Rewind: The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs

Stephin Merritt's epic 69 Love Songs remains one of my favorite records of the 90s that's aged well enough not to be featured only as part of a nostalgia set. It's charming and quirky and just this side of snotty. On the surface,  the songs actually sound like conventional love songs, that is until you listen to the lyrics carefully. And while it was a massive undertaking on Merritt's part, all three volumes work as a cohesive whole. But I always return to Vol. 1:

As much as I still love 60 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields will be forever tainted by  unfortunate comments Stephin Merritt made back in 2006:

The bizarre case against Merritt came to a head last month at the Experience Music Project's annual Pop Conference. Merritt was the keynote speaker, and in a panel conversation he described "Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah," from Disney's legendarily racist 1946 musical Song of the South, as a "great song." He made clear, according to a partial transcript of the panel provided by his band mate Claudia Gonson, that he did not actually like Song of the South, calling it unwatchable and saying that it has just "one great song. The rest of it is terrible, actually."(Slate)

Whether it was a bizarre slip or a snide remark gone awry, there's really no way to rationalize it. Praising racist material -- even in a historical context -- makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I'm reminded of it when I listen to his music.

Musicians Call Grammys Cuts "Subtle Racism"

The Grammys cut or consolidated several categories for the 2012 ceremony, mostly among non-pop, non-western styles of music. For example, Latin Jazz artists will have to submit their work to the best jazz instrumental, or jazz with vocal, and Hawaiian, Native American, and Zydeco artists will get lumped into the regional or "roots" music category. (Via Jezebel )

To the average listener of American pop music, this probably doesn't seem like a huge issue, but to these artists it is, because a grammy even in a "niche" category translates to greater visibility and greater sales. Carlos Santana, one of the artists protesting the cuts calls, it a "subtle form of racism," saying: "To remove Latin Jazz and many other ethnic categories is doing a huge disservice to the brilliant musicians who keep the music vibrant for their fans -- new and old. ... We strongly protest this decision and we ask you to represent all of the colors of the rainbow when it comes to music and give ethnic music a place in the heart of music lovers everywhere." (via The Atlantic)

Gil Scott-Heron: R.I.P.

courtesy of last.fm

Gil Scott-Heron who was long regarded as the forefather of hip-hop -- a label he resisted -- died earlier this week in New York. He was sixty-two. From The Guardian:

He was known as the Godfather of Rap but disapproved of the title, preferring to describe what he did as "bluesology" – a fusion of poetry, soul, blues and jazz, all shot through with a piercing social conscience and strong political messages, tackling issues such as apartheid and nuclear arms.

"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks', which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," Scott-Heron wrote in the introduction to his 1990 Now and Then collection of poems.

Although he's most known for "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," I first heard Gil Scott-Heron's music under dubious circumstances -- I'm ashamed to admit, a morning-zoo type radio show. The song was "Whitey On the Moon," and I thought it was brilliant:

On one of his final performances at Coachella last year, blogger Jay Smooth had this to say, and I think it poignantly sums up Gil Scott-Heron's life and work:

When he finally walked out he did look frail physically. But as soon as he smiled that wry, world-weary smile, and began to talk with us and sing to us, he felt so very present, and vibrant, and alive. It was, and is, hard to imagine he’d ever be gone.

My So-Called Nostalgia Trip

The Real 1990s 

I’m not going to deny that My So-Called Life was better than the most of the programming on television in the early-to-mid 90s, nor that it filled a void by giving voice to a number of teenager girls, but to say that the appeal of anything is universal is just really unfair — particularly if the object of that appeal is still thin, white, middle-class, and conventionally attractive (home dye job notwithstanding). Maybe it could have been worded better, because I’m pretty sure that’s not what Donnelly is claiming in this , the most recent post I've read lately, but I brace myself for that little tidbit every time I see another one lauding My So-Called Life. Angela's "every girl" status was pretty much TV-standard, adjusted for a bit of 90s ennui, and with a better-than-average soundtrack.

(Personally, I think a "better" Angela was Roseanne's Darlene Connor. She had a greater sense of agency despite being equally angsty. Plus Roseanne, considering it was a mainstream sitcom in a cushy timeslot, was a pretty realistic portrayal of a working-class family, something not seen all that often in primetime.)

Snarky's Machine said this about the MTV cartoon, Daria, a show with similar appeal, and an overlapping fan base with a predilection for the same heaping praise without considering that maybe its audience was rather limited. It succinctly outlines how problematic "universal"nostalgia is , and I would be remiss not to include it here:

Perhaps the oddest thing about the deification of Daria is this: she whined tremendously without lifting a finger to dismantle the systems she found so distasteful. Again, marginalized folks, devoid of the level of privilege as Daria tend to engage in a lot more direct action, despite not having anything approximating the level of power Daria’s privileges afforded her!

Which brings me to the other thing that always really bothered me about My So-Called Life: while the show did deal with the BIG ISSUES of the day, those things happened only around Angela, leaving her sense of self (relatively) in tact. She never really had to confront those BIG ISSUES except as a supportive friend, and those friends basically existed as plot points (the “gay” friend, the “messed-up” friend, the “cute but troubled” boy). And while just seeing those things on television seemed pretty revolutionary, bit at the same time it still reinforces the stereotype that "bad things happen to other people."

I know this is a point I make over and over again, but as my generation ages into the nostalgia market, it's becoming clear that what constitutes "our culture" is very limiting. Or who the "our" actually is.

Links & Bits for 5/27/11

Badass Ladies of History: Nana Mouskouri (Persephone Magazine)

Nana Mouskouri is up there with Whitney Houston, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley. Name not ringing a bell? How about if I told you she has sold over 300 million records worldwide in her career that has spanned over five decades? What if I told you she sang in Greek, Welsh, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Maori, and was mostly fluent in all of them?

Ed Schultz Suspended From MSNBC For Calling Laura Ingram "Right-Wing Slut" (Jezebel)

Quite a few male commentators have made sexist quips, from Chris Matthews to Don Imus, but it usually takes them longer to apologize, and their responses seem more coerced. We'd like to get to the point where male media personalities aren't routinely spewing misogyny, but for now it seems a swift apology and acknowledgement of wrongdoing are the best we're going to get.

SlutWalks v. Ho Strolls (The Crunk Feminist Collective)

What becomes an issue is those white women and liberal feminist women of color who argue that “slut” is a universal category of female experience, irrespective of race. I recognize that there are many women of color who are participating in the SW movement, and I support those sisters who do, particularly women who are doing it in solidarity and coalition. But rather than forcing white women to get on the diversity train with regard to the inclusivity of SlutWalk, perhaps we need to redirect our racial vigilance. By that I mean, I’d prefer that white women acknowledge that they are in fact organizing around a problematic use of terminology endemic to white communities and cultures.

Tornado Relief for Midwest and South

As someone who lives in a tornado-plagued part of the country, I was incredibly happy to see Racialcious's list of resources and ways to help victims of the latest round of tornadoes in Alabama and Joplin, MO. Too often the SJ and feminist blogospheres ignore the middle of the country.

Showtime Cancels United States of Tara

Showtime's United States of Tara, a dark comedy about a woman with DID (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) wasn't renewed for a fourth season. I'm disappointed, but frankly not all that surprised.

US of Tara is one of the few shows I've watched since its inception. In its third season, it's gone from being a dark comedy to just plain dark as Tara's life unravels with the appearance of a new, destructive alter -- a personification of her abusive half-brother, Bryce. (Her other alters -- Buck, a Vietnam vet, Alice, a fifties homemaker-type, "T," a promiscuous teenager, Chicken, a five-year-old girl, Shoshana, a New York therapist, and Gimme, a sort of id creature in a red poncho who urinated freely, usually in other characters' beds --  were introduced in the first two seasons. They were annoying but never menacing.) The "quirk" factor of the first two seasons is largely gone, replaced by something more ominous and disturbing. I really like the direction in which the show has been going for the last few episodes, particularly since they were just beginning to explore how Tara's illness has impacted her family. Its biggest problem was that the show was billed as a half-hour comedy instead of an hour-long drama. There's nothing typically "comedic" about US of Tara, and I think that confused people, and limited its audience as well.

The show's creator, Diablo Cody (of Juno fame), recently talked to NYMAG.com about what she would have done differently:

I was just coming off Juno, and I think people were expecting a Juno-esque writing style in the Tara scripts, which was something I was already past, creatively. I didn’t really want to turn in eight pages of gobbledygook banter every week, but that expectation was there, so basically I was kind of a mess during the making of the first season. But I got my shit together later on and I think it shows in the episodes. I think the show gets stronger and stronger, and I’m proud of that.

So United States of Tara joins the legions of critically acclaimed, yet commercially doomed television shows that lasted only a few seasons. And that's too bad, because even though it was probably doomed to run out of steam eventually, there were a lot of things about US of Tara that worked exceedingly well: namely a lead character with a mental illness that's not played for sympathy. Sometimes it's hard to see Tara beyond her alters -- and although she's at the center of them she's actually the least fleshed-out of all her personalities -- she doesn't come off as pitiable. That by itself is pretty rare in TV. Also, some of the secondary characters -- Tara's family, not her alters -- who in the first two season just seemed to orbit around Tara without narratives of their own -- have been given more airtime, some more successfully than others. I've already written about youngest son Marshall, who I think stands out among other young gay characters in that they actually allow him to be sexual. And this season the inimitable Eddie Izzard joined the cast as Tara's new psychiatrist/professor/confident.

I've read enough spoilers to stop right here (and the Onion says this season's finale, which airs in a few weeks, works as a series finale), but I guarantee there's still a lot left of Tara. I'm sorry Showtime couldn't give it one more season, but I'd rather see a good show go out on a high note.

Rewind: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I am 38-years-old and just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower . Regrettably, I wish I were a 17-year-old who’d just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

After hearing this book was finally being made into a movie, I thought I'd move it to the front of the queue of books I'd been meaning to read, but never got around to for one reason or another. I really wanted to like this book, I swear. I’m not just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian because The Perks of Being a Wallflower has meant a lot to a number of people I know. I understand that it’s supposed to sound “how a real teenager would talk,” or more importantly, how a real teenager would write, but I couldn’t get past the stilted, awkward prose. And that’s too bad because there is a lot of good in this book (even if PW called it “trite”). Most notably Charlie, the main character, has a gay friend who’s actually not a plot device existing only for straight characters to confront their homophobia. This is a big plus, and subverts the "gay friend" trope, but Patrick's story could have been more nuanced or fleshed-out.

I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't mention the inevitable Catcher in the Rye comparisons. That doesn't bother me so much, given that nearly every bildungsroman is measured against the template that J.D. Salinger created. Perks is written in the form of main character Charlie's diary during his high school years in the early 90s. An era, I think, that should be noted for its complete absence of a unified, or agreed upon, "culture." (At least in retrospect. Maybe I'm reaching here, because I also spent the brunt of my teens in that weird twilight that was neither the 80s nor the 90s, but I think it's as central to the story as anything.) Charlie is an observer (a "wallflower") to all these things happening around him, and even to the things that happen to him. Without giving too much away, it's a sparse little story that deals with BIG ISSUES and does so without being preachy or patronizing. Also good things.

That being said, there's something lacking. I wish I could have read this when I was a kid; maybe I would have had a more positive reaction and less historical distance. Full disclosure: I’m not an adult who reads YA lit. I’m not sure I read a lot of it when I was young. I know for sure there wasn’t the market for YA books like there is today. (The Perks of Being a Wallflower was published in 1999.) And there definitely wasn't a lot of choices in LGBT lit for teenagers that didn't send a big huge message that homosexuality was immoral, or at least, doomed one to a life of loneliness and disease (the perks of coming of age in the AIDS era). In that respect, things have improved vastly -- this book being just one step along the way to that improvement.

Patrick Wolf Continues to Tempt Us With Videos from His Upcoming Album

The US release of Lupercalia, Patrick Wolf's fifth studio album, isn't for another month, but the singer-songwriter has been steadily releasing videos for "The City," "Time of my Life," and now, "House":



Emily Manuel for Tiger Beatdown dissected some of theses new songs in a post titled, "Taking Liberties With Patrick Wolf ." It's definitely worth the full read, but here's an excerpt:

Where pop narratives more usually refer to obstacles like parents or spouses, Wolf takes the unusual tack of seeing the city itself as an antagonist to relationships. When I interviewed him recently for Billboard, he clarified that the song was a response to the recession, and seeing friends of his re-evaluate their relationships for financial reasons.

I'm really looking forward to the new record, but I could have easily written Patrick Wolf off as guilty pleasure -- except he's far too talented for that. What officially sold me on his magic was "Accident and Emergency,," a song that is by turns self-destructive and uplifting. Sick Mouthy  had another take on why a lot of people are reluctant to embrace Patrick Wolf as a serious artist:

Throughout all the music Patrick Wolf has released so far in his career (four albums with one due soon, and he’s not yet 28), there’s a musicality, a fluidity, a grace, and a melodicism to his songwriting that, for me, would transcend all the electronic splurges, the flamboyant showboating, the love of drama and poetry and passionate commitment to his art that might seem to others to be narcissism, if all those seeming pejoratives weren’t actually just as much a part of the attraction.

As a jaded, aging member of generation-x, his brand of pop/electronic/folk initially confused  me. There's a self-seriousness there, in addition to the flashiness,  that would really be off-putting if he weren't so good at what he does. And at times he does seem to be blatantly repurposing the sound of my generation's electronic pop, and doing it without a shred of irony. As someone who came of age with that music, and the backlash that followed it, that's just... weird. But I like it.

Scott Weiland Reveals Past Sexual Abuse; Blogosphere Reacts Rather Predictably

Is his new memoir, Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver frontman, Scott Weiland, reveals that he is a rape survivor. From Spin magazine:

When Weiland was 12 years old and living in Ohio, he says a “big muscular guy, a high school senior… [who] rode the bus with me every day to school… invited me to his house. The dude raped me. It was quick, not pleasant. I was too scared to tell anyone. ‘Tell anyone,’ he warned, ‘and you’ll never have another friend in this school. I’ll ruin your fuckin’ reputation.’ Adds Weiland, “This is a memory I suppressed until only a few years ago when, in rehab, it came flooding back. Therapy will do that to you.”

The story was also picked up by the Huffington Post, and while I'd like to say that, between the two, most of the comments were supportive, there were far too many doubting the validity of his story and making jokes.

Really? Just, no.

I get that trolls will be trolls, but a lot of these comments weren't trolling, but what predictably happens when a man comes forth with a past history of sexual assault.

In the two short sentences quoted from the book, I think he pretty much encapsulated why men don't talk about abuse much.

Ellen Willis on Patti Smith

(An earlier version of this was posted to my Tumblr.)

I’ve always wondered if she were afraid of her own considerable power. I’m also uncomfortable with her androgynous, one-of-the-guys image; its rebelliousness is seductive, but it plays into a kind of misogyny — endemic to bohemian circles, and, no doubt, to the punk-rock scene — that consents to distinguish women who act like one of the guys (and is also sexy and conspicuously “liberated”) from the general run of stupid girls. -- Ellen Wiilis

I know I've written a lot about the recently published Ellen Willis anthology, Out of the Vinyl Deeps, but this pretty much sums up my reluctance to call Patti Smith a “feminist icon,” although she’s often presented as such.

The “one of the guys” image isn’t necessarily bad by itself, but it’s usually accompanied by a certain degree of disdain for anything “feminine,” and more than a little internalized misogyny. I’ve heard stories about Patti Smith not being that nice to her female contemporaries.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Patti Smith as an artist and as a performer, but I think her status as a “feminist icon,” even a “stealth” one, needs to be reexamined.

Links & Bits for 5/20/11

Tyler, the Creator, Creates 43-Year-Old "Joke" (Tiger Beatdown)

And this means a few things. For example: That the “it’s all about the music” pose is a fucking lie. That all of the boys who are snickering at this, and/or applauding it (and oh, yes, there were plenty) are not enjoying the “music.” They’re enjoying the misogyny. They’re enjoying the suggestion that uppity women should have a dick shoved in them to shut them up.

First Take: Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" (Ann Powers for NPR)

I don't always agree with Gaga's approach to sloganeering. I'm turned off by the biological determinism contained in the very phrase "Born This Way" and puzzled at Gaga's refusal to engage with African-American culture, either musically or within her calls for liberation. After the Twitter fight the soul singer India.Arie had with Gaga's fans last year, it's hard to hear the lyrically inane "I Am My Hair" as anything but a swipe at that singer — and, by extension (pun intended), a sign of insensitivity about black women's long-fought struggles against racist beauty standards. At 25, Gaga is still very much a work in progress. But then, so was Bob Dylan when he went to Washington at 23.

What Makes a Body Obscene? (Sociological Images)

Unless that man’s gender is ambiguous; unless he does just enough femininity to make his body suspect. Indeed, the treatment of the Dossier cover reveals that the social and legislative ban on public breasts rests on a jiggly foundation. It’s not simply that breasts are considered pornographic. It’s that we’re afraid of women and femininity and female bodies and, if a man looks feminine enough, he becomes, by default, obscene.

Yael Naim Has a Story to Tell (PopMatters)

“Songs are a way to express what I have felt,” she reflects. “A way to understand what happened to me or to other people. I usually have an instrument in my hand. It’s usually unconscious. When I feel something coming, I hit record. It’s spontaneous. After a few hours, it will be a song."

One Song(writer), Many Voices: Dylan

A while back I wrote about freeing myself from Bob Dylan. I mean, freeing myself of the idea that I absolutely must love someone so critically adored. It was, um, freeing. Anyway, I realized that I actually do like quite a few Dylan covers, particularly covers done by female artists. It doesn't make his misogyny any more palatable, but it does add another dimension to some of those songs I professed to "hate." Here are a few that I think stand out for various reasons. Some border on camp, some self-serious, but I'm drawn to all of them:

Sara Quin Wants Critics to Sop Defending Tyler the Creator

courtesy of last.fm

Sara Quin, the Sara-half of Tegan and Sara, had this to say on her blog about rapper Tyler the Creator's homophobic and misogynistic lyrics, and the journalists and critics who defend them:

As journalists and colleagues defend, excuse and congratulate ‘Tyler, the Creator,’ I find it impossible not to comment. In any other industry would I be expected to tolerate, overlook and find deeper meaning in this kid’s sickening rhetoric? Why should I care about this music or its “brilliance” when the message is so repulsive and irresponsible? There is much that upsets me in this world, and this certainly isn’t the first time I’ve drafted an open letter or complaint, but in the past I’ve found an opinion – some like-minded commentary – that let me rest assured that my outrage, my voice, had been accounted for. Not this time.

The rest of the post is here, and I implore you to read the whole thing.

Without sounding like a hypocrite, I'm trying to come up with a reasonable argument why I think Sara Quin's criticism is warranted, but Ashley Judd's (who similarly called out hip-hop's misogyny) is not. It would be irresponsible of me not to. I think it comes down to this: Sara's comments were specific. She didn't vilify an entire genre of music, and not once did she say that Tyler the Creator's music should be stopped or censored, but that critics need to stop defending his rhetoric, which is brimming with homophobic language just because he happens to be a talented, nay, "brilliant," artist. Talent shouldn't earn you a pass.

I also think it's symptomatic of music journalism as a whole: the refusal to, at least, acknowledge that some of the most critically acclaimed artists are guilty of some pretty problematic behavior. Be it Morrissey's comments on China last year, rape imagery in the Decemberists' music, or the latest critics' darling whose album just happens to be chockablock with hate speech, too many things get glossed over or ignored. Some may be more blatant that others, but all warrant further criticism -- genuine criticism, not accolades.

Rewind: Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Press Color

I'd like to thank Samantha Cornwell at Visitation Rites for hipping me to Lizzy Mercier Descloux. I have a metric ton of obscure and not-all-that-obscure punk comps, and not one has a song from Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Born in Paris, raised in Lyon, french singer and musician Lizzy Mercier Descloux released her debut album Press Color in 1979. To call it minimalist would be generous. Press Color straddles the line between worldbeat, punk and dance pop, and remains largely unheard to the music listening public at large.



One of her best-known songs is a cover of Arthur Brown's "Fire." (And this performance includes an unintentional cameo from one Serge Gainsbourg.) Full disclosure: I'm not sure if I really love this, or really hate, but either way, I can't stop listening to it. And let's face it, she looks like the coolest girl in the world here.

Earworm of the Day: Mariee Sioux - Wild Eyes

(This was recommended to me via last.fm.)

I'm not that into the whole "freak folk" genre, and to be honest, I this song transcends that pigeonhole. "Wild Eyes" is a full nine minutes long, but utterly mesmerizing.



I'm hesitant to describe her music without drawing comparisons other contemporary female folk artists. Within music criticism, there's a problem of comparing one female artist to another simply on the basis that they're both women. It's unfair and ignores the complexities of each woman's music. Joanna Newsome's name gets tossed around a lot, but frankly, I don't hear it. I think Mariee Sioux's music is rooted more in traditional folk than contemporary singer-songwriter.

Some notes on Out of the Vinyl Deeps

 

seriousladies.tumblr.com 

I finally got a copy of the Ellen Willis anthology that'd I been promoting for a while, Out of the Vinyl Deeps. I think the most rewarding thing about this collection of essays is watching her transformation from a notice music critic to a politically aware pop culture pundit. Hired in 1968 by The New Yorker, her column ran for seven years, yet she still remains mostly unknown to the music listening public unlike her male contemporaries, Greil Marcus and Robert Christgau. Maybe the attention the book has gotten in the few short weeks it's been out will change that.

It's heavy on the sixties and seventies -- her years at the New Yorker -- which made me feel a little more disconnected that I'd like to admit. There were a couple pieces from the 90s, and a stellar essay on Bob Dylan's 2001 album, Love and Theft, but overall it speaks the language of that era: the burgeoning feminist and civil rights movement, and later, the birth of punk rock.

Another thing that really struck me was that Willis was a fan, first and foremost. Her writing was informed by fandom, but not clouded by it. I think this is really important to note. I've read a number of books written by critically acclaimed male rock critics whose work relies too much on gender essentialism, and the gap between fans and critics. Female fandom is often treated as silly and superfluous and over-reliant on emotion, whereas male rock fans are the true students of rock. (As if there really is such a thing.) I think Willis more than proves that fandom and critical thought aren't mutually exclusive and women are more than capable of the latter. (I know! Hard to believe, right?)

Overall, I really enjoyed Out of the Vinyl Deeps. It was long overdue, and I hope more people become aware of her writing because it, but really, I want to see more women join the music journalist canon, along with the Marcuses, Christgaus and Bangses.

Advice to Feminist Bloggers? Don't Be a Feminist Blogger

Advice for young feminists? Do something else besides feminism. I’m serious. The feminist blogosphere is oversaturated in my opinion. Please, find something else you love and take feminist theory there. It gets lonely over here in tech and video games – I have a great crew of other feminists but we are a little island in a vast sea. We need more feminist minded business bloggers, feminist theory wielding finance bloggers. Labor organizers with a feminist lens blogging. Can you imagine what Deadspin (the sports blog) would look like with a feminist on staff? Restructure writes about science, tech and feminism – join her! Publish a blog doing literary criticism with a feminist lens! Take on the NYT! Talk about class issues and feminism. Whatever it is, apply your feminism in a different space. -- Latoya Peterson from whereisyourline.org  

I think what Latoya is suggesting is actually going on. There are quite a few bloggers who look at literature, music, and technology through a feminist lens, but because they fall under the umbrella of "feminist," they remain unknown to the world at large.

In the course of a year, my blog has evolved from a "womyn's" music blog to a pop culture blog that's informed by feminism. I'm not political enough to be a social justice blogger, but writing about pop culture without examining the problematic behavior of those creating it feels disingenuous. I know what I do is not unique (actually, there are several sites that do it much better than I ever could), but in a blogosphere focused on branding or creating a niche, not really knowing where you fit in definitely has its disadvantages. The thing is, if you're a feminist or a womanist, your writing will be filtered through that lens. I sometimes write for another pop culture site that isn't explicitly political, and I find it hard to write "objectively." (Read: no ladystuff) It starts to feel like straddling two worlds, neither feeling completely authentic.

This is why we need feminist writers in mainstream blogs. I'd love to see a feminist on staff at Deadspin, but I can't imagine that happening anytime soon. I'd love to see smaller blogs whose feminism is stealthily snuck in as part of the larger, "Big F" feminist blogosphere, which doesn't happen nearly enough either.

Online Activism is real activism

I’m tired of seeing online activism trivialized or thought of as “not real activism.” Raising awareness and visibility is "real activism" and the internet is exceptionally well suited for it. What about those for whom it’s not possible to leave their homes and go out and do the “real” work? Should they be excluded from activist work altogether because they can’t be one in the way that’s prescribed?

These are questions I've been asking myself a lot lately, as the schism between "real" (read: concrete, hands-on, in the public) activist work, and "not real" (online, call-out culture -- which I'll get to later) widens as more people are starting feminist/anti-racist blogs, or becoming part of the existing SJ blogging community. Can I just say one thing? It's insulting to say that online activism isn't real. It might not have the immediacy and urgency of being part of a large-scale public protest, but it's no less real. The recent #mooreandme campaign is a good example of a successful online protest that still managed to be pinned as "slacker activism":

#Mooreandme is not a slacker protest. It’s a different form of civil disobedience. We’re not flouting the law — there’s no specific unjust law, in this case, to flout. We’re not marching, because marching is meaningless here; our issue is not with the writ-large, protest-sign, bumper-sticker policies of progressivism, but with the misogyny that comes out when so-called progressives wink and nudge at each other in private, which Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore demonstrated and legitimized in public. We object to the conversation, and we object with conversation. We disobey the rules that say women should not engage powerful men. We disobey the rules that say women and allies should not demand accountability from powerful men for the harm they do. We disobey the rules that say women must not band together, that we must make ourselves small and solitary and vulnerable. We disobey the rules that say a threatened woman must back down. (Jess from Hate Harding.info)

That's not to say online activism is perfect, or should take the place of real world activism; if fact there are a lot of flaws. A few weeks ago, Jill's Feministe post on call-out culture hit a nerve with the SJ blogosphere. My only issue with call-outs is that they rarely lead to real accountability. This, I think, is symptomatic of a largely privileged commentariat at different stages of awareness. Unfortunately, I have no idea how we're supposed to get around this, except to reinforce this: listen. And listen some more. (The flip side of that is, I guess, not trusting your own voice. I rarely comment unless I'm 110% sure of what I'm saying, and even then, sometimes I don't.) Also what's helped me is accepting that I'm going to get some things wrong. By virtue of being a relatively thin, cis white girl, society has granted me a fair amount of privilege. (Not all: I'm still a woman in a society that still devalues women, I grew up in a multi-cultural household with one half of my family not native English speakers, and I have almost nothing in the way of economic power.) I'm still learning how these advantages and disadvantages inform the way I think.

These are only small steps, but still a big part of the "work" of online activism. It's also a lot of 101-stuff, but I'm okay with a little 101 as long as it leads to more awareness. But I guess what I'm trying to say is these are some of the things the online world does well, and if it leads to bigger, more concrete activism, even better.

Michael Stipe: The Interview interview

(Link via Perpetua)

courtesy of last.fm

Interview Magazine recently posted a pretty meaty article on REM's Michael Stipe. He candidly talks about his band, growing up in the early years of AIDS awareness, and even his bout with bulimia:

We had moved out of opening for the Gang of Four or The English Beat. At that point we were playing our own shows and people liked us, but I was unraveling on the inside. I was also vegetarian, trying to eat from fast-food restaurants without meat. I didn't know how to eat properly and I was starving. I was adrenalized to the eyeballs from performing. I was afraid that I was sick with AIDS. We were playing five shows a week. I even went through a period of abstinence where I didn't drink and stopped having sex. Which is crazy. Maybe I'm answering too many questions at once here, but this is where my mind was at the age of 25.

I hate throwing out platitudes,  but I think those few sentences speak volumes about the multi-faceted nature of eating disorders, their persistence in the music industry (that's compounded by road travel/bad food), and men's resistance to talking about what is thought of as a "woman's disease."

Rewind: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is one of those albums that will always be tethered to the late-90s, and for me, the last few whiffs of being a twenty-something. As Bonita Applebum succinctly lays it out:

Lauryn was unapologetically woman and a strong and well-spoken one at that. It is such an intensely personal album that speaks to the struggles we all face. I listen to this album on a regular basis. It is inspiring and uplifting, and it never fails to make me sing along or wop it out.

I think it's also important to note how absolutely huge this record was in an era of grungy rockers and teenage pop stars. Lauryn Hill's music seemed to be everywhere the last few years of the nineties, and a year later, she completely dropped out of the public eye. She later said in Essence magazine:

People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at that time… I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable about having to smile in someone's face when I really didn't like them or even know them well enough to like them. (source)

Out of the dozen or so songs on the record, there's hardly a weak track, but one of my favorites has always been "Ex-Factor." Yeah, it was one her biggest hits, but more than a decade later still sounds fresh.



One of the things that strikes me most about this album is that she's at the center of every song. It doesn't seem that revolutionary on the surface -- aren't songwriters supposed to be at the center of their songs, even when they are highly fictionalized? I think it's the expectation that women aren't supposed to claim that much for themselves. She inserts her own experiences, her own name, into her songs instead of sticking to general themes of love and loss and growing up -- though all those things are there.

What's your damage, Generation-X?

"Generation X is generally defined as those born from 1961 to 1981, which means – I can scarcely bring myself to type these words – that the first Gen-Xers turn 50 this year." -- Darragh McManus from Comment is free

Though I fall squarely in the middle of it, I've always hated the phrase "Generation-X." And up until now I've been avoid the deluge of articles about our entering middle-age and how we're not aging "gracefully."

(Given that the only real option is death, I'll take aging.)

But my contemporaries' unease with "turning into our parents" isn't what's bothering me; it's the entire generation-x zeitgeist and the nostalgia culture that come s with it.

I read a lot of nostalgia blogs, and even write for one in addition to this blog which I hope doesn't smack of too much "back in my day." I don't need to write yet another post about how nostalgia isn't universal, but gen-x nostalgia seems to be particularly limited to white, middle-class culture -- even when it's a sort of dropout culture of indie bands, over-education/underemployment, and a job that pays just enough to allow enough leisure time to read the hippest underground novel or lounge around in pajamas watching a marathon of Saved By the Bell. (Think every character Ethan Hawk has played as channeled by Chuck Klosterman.) It simply wasn't the reality for a lot of people, and its  nostalgia doesn't want to reflect that.

Fran Lebowitz: Public Speaking

It actually premiered on HBO back in November, but Martin Scorsese's Fam Lebowitz documentary, Public Speaking, is currently available On-Demand and will be released on DVD May 24th:

[...] Indeed, as Lebowitz says in one interview among the many here, she is first and foremost a public speaker, a woman who takes talking to a high art form after she dreamed, as a child, that people would care about her opinions. Public Speaking chronicles a truly iconoclastic author and thinker whose satirically barbed wit is hilarious and controversial on the page, as well as onscreen. In her interviews she pontificates most vocally about her experiences as a New Yorker, as a writer, journalist, feminist, smoker (yes, she actually takes the protection of cigarette smoking rights up as a cause), and gay rights activist. What it adds up to, in her words, is a devotion to maintaining individual freedom. Most poignant, however, are the scenes in which she places herself historically within a New York cultural framework, as she remembers first writing for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, then publishing her first hit novel, Metropolitan Life.  - Trinie Dalton

Full disclosure: I've been a fan of Fran Leobowitz since I first picked a copy of The Fran Leobowitz Reader when I was in my early twenties, so it's not exactly possible for me to offer an unbiased review. Listening to her talk, though, is the best way to experience Fran Lebowitz, which is why this documentary is so effective.

Oscar Wilde's Jersey Shore (aka the funniest thing you'll see all day)

Watch Playbill's Jersey Shore Gone Wild -- five short videos starring some of the current cast members of Oscar Wilde's iconic play, The Importance of Being Earnest, quoting lines from MTV's Jersey Shore in "Oscar Wilde-syle:



Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Links & Bits for 5/6/11

Women in Rock: Tamar-kali (The F-Word)

I definitely identify as a womanist/feminist. I live my life knowing my worth as a human presence on this planet could never be eclipsed by my gender, that’s ludicrous to me. Based on the power structure in which we exist I walk this planet in the path of the ‘other’ and my lyrics reflect that; my rage, my hopes and the challenges I face. I do not write with political intention but the fact that I am a black woman telling my story in the context that I do makes it a political act in itself.

Will Gaga's $1 Million Donation To Gay Youth Actually Reach Gay Youth? (Queerty)

Not one to let a social media campaign escape her, Lady Gaga is letting her Facebook fans decide how she should donate a million dollars. Though she certainly could use a new creative director and better prosthetics, you can’t argue with Gaga for going the more charitable route with her gay-earned dollars. The artist better known for making awesome music videos to otherwise terrible pop songs has partnered with the Robin Hood Foundation in New York to give $1 million to five non-profits working with homeless or at-risk LGBT youth.

Oh, by the way Queerty's back!

Thoughts on United States of Tara (Womanist Musings)

There is a huge part of me that is happy to see a disabled character at the center of the show, and another part of me that worries about whether or not the portrayal is realistic.

The Willis Test is the Bechdel Test for Music

I vaguely remember lamenting the lack of a way to evaluate music for sexism, a la the Bechdel test for movies. Enter the Willis test :

Over the weekend, I went to (and took part in) a conference dedicated to [Ellen]Willis' work as a music critic, feminist, and thinker, writing in The New Yorker and the Village Voice and more. [...] That's when one participant, Molly Templeton, took a line the writer Rob Sheffield and others kept praising, and called it the Willis Test. (Irin Carmon for Jezebel)

In a 1971 essay called, "But Now I'm Gonna Move," Willis suggests taking a song written by a man and flipping the gender:

A crude but often revealing method of assessing male bias in lyrics is to take a song written by a man about a woman and reverse the sexes. By this test, a diatribe like [the Rolling Stones'] "Under My Thumb" is not nearly so sexist in its implications as, for example, Cat Stevens' gentle, sympathetic "Wild World"; Jagger's fantasy of sweet revenge could easily be female—in fact, it has a female counterpart, Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" — but it's hard to imagine a woman sadly warning her ex-lover that he's too innocent for the big bad world out there.

Despite having aging record nerd taste in music, I tried this. It's actually an addictive little game with some pretty surprising results. It works the other way, too. A number of comments mentioned that Taylor Swift's "You Belong to Me," sounds downright creepy and stalkerish when imagined being sung by a man. It kind of reminds me of one of my favorites songs from childhood, Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night," (which, incidentally, was written by a man), which give off an icky stalker-vibe if sung by a man.



Disappointing, but not surprising, some of my favorite highly-acclaimed songwriters, from Tom Waits to Richard Thompson to Ryan Adams, fail the Willis test. (Not always, but a lot more than I'd anticipated.) That these guys have a ton of respect in the music industry says volumes.

More on the Willis Test:
Finally, a way to evaluate music for gender bias (What Tami Said)
Some people work very hard/But still they never get it right (Pandagon)

Where Visibility Meets Stigmatization

last.fm 

I'm not sure how I feel about Paste's list of 10 brilliant musicians who've battled mental illness. Aside from the somewhat problematic language used in the title (I hate the phrase "battled mental illness"), something about listing the ten really great artists who happen to have a mental illness -- the same way one would the ten best songs about rain, or the ten greatest albums to take with you on a desert island -- seems wrong. Visibility is a wonderful thing (I had no idea Ray Davies had bipolar disorder), but the reality is the "damaged genius" trope almost always comes with exploitation. It's hard to imagine a Nick Drake, a Syd Barrett, or a Kurt Cobain without the accompanying stories of such "brilliant madness."

I'm not denying having celebrity representation is a worthy and valuable tool in overcoming some of the stigma attached to mental illness, but as often the case with musicians and writers, mental illness is seen as a badge of authenticity. I think it's telling that I mentioned that I never knew Ray Davies had bipolar disorder. Unlike Syd Barrett or Nick Drave, it isn't one of the first things mentioned in article written about him. I wonder how he managed to mostly escape the stereotype?



Another thing I'd like to briefly touch on is how women in the industry who've talked openly about their mental illness are treated differently from male artists who have. The list is very male-centric save for the addition of Poly Styrene and Sinead O'Connor. Kristin Hersh, another songwriter who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had this to say about the media's attention to her illness and how it has become part of her legacy in a 2003 Venus interview:

[...] I was very disappointed in that particular angle because people had implied that music was made by crazy people before and I had always said, "No, this is what would come out of your wife or your friend. It's only strange to your ears because you were raised on Top 40." That was my argument and I stand by it, so to have them say, "Ah we knew it!" [when she said she had bipolar disorder] was disappointing and yet people weren't cruel about it. I still don't think [songwriting] has anything to do with that, and I'm not sure I agree I was ever bipolar.

As someone who's been on the other side of mental illness -- as a family member and caregiver -- this hasn't been the easiest post to write, and I'm sure I've made a few glaring errors myself. As I said earlier, representation is essential, and I don't think the list was intentionally in bad taste, but I'd rather have the artists tell their stories themselves instead of seeing them laid out in list-form

Joanna Russ, R.I.P.

"Joanna Russ died yesterday. She wasn’t important, she was essential!" -- Paul Kincaid from Big Other

Succinct and perfect -- and sad because after hearing about Joanna Russ's death, I went sleuthing for online tributes, mentions, something and found very little.

Joanna Russ was an American writer and feminist, known mostly in feminist circles for her sarcastic How To Suppress Women's Writing. She was also a prominent science-fiction author who challenged science-fiction writing as mostly a man's domain. Her 1972 story, "When it Changed" won a Nebula Award, and a decade later won a Hugo award for her novella, "Souls." From Publisher's Weekly:

I don’t even know how to talk about her: her influence on writing, on writers, on the direction of the genre, on generations of readers, and especially on other women in all areas of the field. She was tremendous. I read The Female Man when I was in college, and was awed. I read “When It Changed” some time later, I think when it was first reprinted on SciFi.com (for which I am very grateful to Ellen Datlow, the site’s fiction editor, who ran a phenomenal series of reprints there), and I read it again today when Graham Sleight posted a link to it. It is just as powerful as I remember.

Joanna Russ was 74.

Musical Tumblrs

Although I have no intentions of shutting Five Dollar Radio down, I've been spending more time on Tumblr than I do here lately. Part of that is the ease of adding a link, photo or video with a few keystrokes, but mostly I've found quite a few really good music blogs that I would have passed up had I not signed up for Tumblr. Here are some I'm really digging right now. (A couple of these are the personal blogs of music or pop culture bloggers who write elsewhere, but are worth checking out if you're a fan of their more professional writing):

the rich girls are weeping
Queerphonics
TwentyFourBit
Champagne Candy
Molly Lambert
a grammar

Ellen Willis: Out of the Vinyl Deeps

Ellen Willis, the first pop music critic for the New Yorker, is anthologized in a new collection called Out of the Vinyl Deeps . She was also one of the few critics to bridge the gap between traditional rock journalism and feminism, writing about women's roles as fans and consumers of pop music:

Female fans made an analogous identification with male rock stars — a relationship that too often found us digging them while they put us down. This was not masochism but expendiency. For all its limitations, rock was the best thing going, and if we had to filter out certain indignities — well, we had been doing that all our lives, and there was no feminist movement to suggest things might be different.

Says Maura Johnston for the Village Voice :

[...] most striking—and inspiring—is Willis's willingness to engage with herself as she tries to grapple with the cultural artifacts she covers. Yes, when she has an opinion, she isn't afraid to matter-of-factly state it. But there's a strong intellectual through line in the book, and it's brightest when Willis is debating herself—a quality that's lacking from too many writers right now, when brute force seems to count more toward one's intellectual heftiness than any sort of conviction or willingness to learn. Whether it's her struggling with the gap between her intellectual-feminist and primal-fan reactions to the Sex Pistols' brutal "Bodies" or noting that New York's frantic pace made her more likely to require that the music she listened to grab her right away, to read her work is to watch someone bristle against the idea of a music journalist merely serving as an objective pair of ears.

I'm looking forward to reading this, though it's a bit unfair to paint Willis as merely a pop music critic, though as a woman succeeding in rock journalim's boy's club, she definitely broke ground. A self-described democratic socialist, she also co-founded the radical feminist group The Redstockings with Shulamith Firestone, and wrote a number of articles on ant-semitism. That being said, the need for women's visibility in music journalism is huge, and this should be a worthy addition to the canon.