Long Island Emo & Punk

You're asking about a commuter-rail suburb, not a sound. These were hardcore kids from Amityville, Levittown and Hicksville who kept the breakdowns and the tough-guy stage moves but started singing about girls, friends and who told whom what.

The scene ran on small rooms, incestuous line-ups and public grudges — the records are documents of people who all knew each other and stopped speaking.

The 90s Long Island hardcore circuit — VFW halls, firehouses, basements — fed everything. Eddie Reyes was already a veteran of that scene, playing in Mind Over Matter, which fed into post-hardcore bands like Glassjaw, and in Inside, one of the island's influential indie-emo bands.

He formed Taking Back Sunday in Amityville in late 1999 with bassist Jesse Lacey; Lacey quit in 1999 and formed Brand New in 2000, and the two bands ended up in a very public feud. The emerging emo scene got rooms to grow in when The Downtown and The Crazy Donkey opened in Farmingdale — The Downtown started as a sports bar before Dave Glicker and partners began booking shows there in 2001, and its 450 capacity hosted early Taking Back Sunday, Glassjaw, Straylight Run, Bayside and As Tall As Lions.

Victory, Triple Crown and Revelation carried the records off the island.

Who: Reyes, Lacey, John Nolan, Adam Lazzara (recruited from North Carolina by Nolan and moved to Bellmore within a week), Daryl Palumbo, Vinnie Caruana — plus Farmingdale's two clubs and a hundred VFW halls.

What: hardcore mechanics with pop vocal writing — interlocking lead and backing vocals trading lines, half-time breakdowns, lyrics naming names. Producers matter: Ross Robinson for Glassjaw, Brian McTernan at Salad Days in Washington DC for The Movielife.

How it works: a record gets in if the band played the island's halls, swapped members with three others, and sang like the argument happened last weekend.