Beyond "The Monster Mash"

Generally, I loathe Holiday-themed posts, especially Halloween ones, as I really don't need to hear "Monster Mash" or "Werewolves of London" again. But I was inspired by I Fry Mine in Butter's post of Halloween songs that don't suck (and that you can listen to all year), so I'll add a few:

Writing While Female

I never intended to turn this into a series of posts, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot since I started this blog, and I see so little mention of women as music fans online. I did, however, find a post from Anwyn from Popular Demand that really hit home:

"I love writing about music, and sometimes I think I do it well. (But the confidence comes in intermittent flashes, it’s not a constant, guiding light. I have several male music writing friends who really and truly do think they’re wonderful writers – and some of them are – but it’s more that they feel entitled to believe that, no doubts or questions."

I, too, love writing and talking about music, but I always feel as though I need to pass a series of tests before I can prove that I know my stuff. Or that what I'm saying or writing is silly and superfluous or just plain wrong -- like Juno trying to convince Mark of Mott the Hoople's brilliance as he smiles and nods condescendingly. Part of that is that I've never been fully confident in my writing, but it would be naive to deny that the lack of female voices critical in music or cultural criticism is hugely influential in how other women see themselves as thinkers and critics. It doesn't help when respected pop culture pundits dismiss women's fandom as less serious than men's.

I should clarify that when I say there's a lack of women critics, I mean there is a lack of women critics in the mainstream music blogosphere, and a lack of women writing about how pop culture influences women's lives. The best critics, I've found, come from inside the feminist blogosphere, but let's be honest: the audience for a lot of feminist blogs is exponentially smaller than those at mainstream sites. As someone who's been a writer for an ostensibly feminist site, but a long-time commenter at many sites where I've been one of few women, there's a definite difference. I take more risks here than I do when I'm part of a crowd, or more often than not, I feel invisible. The key is to get more women writing and promoting other women's work.

Links & Bits for 10/29/10

Bad body image day songs (Feministing)
"Yesterday was a bad body image day, and since I had a lot of work to do and couldn’t afford to spend time thinking about my thighs, I decided I had better put together a playlist that would turn the day around. I dragged and dropped a few songs from my iTunes, and I solicited the advice of my friends and Twitter followers."

Why Feminist Pop Criticism Matters (Bitch Blogs)

"Creating art is walking through a minefield, especially in a society like this one that doesn't really do much to support said art. And since many of us critics are also creators, we know that we don't want to discourage creation, we want to make it better."

My Mic Sounds Gay: Saluting Out and Proud Female Emcees (Autostraddle)
"While several articles have been written about Nicki Minaj and her alleged bisexuality, no one has been talking about the high percentage of same-gender-loving female emcees or how that may play a part in the lack of girl rhyme slayers being given their time in the limelight."

Quote of the week goes to Jessica Hopper, because this is also a huge pet peeve of mine:
"Oh, jeez, in the compendium of rock critic cliches, few things are as annoying like the male rock comparing women artists to other women that they sound nothing like."

RIP Sony's Walkman (sort of)

It turns out the reports of the death of Sony's Walkman were only half true. According to an article in PC Magazine yesterday, Sony will cease its production of the iconic personal music player in Japan, but it's still available in the US. I honestly thought it was gone from store shelves years ago.

I got my first Walkman at the ripe old age of fourteen. It was a Christmas present, and if I recall correctly, the first song I played on it was Eric Clapton's "It's in the Way That You use It." I wish I had a cooler story that that, but it was the late-80s and coolness wasn't on my radar yet. I was just glad to have something that let me listen to music in the privacy of my own two ears, no longer tethered to the "big stereo" in the family room. The real fun was taking it to school with me the next week just to spite the principal who threatened each semester to ban all portable music players, but he never did.

Needless to say, I promptly dropped it in the second floor girls' bathroom, losing the back that held the battery inside the body. I wrapped the thing in duct tape for the next year because my working-class parents sure as hell weren't going to buy me a new one. I went through several walkmen (walkmans?) throughout the 80s and all the way up to the 2000s when I finally broke down and bought, get this, a discman. No early adopter, I only bought my first iPod a couple years ago and now can't imagine life without it. Yes I can. It involved cassettes rattling around in the bottom of my backpack and the inevitable call of "Can I make you a mixtape?" I'm not one to get misty over the technology of my youth, and I don't miss schlepping around tapes, but it's sad when something so iconic, something so suggestive of a particular era goes the way of the dinosaur.

Rewind: Crass - Penis Envy

If there ever was a record that could truly and honestly wear the label of "feminist album," it would be this one. Penis Envy is the only one of Crass's albums that features the band's female members (notably Joy de Vivre and Eve Libertine) on vocals, and actually managed to break into the British top twenty.

Released in 1981 as punk was taking its last breath, Penis Envy's themes of sexual harassment, sexual repression and the patriarchy's control over women's brains and bodies was really subversive stuff. In a recent article for the Guardian, Rosie Swash writes:

"If you were a teenage romantic in the 80s, you might have been the kind of little dreamer who bought Loving magazine. Filled with swooning love stories, it must have seemed an unlikely place to hear the latest record by an anarcho-punk outfit from Essex. And yet that's exactly what happened when a flexi-disc with a song titled "Our Wedding" by an artist called Joy De Vivre – purported by Loving to capture the happiness of your big day for "true romantics" – was given away to readers. Famously, the mag was forced to issue an apology when it emerged this was actually a subversive piece of feminist agit-prop from an album called Penis Envy by a band called Crass. This lent new meaning to the lines: "All I am I give to you, you'll honour me, I'll obey you" and caused the News of the World to describe them as a 'band of hate'."

Full disclosure: I came to this record pretty late in my music listening life, and I'm glad I did. The songs on Penis Envy are scathing, seething, and absolutely essential for anyone, especially a young feminist.

In Anticipation of NaNoWriMo: Four Vaguely Rock and Roll(ish) Books

NaNoWriMo is a week away. I promise I won't bore you with updates, bitching, or the general panic that comes with crafting a novel in thirty days (I have a Tumblr for that), but the content around here might get a bit skimpy in the next four weeks. I'll try to remember my bloggy duties, but I can't make any promises. Until then, here are four novels I wish I could have written that some sort of a rock and roll theme:

Girl by Blake Nelson
Oh so 90s angsty. Published in 1994, Girl is Nelson's first novel and a favorite among the YA set. Andrea is a bored, smart teen on her way to college who finds herself enmeshed in the Portland music scene via her fried, Cybil (Rayanne Graff to Andrea's Angela Chase) and a boy, Todd.

The Exes by Pagan Kennedy
The Exes are a hip Boston band made up of, guess what? Exes. As in, they used to date each other. Each chapter tells of the band's conception through the eyes of a different member, which according to one Amazon reviewer produces, "an omniscient Rashomon-like narrative that weaves pop reference and nerdy rock-geek sensibility into a combination Harlequin Romance/Celebrity Tell-All."

Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story by Lewis Shiner
What I love about Say Goodbye is that it reads more like a biography or a memoir that a novel. Normally, I think novels like this fail more often than they succeed, but Shiner's writing is so perfectly nuanced that you really believe Laurie and the people around her exists.

The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Mary-Beth has an unusual talent: song reading. She can decode the song that's stuck in someone's head, sort of like a fortune teller or palm reader. The Song Reader's premise is a little odd, but underneath it all is a bittersweet story about love and grief.

Ari Up: Punk Rock and Feminist Pioneer

Ari Up, former vocalist for the seminal punk band The Slits, died earlier this week from a "serious illness" (later reported as cancer by the Guardian). She was only 48-years-old.

Formed in 1976, the Slits carried the brunt of punk's criticism as noise made by unskilled pseudo-musicians. Of their early recordings, critic and author of The Sex Revolts, Simon Reynolds said, "The Slits initial focus was in demystifying the means of musical production, and their earliest recordings (released belatedly as an untitled 1980 album) offer an artless, atrocious racket." That racket when on to inspire a legion of women in the 80s and beyond, especially the riot grrrl scene of the early 90s. Their most well-known album, Cut, is sited as one of punk's best, and most underrated, records. It was also one of punk's most iconic album covers showing the three members of the band naked and caked with mud. Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein in a blog post for NPR detailing The Slits' influence:

"Not once did a Slits song cease to amaze me, not after repeat listens, literally hundreds of listens. Not once did they fail to excite or inspire me, to make me a worshipper of rhythm, chaos and of attitude. The Slits were giants and they only grew bigger and more potent over the years. Their album Cut — on which the band is pictured topless and caked in mud — is nothing short of a pinnacle. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Cut sat there in the record collections — of both musicians and fans - -as the dynamic, the sound and the uniqueness for which to strive."

Critic Jon Savage wrote in The Guardian, "The Slits found it difficult to assimilate within a conservative, male-dominated music industry. The songs became clearer, and when you listened, they were tuneful, witty and extremely sharp." Ari Up herself downplayed her band's feminist connections. In the book Cinderella's Big Score, she said, "It was more a personal thing... we wanted to female without being what female was supposed to be. We just wanted to be us."

She is survived by her three sons and her mother, Nora, who is married to the Sex Pistols' John Lydon.

Further Reading:
Previously Unpublished Q&A With Ari Up (Spin)
(Not A) Typical Girl (Bitch Blogs)

Links & Bits for 10/22/10

Remembering Ari Up Of The Slits (Carrie Brownstein for All Songs Considered)

"The Slits were a life-changing band that made life-changing music. What does life-changing mean? It means someone puts a song on a mix tape or throws a record on and you stop dead in your tracks because now, whatever path you were on no longer exists. In that moment, you think of histrionic and cliche things such as "from this day forward" and "from here on out," and you hope to God you have the conviction to follow through with all the things this music has inspired you to do."

Janelle Monae Discusses Androids, "The Other," and Making Music That Moves You (A to Z)
"Originally hailing from Kansas City, Kansas -- an article in our sister paper, the Pitch, explains more -- Monae travelled to Atlanta by way of New York. She cultivated valuable creative relationships along the way: Diddy and Big Boi have taken interest in her work, and she's done many collaborations with other artists in the last year, including Of Montreal, B.o.B. and Lupe Fiasco. As she prepared to embark on a nationwide tour with Of Montreal in support of her debut full-length, The ArchAndroid, Monae took a few minutes to discuss her music, her message and her muse: you."

Sons of Matriarchy: Boy Rapper Speaks Out Against Objectifying Women (Bust Magazine)
"Fourteen-year old rapper Brian Bradley, better known as the Astronomical Kid, sends a clear message to ogling men everywhere: "Stop Looking at My Moms"

Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen waxen (Dorothy Surrenders)
"What makes the whole hair whipping phenomena more interesting is its juxtaposition with the also just-released “I Love My Hair” video by Sesame Street. The cherry little number is an ode to African-American hair and, well, adorable. So damn cute."



And a cute mash-up of Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" with Sesame Street's "I Love My Hair."

Ari Up - RIP

From this morning's Guardian:

"Ari Up, frontwoman of the celebrated British post-punk band the Slits, has died at the age of 48.

The singer, born Arianna Forster, passed away yesterday (20 October) after a "serious illness".

The announcement was made by representatives of Forster's stepfather, John Lydon, last night. A statement on his website reads: 'John and Nora have asked us to let everyone know that Nora's daughter Arianna (Ari Up) died today after a serious illness. She will be sadly missed. Everyone at JohnLydon.com and PiLOfficial.com would like me to pass on our heartfelt condolences to John, Nora and family. Rest In Peace.'"

Infidels: How I Learned to Not Love Dylan

(Serendipitously enough, Bob Dylan is in town tomorrow, something I didn't realize until I started researching this post.)

I write a lot about spending time with other music fans and for better or worse, being unduly influenced by their tastes. I mean, it's bound to happen: You want to like what you're friends do, and a huge part of being a fan is the community it fosters. However, I have one dirty little secret I keep from the general music nerd community.

I don't like Bob Dylan.

I tried to for decades. I bought all his records as they were re-issued and re-issued again, and although I can respect him as a songwriter and note his influence in nearly every young songwriter to come after him, his music never moved me the way it has pretty much everyone else in the known universe. Oh it me moved, but not as if I'd just witnessed the genius of the greatest poet of the last half-century, but more like I'd just gotten into an argument with the world's worst boyfriend or husband or random guy at the bar. In other words, Dylan reminds me too much of people I've known. Ironically, Sady Doyle's defense of Dylan succinctly sums up why I've been unwilling to embrace his music:

"Dylan is, among other things, a gigantic douche on occasion; very specifically, he would seem to be a misogynist of the old school, a member of the Grand Old Boner Party, the sort of man who can only deal with women – at least rhetorically – if they are childlike and precious, or strangely exotic objects on which he looks with fear, admiration, and deep distrust."

I don't know much about Bob Dylan's life outside his music, but I do know glassy-eyed worship is his reward for writing songs that infantilize women. Granted, it's naive to think that Dylan is alone in his misogyny, and if I removed all the songs from my iPod that were anti-woman in some way, I'd be left with... not much. It's more than that. It's the near-obsessive fandom, the unwavering critical acclaim, the unquestioned genius coupled with the long-standing -- and brushed aside -- belief that this guy probably doesn't like women too much that makes it hard for me to listen to his music. Call me an infidel if you must.

Funstyle -- and Girlysound Revisited

Liz Phair's new album, Funstyle, was released this week along with all the songs from her Girlysounds Tapes, her pre-Guyville lo-fi recordings.

As you may remember, last summer Phair confused fans (and much of the blogosphere who weren't so kind) with her "rap" (ironic air quotes required) single, "Bollywood." I'm not the biggest Liz Phair supporter, and while I think her career missteps have been unfortunate, at best, and greatly outnumber her hits, she's been an integral part of women's history in rock music, and I'm glad to see the Girlysound tapes become available for the next generation to discover.

Whitney Matheson from USA Today's Pop Candy blog will be streaming Girlysound all this week. You can catch it here.

Rewind: Nina Hagen - Nunsexmonkrock

While we're on the subject of throaty German contraltos, I have to talk about Nina Hagen. Born in 1955 in what was formerly known as East Berlin, Nina Hagen was studying ballet by age four and was considered an opera prodigy by nine. From the deepest growls to ear-bleeding highs her operatic voice serves her well on Nunsexmonkrock , a blend of punk, goth, dance and reggae -- and her first English-speaking album.



Unfortunately, Nunsexmonrock has been out of print for a while, though it was re-issued on cd sometime in the mid-90s. It's worth a dig through the cut-outs because it's also not available for download anywhere.

Earworm of the Day: Nico - My Funny Valentine

I admit it, I've always love Nico's voice: Smokey, croaky, loaded with deadpan indifference, but still achingly vulnerable. When I first got my hands on Velvet Underground and Nico, I was immediately drawn to it, in part because I had a really deep singing myself and only with much effort could push myself into mezzo range. Women weren't supposed to sound like that. Most of the singers I was listening to at the time had high, chripy voices, or traditionally "pretty" ones. (Note: I'd yet to discover Nina Simone, Odetta, or even Patti Smith.) Nico's was otherworldly.

"My Funny Valentine" comes from her final solo album, 1985's Camera Obscura.

Record Store Girl

If there are any female collectors out there, we have some bad news to report: Sorry, but you don't exist.
Vinyl Junkies

I am a female record collector and self-professed geek. If I were a character in High Fidelity, I'd be Barry. We do exist.

Although a lack of funds keeps me from pursuing the vinyl part of my hobby more, I was pretty deep into trading "field recordings" (I've always preferred this term to bootlegs) with guys twice my age I knew only from fanboards. There's a definite hoarder aspect to collecting bootlegs: the feeling of obtaining something very few others have, tangible proof that you are a more "serious" kind of music fan. (I mean, who takes pride in a collection of drunken Replacements shows recorded by equally drunk fans?) Women may be few and far between, but we are there.

I'm lucky that I have a couple really good brick-and-mortar record stores in my city, and more than a few decent used cds stores. In the pre-iTunes era, had it not been for used cd outlets (and libraries), I wouldn't have a "collection." I have never experienced any overt sexism, except when I'm pushed aside by guys whose wingspan is thrice mine digging through crates of musty old vinyl that's been sitting in someone's basement for decades. It's the covert, "is it or isn't it?" unexamined, unpacked kind of sexism that's the most infuriating. It's the constant "schooling" I'd get when I placed my purchases on the counter. (I think I know what I'm buying, thank you very much.) It's being serenaded with Big Star's "I'm In Love With a Girl" when I really just want to get out of there. It's this sentiment, which seems to be shared by fans and male rock critics alike:

"To some extent, male record collectors wear their geekiness as a badge of honor. There's a certain pride that goes along with self-deprecation. Hell, no woman could be as obsessed as we are. Take away cheap sexism, and you're left with an idealized attitude. The idea that isn't women are inferior, but they've got better things to do."

No, take away any cheap sexism and you're left with... more sexism. To posit that women are underrepresented in a subculture because they have "better things to do," is just kind of lazy. When you're continually thought of as less knowledgeable or not doing fandom right, you really don't want to be part of the club.

Scraps: Breaking Waves

I've been reading Rebecca Traister's excellent book about women voters and the 2008 presidential election, Big Girls Don't Cry. Much of the antipathy I felt towards the media, especially the home team -- the "good, liberal media" --- being a closet Clinton supporter was validated.

At the time, I was writing for a pretty big deal women's blog. Although I was a lowly entertainment reporter, and not one to get involved in any of the online shitstorms, I could sense the divide in the feminist blogosphere. As I edge closer to forty, I guess I'm on the elder end of third-wave feminism. A woman just graduating college is almost (biologically speaking, literally) young enough to be my daughter. She's coming into "her feminism." I can't speak for other women my age, but I think beginning to understand the rift between second and third wave feminism twenty years ago. This really hit home:

"What was often hard for older women to remember was that younger women creating a new feminist realm had not the same experiences they had, both in broad poetic post second wave terms and also purely in terms of age."

I see that happening now, too, in the feminist blogosphere, where it's easy to feel irrelevant and left out as each year the commentariat gets younger and younger and you're one of few over 35. I rarely comment these days anyway, and I have to keep reminding myself that it's the natural progression of things, and at twenty, I sure as hell didn't want to listen to a forty-year-old. (My mother will concur.) What I do isI worry that we're going to be as out-of-touch as we used to accuse the second-wavers, our mothers, of being.

Links & Bits for 10/15/10

Maura Johnston from The Awl lists iTunes's "69-Cent One-Hit Wonder" Ranked By Relative Tolerability

Gossip's Beth Ditto Preaches 'Togetherness' on National Coming Out Day (Spinner)
"It just makes me so sad, in this day and age especially," Ditto tells Spinner. "To know that things like this are still happening because of the internet ... I don't mean to oversimplify this, but there's a lot of great things you can do on the internet and there's access to things we didn't have when I was younger, but I never thought about it going the other way. I never thought about internet bullying or anything like that. It's easier now more than ever to have your privacy invaded. You can't hide your profile under your bed or leave it at your friend's house. It's there for everyone to see and that's really disturbing to me."

When Antony Met Marina (The Guardian)
"It's early morning in Madrid, and neither Antony Hegarty nor Marina Abramovic´ have been up long. The celebrated musician and the legendary performance artist are rehearsing for The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic´, an opera that will make its debut at the Manchester international festival next year. The pair have a benevolently witchy air: Abramovic´ has an almost narcotically deep, consonant-rolling Serbian accent; Hegarty talks a lot, but less than the motormouthed Abramovic´, his soft voice punctuated by reflective pauses. Despite the fatigue of rehearsing solidly for 15 days, the level of mutual admiration is almost tangible."

To Yoko (on John's 70th Birthday)

John Lennon would have turned 70-years-old last Friday.

I'm just barely old enough to remember when he was murdered. John's was the first rock star death to have affected me in a way I could comprehend, "Oh, somebody great has died." I'm not sure, as a seven-year-old, how much I knew about the Beatles' legacy. My parents weren't fans (which is pretty shocking for a two people born smack in the center of the baby boom years); their music wasn't played at our house, but it was so omnipresent it didn't need to be. John was a cultural icon whose influence had already been felt throughout popular music as he was standing on the precipice of middle age. And then he was gone. There's really nothing more I can say about a man who quite literally changed history, so I won't. Instead I want to talk about Yoko, his widow.

Growing up in the years after John's death, Yoko Ono was, more than anything, a punchline. A succubus. A witch. The person responsible for breaking up the Beatles, leading half its creative head down a path of drugs and ultimately turning him into a house husband. I had never heard her music nor seen her art, and I was taught to dismiss her as a caterwauling non-talent. It pissed me off, and I stealthily defended her, though I didn't exactly know what she had done, aside from wedding a Beatle. What I didn't know then was that I was getting my first taste of feminism. Yoko wasn't as "stand by your man," kind of gal or rather she was, but she was more a "stand with your man" as equals and co-creators. That scared people.

Cara from The Curvature wrote a wonder three-piece feminist analysis on Yoko (which you can read here, here, and here) that delves deeper into her history that I ever could:

"The common story of women manipulating their male partners comes from the perception that these women are not supposed to do anything with their time except think about their man. It simultaneously ignores and depends upon the fact that women would of course not have to manipulate their husbands if they had equal power and autonomy in the relationship. Because Yoko had, on a personal level, equal power in her relationship with John, the assumption simply was that she could have obtained an equal status in no way other than manipulation. John couldn’t have enjoyed being a househusband. He couldn’t have just respected Yoko as a person. She couldn’t just be financially smarter than him. And god, he couldn’t possibly have actually liked that dreadful music and art of hers! The only explanation was that somehow, she had to be tricking him."



I would see this trope played out again after Kurt Cobain's death, with Courtney Love pegged as Generation X's Yoko. It's almost jokingly easy to draw parallels. And for someone still trying to navigate her was through feminism's third wave, when we were supposed to be past all this witch-hunting, it was a sobering reality that we hadn't come as far as we thought.

Art vs Commerce: "Ironic" Covers

Weezer has a new rarities album coming out next month. As these things go, it's a handful of b-sides, unreleased songs and the requisite ironic* cover.

I realize I'm speaking from the point-of-view of someone who grew up in a era when the chasm between commercial and indie was wider, even under the umbrella term "alternative rock," but during the nineties especially, it was de rigueur for an indie band to cover a pop song, in a sense giving it new life, but more often that not, the message was "look at the cool, critically acclaimed 'artist' pointing out the absurdity in pop music." No credibility lost there.

I've never been all that comfortable with the concept of "ironic covers." I love a lot of them, but there's something a bit unsettling about artists covering songs that's supposed to be "beneath"them.

A few weeks ago, I read a post in the Guardian about the racial barriers that plague rock music. This stood out in particular:

"In America, unfortunately, white rock has always been considered as art, and black music as commerce."

POC and women are well represented in pop music that sells, but when you look a list of critic's picks, it's overpopulated with white men: the singer-songwriters and "indie" (in parentheses as indie as become a meaningless term) bands that make up the canon. When Paste published its list of the 100 best living songwriters, women and POC were few and far between. (Surprisingly, the readers' list was slightly more diverse.) It's hard not to ignore that pattern.

What does this have to do with Weezer? They're releasing a cover Toni Braxton's 14-year-old song, "Un-Break My Heart," much maligned as an adult contempo classic. It's actually a pretty good song, and Braxton sings her heart out on it. I like Weezer and hope they threw a little reverence her way..

*Yes, I realize both "ironic" and "indie" have become meaningless, bear with me.

Rewind: Marianne Faithfull - Broken Emglish

(Note: I'm dropping the tag "retro" on my album of the week posts since it seems they're all retro these days. I no longer need the qualifier, I guess.)

I'll admit it, the cover is what drew me in: tinted blue, face obscure by a hand, lips parted and the neon tip of a lit cigarette. It reeked of late-70s cool. It's still among my top albums, though to be honest, Broken English 's disco-era production hasn't aged well. It's a little cold and aloof, but a handful of the songs stand the test of time, notably "Why'd Ya Do It," one of the bitterest, nastiest songs ever committed to record:



Her cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" is a bit robotic, but still effective. (I'm biased, though. I fell in love with the original when I was a kid because it was the first time I ever heard someone drop an f-bomb in song. Silly, I know, but powerful for a seventh grader.) "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" is the outlier here. Written by Shel Silverstein, it's since been covered by many artists, including Bobby Bare and Lucinda Williams, and was featured in the movie Thelma and Louise.

This isn't a record I run to often, but when I do, I get to be "that girl" for while: glamorous and cool, but still a little rough around the edges.

Owning Your "Guilty Pleasures"

I think someone unfriended me for posting a Cher video.

Now I know that's silly and most likely not true. I was probably unfriended for a good reason. Maybe I offended him in some way I couldn't uncover by my combing through my most recent posts. Or maybe I was unfriended for the unforgivable crime of being terribly un-clever. Either way, I'd like to believe my greatest infraction was my questionable taste in music, 'cause I totally own that:



I honestly don't remember this song existing, but I know every word. I'm pretty sure I owned "Save Up All Your Tears" on a cassingle, the 80s and early 90s equivalent to downloading the one good song on a record. (Downloading itself is a huge guilty pleasure enabler.) And I'm pretty sure I belted it out in my bedroom when no one else was at home. Fear of having a Sue Sylvester moment keeps me from doing that right now.

I came to music late in my adolescence. I was still bopping along to Wham! when most of my peers had discovered REM, and it wasn't until my twenties when I became aware that some artists came with a critic's seal of approval. I bought myself a copy of The All Music Guide and scoured used CD stores for the highest rated records. Some of them, to my surprise, I liked, and some of I hated with the fire of a thousand suns and wondered why this dreck was even allowed to be recorded. A lot of them I just sort of pretended to like. Being a music blogger requires me to rewrite my own musical history a bit: no one wants to appear less knowledgeable than she really is, especially in the male-dominated music, indie=good, everything else=bad music blogosphere. And no one wants to think she has "terrible taste." But you know what? I simply don't care anymore. I refuse to label anything that makes me happy a "guilty pleasure."

One Song, Many Voices: Pirate Jenny

"Pirate Jenny," one of the most well-known songs from Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera has a long history in contemporary pop and jazz music. In his book, Chronicles, Bob Dylan says of the song, "Each phrase comes at you from a 10-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another comes like a punch on the chin." Many artists from Nina Simone to Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls have covered it some of whom I'll share here, but first a little backstory:

"The song depicts Jenny, a lowly maid at a crummy old hotel, imaging avenging herself for the contempt received by the townspeople. A pirate ship – with eight sails, and with 50 cannons – enters the harbor, fires on the city and flattens every building except the hotel. The pirates come ashore, chain up all the townspeople, and present them to Jenny, who orders the pirates to kill them all. She then sails away with the pirates.

The song was originally placed in the first act and is sung by Mackie's bride, Polly Peachum, who resents her parents' opposition to her trying her luck with Mackie and is phantasising about avenging herself on the constraints of her family. However, the song is frequently moved to the second act and given to the prostitute Jenny. Jenny has given Mackie, her former lover, shelter from the police but is jealous of his wife, Polly. Eventually, she tips of the police, who catch Mackie and take him to his hanging. Her song suggests that she likes the idea of having Mackie's fate in her hands." (Wikipedia)

One of the most revered versions is Nina Simone's. From 1964's Nina Simone in Concert, she gives the song "a grim civil rights undertone, with the 'black freighter' symbolizing the coming black revolution."(Wikipedia) Says nojojo from Alas, A Blog: "She means every word of it, too — you can hear that in her voice. The first time I listened to it, I thought, If I was white, I would sleep with one eye open. For the rest. Of. My. Life. Because it’s blatantly obvious from the barely-contained rage in this song that Simone is not singing about pirates..."



I dug around youtube and found several other versions from the sublime to the just plain odd. Here are some of my favorites:

Care Package to My 13-year-old Self

NPR had the right idea. Suggesting songs or albums that would help a 13-year-old get through her adolescence is a great way to connect with and guide the next generation, but I don't know many 13-year-old girls raised on a steady diet of Katy Perry and Ke$ha who could really get into King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King or Neil Young's After the Goldrush. Any chance one would have to drive a teenage girl away from pop music's message that she has to be thin, sexy, and available to boys, take it. But Neil Young isn't going to cut it. At 13, I would have dismissed it as "dad rock."(If you have to go the Bob/Neil/Bruce route, I'd suggesting buying her a guitar to go along with cds.)

Truth be told, I wasn't listening to much of anything at 13. My neighborhood didn't have MTV yet, and my parents kept the radio tuned to talk or country. What little music I listened to had to be so ubiquitous that it was unavoidable. The trifecta of Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, Culture Club's Colour By Numbers, and Thriller made up the entirety of my record collection. I didn't really start getting into music until my late teens or early twenties. Fortunately for me, a lot of great music came out during the latter part of the 80s and into the 90s with the rise of commercial "alternative" rock. (Biggest oxymoron in the world, I know, but it did shake up the music industry for a few years, and dealt the final blow to hairspray rock.) However, by then I was a little too old to really enjoy it. I wish some of it was around when I was younger. If I could send a care package to my 13-year-old self, this is what it would include:

Queen Latifah's "Ladies First" and "U.N.I.T.Y"
My earliest taste of feminism came courtesy of hip hop, and both these songs left a huge impression on me. Hearing Queen Latifah in "U.N.I.T.Y" threaten to punch her harassers "dead in the eye" planted the seed in my head that, "Wow. I can do that?" I never had to, but I used to play that song on a loop in my brain whenever I'm walking home alone.

Patti Smith's "Gloria"
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine... Truer words have never been spoken, especially to a budding atheist like myself. I kind of wish someone would have pointed me toward this song when, at age eleven, I asked my dad how I could become excommunicated from the church. I actually got to see Patti Smith a few years ago, and it was the closest I've ever been to a true religious experience.



Le Tigre's Feminist Sweepstakes
Going with the entire album here, as there are few artists these days calling themselves feminists, and even fewer records that make the word sound not scary or antiquated.

TLC's "No Scrubs"
What I've always loved about this song, though it was a huge pop hit, was that it was completely free of the victimization of street harassment. Many times "message" songs make me feel more powerless than I did before. This one doesn't, and puts the onus on the creepy guy "hanging out the passenger side."

So, what songs are albums would you recommend to a girl just entering her teens?

Links & Bits for 10/8/10

The 50 Most Important Queer Women In Music (AfterEllen)

"Popular music is one of the most influential forces of the last century. It has the power to entertain, but also to educate. And with women being a growing force in the industry, it was only a matter of time before lesbian and bisexual women would make themselves known in the very straight, very male-driven music business. With this list of the 50 most important queer women in music, we highlight those females who have proven to be influential, not only to their own specific gay and female communities, but to the world at large, through their being successful musicians and open about their sexuality."

For What It's Worth: Misnomer(S) Break Down Hip Hop Stereotypes (Feministing)
"Misnomer(S) consists of two Korean-American sisters from Buffalo, NY, known on stage as Knewdles and Sos (yes, pronounced noodles and sauce). What sets them apart is not the “novelty” of being Asian female hip-hop artists but how they combine lyrics and instrumentation: Knewdles is an emcee and Sos is a violinist."

The Dreamland of Candy Darling (PopMatters)
"Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar documents the short life of the transsexual actress whom Warhol’s POPism memoir described as “the most striking drag queen I’d ever seen”. Oscar-nominated actress Chloe Sevigny supplies the voice of the Superstar, who grew up on Long Island being entranced by silver screen legends like Kim Novak and Lana Turner."

Carrie Brownstein says goodbye to Monitor Mix (NPR)

Cat Power Plays Every Instrument on Her Upcoming Album (Paste)

Liz Phair Remembers Exile in Guyville (Rolling Stone)
"Everyone who was making indie music knew each other. It was a small group of people," Liz Phair told Rolling Stone, sitting high up in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas during the weekend anniversary celebration for Matador Records, which released her acclaimed 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville."

Swanlights Streaming

Courtesy of NPR's First Listen Series, you can listen to Antony and the Johnson's new album, Swanlights, a week before its official release. Or you can watch the video for the single, "Thank You For Your Love," which is made of up of grainy Super 8 footage Antony shot when he first arrived in New York almost twenty years ago:

Rewind: Mary Gauthier - Dixie Kitchen

Named after a the restaurant she opened in Boston's Back Bay, Dixie Kitchen is singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier's criminally overlooked first album. The centerpiece of the record is a intensely personal ballad called, "Goddamn HIV," sung from the perspective of a young gay man during the early days of AIDS. Unfortunately, I cannot find a stream or video of the song anywhere online, though it is in last.fm's catalog. (You can listen to a thirty-second sample there, or, if you have a last.f, account, add the song to your playlist.)

In case you're wondering, she sold the restaurant to fund her second album, 1999's superb Drag Queens in Limousines , but Dixie Kitchen remains a lost classic.

Further Reading:
Q&A with Mary Gauthier (American Songwriter)

Earworm of the Day: Jenny Owen Youngs - Hot In Herre

Although Jenny Owen Youngs's cover of Nelly's "Hot In Herre" is over three years old, I thought it was appropriate in light of this a cappella version of a Dr. Dre song from a couple weeks back. (In fact, it was link in the original post's comments.) It kind of has the same vibe, if slightly less overtly misogynistic lyrics.

Women as Fans, Women as Critics: Round Two

(I saw this story linked on Feministe yesterday and my comment got a bit long, so I turned it into a post.)


"'Wordless, intensely emotional and undeniably sexual -- this is the state in which teenage girls are understood to connect with music, and with those performing it,' writes Crawford, an Australian journalist known for her feminist music criticism. 'It is all in their bodies: they do not intellectualise; their opinions are instinctive rather than considered.'"
- Critic Anwyn Crawford in an article on the lack of women in music criticism courtesy of On The Issues

On another website a few weeks ago, I reviewed a book by a well-received rock critic. I overwhelmingly like and respect his work. He does an amazing job communicating the zeitgiest of the 80s and 90s indie music scene, but still has a healthy appreciation of all things pop. A good review should have been a given, save for one little problem: his reliance (the brunt of the book, actually) on the idea that women are not "serious" music fans. But that's okay girls, 'cause we can still dance and stuff. See, our non-serious fandom allows us the freedom to squee and swoon and wet ourselves and we don't have to worry about looking at music, or pop culture as a whole for that matter, with a analytical eye.

Of course, none of this really matters unless you are a music critic, but women are grossly underrepresented as critics. If women, as the article states, are trained from a young age that they are emotional rather than rational, reactive and instinctive rather than thoughtful, how are we to see ourselves a capable of critical thought? I know from experience, being around fans and critics alike, it's not so much that I think I'm incapable, but convincing others I have a brain and am not just into a band because "the lead singer's hot." (Yes, I have known male rock fans who reduce it to that.)

"Having more female critics is important because women need to see more examples of what they can do, but also because women, particularly feminists, bring a much needed perspective to bear on the cultural subjects they are discussing. The same is true with people from different races, cultural backgrounds or sexual orientations."

Some of the best cultural critics, I've found, come from within the feminist blogosphere. I never grew up with fantasies of being my generation's Lester Bangs or Robert Cristgau, so doing what I'm doing now, even on a micro level, is still quite alien. Hearing other women's voices provides a well-needed sense of validation, but go to any mainstream music blog or magazine (what few of them are left), and men still outnumber the women.

Girls to the Front -- A Sloppy, Somewhat Personal Review

So I finally got my hands on a copy of Sara Marcus's Girls to the Front and haven't put it down for the past two days. I think I'm really starting to understand the "scene" aspect of riot grrrl, or, rather, the lack of a unified scene, which made it difficult to define riot grrrl despite mainstream media's best (or worst) efforts. Going by the handful of magazine articles written in the early nineties, one would think riot grrrl was nothing but babydoll dresses and smeared lipstick punks with just a side order of feminist politics. Reduced to its sartorial effects, the movement loses its power. And girls stuck in the middle of the country or away from a major city got their information piecemeal: a short article here, maybe a some airplay on a low-power college station there. I was one of those girls, and everything I knew about riot grrrl came from traditional media. The way it was presented in the mainstream press, I just assumed I wasn't cool or smart enough for it. Plus, I was never much of a fan of punk rock, and it was impossible to disassociate riot grrrl from its music.

It's kind of a sad fact that, especially in the pre-internet age, riot grrrl needed the mainstream to reach all those girls grasping for feminist role models, but it was the mainstream that ultimately sold them out. In that respect, I like that that Girls to the Front was told from the inside out. It answered a lot of questions I had, and I don't feel as much resentment towards it now. It was about the music, but much more. And I'm kind of surprised that riot grrrl's heyday lasted only a few short years -- at least in the big history of rock -- but as cliched as it sounds, its impact is still felt today.

Random tidbits from the notes I took while reading:

Fugazi's influence as a political punk band fighting against the sexism that is part and parcel to hardcore: noted. Their song, "Suggestion" is sung from the point of view of a woman being harassed, and lauded as an anti-sexist anthem. It always smacked of appropriation to me. I couldn't help but feel validated when I read this:

"'Suggestion' was still Fugazi's song, though, and in recent months it bad begun to sound to some riot grrrls like a self-righteous white boy appropriating girls' issues so he could appear more virtuous."

I never doubted Fugazi's motivations, I just thought it was a bit misguided. That they let women come up on stage and sing lead presents it in a different light, though.



On riot grrrl's mostly white, middle-class majority:

"Some of the riot grrrls knew their group wasn't perfect. They were good at talking about what they had in common, but they weren't sure how to approach their differences. For instance, while a majority of the people involved were white and middle-class, quite a few were Latina, black and Asian. And some had grown up in struggling families. These things were rarely discussed."

This has been my primary criticism of riot grrrl, and I see parallels in the feminist blogosphere today. Although some of those walls have broken down, it's an ongoing process to fight against the biases and privilege.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book have a lot of respect for the women who were part of the early days of riot grrrl. I especially liked that riot grrrl's story wasn't sugar coated, but presented as something as complex and, at times, as flawed its members.

Links & Bits for 10/1/10

B-Sides: Sleater-Kinney Reloaded (Bitch Blogs)
"The Corin Tucker Band is releasing their first album 1,000 Years on October 5th. Tucker joined forces with Sara Lund (Unwound) and Seth Lorinczi (Golden Bears) who Tucker played with at a benefit show last year."

Hey Ladies: Pop Stars Vs. Role Models (NPR)
"Today's superstar pop divas are pre-packaged and derivative, in Kaplan's eyes. But the chief pop critic of the Los Angeles Times disagrees."

Author Sara Marcus, "Girls to the Front" Tells it Like it Was (Tom Tom Magazine)
"We just got our copy of Sara Marcus’s long-awaited book about Riot Grrrl history, Girls to the Front, and were dying to ask Sara some questions. She kindly responded quicker than we thought so we threw her answers up today. Thanks Sara."

Why it doesn't bother me that Elastica stole from Wire (Feminist Music Geek)
"So, the cool kids already knew back in 1995 that the answer to the “Oasis or Blur” question was “Pulp.” In 1995, I certainly knew I was supposed to like Sheffield’s underdogs who rose from years of obscurity to deliver “Common People,” which is all the more relevant today as trust-fund kids remove the band’s class consciousness to ape their deadpan sensibility and ironic sartorial statements, which seem to be modeled after what European teenagers were wearing in the 80s according to my high school French textbooks. I did like them, and continued to after their 2002 split."