I didn't find much punk in the Mid-West when I was there back in 1994-1998. I found plenty of Country, some Oldies and a disco station. There was an alright rock station. I believe they are still there.
Kansas City, St. Louis, Lawrence, KS, Minneapolis, MN, Chicago, Omaha & Lincoln, NE... all these places have pretty good punk/hardcore scenes. Not as big as say, New York but still, pretty big.
I mostly listen to the college station at the top but sometimes the rock station will play some AC/DC or Hendrix and the college station will be playing some whiney emo band. Most of the time, though I just listen to NPR as we have two really good NPR stations that we can get here. Since we're centrally located I guess we're just lucky that we get both the eastern & western stations. It's great, if there's classical on one and I don't feel like classical I switch to the other one and listen to jazz.
Emo = Emotional Hardcore. Basically it's what happens if you take hardcore, water it down and then put a bunch of guys who dress like Weezer onstage to whine about girls and heartache. It's like a mix of pop-punk and hardcore, kind of, sort of. I guess it's really hard to explain if you've never heard it. Those who haven't heard it are lucky.
I guess it would have really appealed to me when I was like, 13 and depressed but not now. I do like Dashboard Confessional, though. They're emo.
Dashboard Confessional, I will check them out. I used to be in the popular musical loop. Now I don't know alot of the new stuff. I just heard of the rapper named "50 cent" the other day.
You don't know what your missing!! LOL! Check out this gem of a (classic) WA Thread: 50 Cents' "In da Club" Ringtone