest shows for awhile, began videotaping them for posterity in early 2002. After the Taking Back Sunday/Armor For Sleep show, David decided to throw some of the videos from Hawk’s Nest shows on this.is.not.emo.com in order to show people what the shows there were like. Soon after, this.is.not.emo was contacted by Victory Records to video tape an upcoming show with Thursday at the Palladium in Worcestor, Mass. Videos from the show of Thursday and Fairweather were soon added to this.is.not.emo.com, and the site began to be recognized as a place for live band recordings as well as show promoting.
The summer of 2002 saw many videos added to this.is.not.emo and June 2002, This.is.not.emo sponsored their first out of CT show at the Mass Skate Park in Massachussettes which featured The Stryder, The Weakerthans, The Early November, West Beverly and many others. in October of 2002 an exclusive performance of Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’” was added to the site. This video sparked a renewed interest in the web-site, and this.is.not.emo received a lot of positive press, and soon more and more interested music fans started flocking to the web-site. This.is.not.emo continued to grow into the new year, adding more videos and putting on more Hawks Nest shows for the show going and viewing public.
In February of 2003, This.is.not.emo began looking into branching out and promoting by selling merchandise to their loyal visitors. This is where Drumm, The Merch King, first came into the picture. Now as a trio, this.is.not.emo was ready to get out to the public like never before. In April, 2003 this.is.not.emo made their second public appearance at Asbury Park’s annual Surf and Skate Festival as a vendor. Here they got their name out to people who had never heard of the web-site and made a personal connection to many in the Jersey area. Following Skate and Surf this.is.not.emo began selling their merchandise on Merchdirect.com as a way to expand their market to more and more people. In the past few months this.is.not.emo hasn’t slowed down in the least, nor do they plan too.
Ever bringing you new footage of both new bands and fan-favorites, as well as diversifying into different areas to broaden your musical horizons, this.is.not.emo will continue to refresh their appeal over and over again. In the coming months this.is.not.emo will be bringing not only a new web-site and a new member to the this.is.not.emo family (Kevin Flanagan, message board administrator) but more bands than you can shake a stick at, cool photos and great live videos. We know that you , the loyal this.is.not.emo visitors deserve the most out of us, and that is what we aim to give.
this is only a start to the incredible history of this.is.not.emo, stay tuned in for more.