2009 April « Feminist Music Geek

Archive for April, 2009

Apr

Marnie Stern: feminist metal affirmations

So, one of the downsides to having a blog is feeling like you have to stay up-to-the-minute. But one of the joys of having my blog is that I can write about whatever whenever. And one of the joys of being an adult (according to Jerry Seinfeld) is eating whatever dessert whenever. I am eating cookies at the moment. Before dinner.

Anyway, I didn’t have this blog when singer/guitarist Marnie Stern’s This Is It and You Are It and So Is That came out, but it was one of my favorites from last year. I was extra-happy that my neighbor-friend David (quite the guitar geek/metal aficianado) recommended her and said something to the effect of “she’s not ‘good for a girl’; she’s really good.” Fabulous!

A lot has been said about her sound, which I think of as lady-Viking music. All shreddy and clangy and fast. This is my go-to bad-ass music. If I were ever on a softball team, any of these songs could be my theme music (I think I’d go with “The Crippled Jazzer,” personally). Hell, she even makes me wanna join a softball team, and thus set aside memories of my fat, “indoor kid” childhood. And I can’t get enough of her guitar-playing against her sugary, girly voice.

A 2007 New York Times article about Stern, Carrie Brownstein, and Kaki King awaits you if you click on this image

But for all that’s been said about her sound, I’d like to draw attention to her lyrics, which are awesome and I think of the tribe. So, today, I will list a favorite lyric from each song on This Is It, in the hopes that one of them will appear on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. Or that I find the time to make one for myself.

1. “I made a start, looked back just once” (“Prime”)
2. “I turn this moment into something new” (“Transformer”)
3. “Center, we enter” (“Shea Stadium”)
4. “Chaos is a friend of mine” (“Ruler”)
5. “Grabbing minutes. Stuck in composing. Finding an angle.” (“The Crippled Jazzer”)
6. “It’s the search that I crave. I always hear that song at the right time.” (“Steely” — may as well be my mission statement for this blog/life)
7. “There are dimensions I must enter to see what I am made of” (“The Package Is Wrapped”)
8. “Bigger without boundaries big enough to try bigger than the whole world” (“Simon Says”)
9. “Movement is the sign” (“Vault”)
10. “Holding back will be forgotten” (“Clone Cycle”)
11. “I present two sides: my hopelessness and my faith, my ego and my heart, my feelings and my brain” (“Roads? Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads”)
12. “But this thing we’ve started it’s rare and new” (“The Devil is in the Details”)

Apr

Kim Ann Foxman: lesbian messenger boy

By Alyx Vesey 2 Comments

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Turn Their Headphones Up
Tags: Andy Butler, Antony Hegarty, Athene, Blind, Hercules and Love Affair, Kim Ann Foxman, lesbians, LGBT community, new disco, New York, Nomi Ruiz, Pitchfork, queer disco, Single of the Year, transgendered

For this post, I gotta credit my dear friend Kristen, whose ability to think critically and mine great news items and articles is invaluable. She may wanna remain behind the scenes, but that’s not fair.

So, Hercules and Love Affair made 2008 their year, as did the music press, who gave them tons of love. And this is great to me, as I was a big fan of their debut album. Who doesn’t love a multi-gender, multi-racial, queer disco band? Isn’t it time for one, America?

The song that got the most praise, it seems, is “Blind,” a stirring anthem about growing up queer and the heartbreak, struggle, determination, and — hopefully — defiant joy that comes with it. No disrespect for the song. I’m happy about it and was pleasantly surprised when Pitchfork named it Single of the Year.

However, one of favorite songs on the album is “Athene,” a song Kristen and I giddily talked about when we had both had a chance to process the band’s debut. While the band has been aligned with the gay community (a diverse, heterogenous group that nonetheless is presumed by many to be male, perhaps even white and male), there may exist the assumption that songs like “Blind” are speaking particularly to a gay male experience — though doing so ignores that singer Antony Hegarty doesn’t identify as male. However, I think most of this can be attributed to Hercules leader Andy Butler, who is a gay man.

We love “Athene” because, apart from being a groovy little dance gem, that’s totally queer but also from a female perspective. Dyke disco! Plus, it boasts the vocals of one Kim Ann Foxman.

Now, she’s a dyke to watch out for. I love the gender tension at work in her on the butch side of androgynous look. And did you know that she’s a jewelry maker? Fierceness.

Also, I love her voice — kind of mumbly, but no less powerful. And I love her interplay with singer Nomi Ruiz (who, like Antony, is also transgendered) in this clip. You really get a sense that they make room for themselves in the collective. And of course, it goes without saying that I love that the performance on the roof, the New York skyline at sunset serving as a backdrop for their set.

So, yeah. Big ups to Kim Ann and big ups to Hercules and Love Affair for creating a visible space in dance culture for multiple identities within the LGBT community.

Apr

Bettina Richards, the boss

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Demand Political Action
Tags: A&R, Atlantic Records, Austin Handmade, Bettina Richards, Chicago, Equal Pay Day, High Places, Latinitas, OOIOO, Red McCombs School of Business, The Sea and Cake, The University of Texas at Austin, Thrill Jockey, Wake Forest University

In honor of Equal Pay Day (thanks for the reminder, SparkleBliss!), I thought it might be fun to throw a spotlight on some awesome business women who work in the music industry and are doing their part to close the gender gap. Any women who wanna smash the capitalist-based business model altogther are also welcome.

The lady I’m gonna champion today is Bettina Richards, founder of Thrill Jockey Records. Richards used to be an A and R rep for Atlantic Records, but jumped ship, taking a huge paycut in 1992 for the sake of equitable treatment and quality product. She founded Thrill Jockey, an indie label stalwart that boasts some of my favorite acts, including OOIOO, High Places, and The Sea and Cake. Seriously, I’d totally move to Chicago just to hang out in her office.

But Richards is just one example. There are so many smart, kind, socially responsible women making it happen in the work force. Feel free to post the ladies you want to celebrate today.

They don’t have to be in the music biz, either. This is open to any business woman. For example, big ups to my friends Catherine, co-owner of Austin Handmade, and Sandie, who works as the Marketing Communications Writer and Account Manager at UT’s McCombs School of Business, serves as editorial director of Latinitas, and will be attending Wake Forest’s MBA program next fall.

More importantly, though, make sure you also call or e-mail your Senator and lobby for equal pay!

Apr

“With brass knuckles underneath”: St. Vincent avoids the sophomore jinx

By Alyx Vesey 3 Comments

Cover of Actor, released on 4AD in 2009

If I may indulge in some cred wankery for a moment, I’d like to point out that I’ve been a follower of Annie Clark’s from way back. No, no. I mean, way back. Before she recorded under the name St. Vincent even. Early 2004.

It turns out that Annie Clark went to high school with a college friend of mine, who talked up Ms. Clark’s talents and recommended that I review her EP for KVRX. However, Hollie also had another dark-haired, musically-inclined friend named Annie who I got drunk with at a party. This led to a rather embarrassing exchange between myself and Ms. Clark where I wrote a babbly testimonial on her Friendster page (remember Friendster, kids?) and . . . well . . . she was quick to point out that I got the wrong Annie.

That said, she was also quick to send me her three-song EP, Ratsliveonnoevilstar, which I promptly reviewed and put into rotation. I don’t think it got a lot of spin, but I wrote a glowing review of it. In it, I really got a sense for her love of shimmery strings, idiosyncratic and minute production, coy but confrontational lyrics, and putting her rich voice front and center.

Of course, her interim between this period and her debut as St. Vincent is well-documented. She played with folks like The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, and I also caught her behind the cello at a Castanets show during SXSW 2k6. But when she finally released Marry Me in 2007, I was enlivened to hear all the promise I heard on that EP, distilled and glorious.

Cover of Marry Me, released on Beggars Banquest in 2007; photo taken from freewilliamsburg.com

Point is, while she may not remember me, I always believed in her.

And I still believe in her, because her sophomore release, Actor is wonderful. My dear friend Kristen hipped me to a certain national public radio station that was premiering it, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. And I was already in love with many of these songs, which I heard during SXSW 2k9, as I was fortunate enough to see her put on a delightful show at Central Presbyterian.

Still of St. Vincent performance at Central Presbyterian, found on Flickr

There’s a lot to love on Actor. For one, there’s her voice. As a choirgirl mezzo-soprano, I appreciate the hell out of her swoony, supple alto. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that high school me would have been all about St. Vincent. I also love her inherent properness — the girl’s diction is as immaculate as her posture and guitar playing — and how it creates an interesting tension with her frank, wryly sexy lyrics (a favorite of mine is the first line off opening track “The Strangers” — “Lover I don’t play to win/For the thrill until I’m spent,” but there are plenty more).

In addition, she’s a fan of vocal loops, doubling and tripling and quadrupling her voice until there is an entire chorus of Annie Clarks echoing, harmonizing, dialoging, and sometimes completing trains of thought for itself. I believe this to be a feminist act — using one’s voice as an instrument, noise, an assertion of the self, and an acknowledgement that it can be many different things at once, while still residing in the same throat.

On that tack, I love Ms. Clark’s production sensibilities. I put her in ownership specifically, as she meticulously helms her own recordings, serving here as co-producer and playing many of the instruments herself (homegirl did go to Berklee, after all). Her songs are luminous and exquisitly crafted, characterized by either jarring, exciting spurts of guitar feedback and distortion (“An Actor Out Of Work” and “Marrow” especially) or building, layer by layer and wave upon wave into bottomless sonic structures (the one-two punch of “Party” and “Just the Same But Brand New” do this nicely for me). But she owns them. Just watch her:

Thus, one of the main things I love about Ms. Clark is her assuredness. I wouldn’t fuck with the woman behind “An Actor Out of Work,” no matter her deceptive politesse, would you?

If this album isn’t much of a departure from her debut, I think it might be because she already has a very clear take on who she is as both an artist and as a young woman. It’s evident in her sturdy voice, her steady hand guiding the production, and her direct yet candid, florid lyrics. Even when her lyrics point to a very mid-20s, female sense of doubt and uncertainty (a sense many of us can identify with, I’m sure — listen to “Party,” “Save Me From What I Want”), there’s little doubt that Ms. Clark knows exactly what she wants and will learn more and share with us as she grows older. At 26, she’s already gotten a pretty good start to figuring it out. At 25, I can’t wait to hear more from her.

Annie Clark looks ahead, though slightly off-center

Apr

Music Videos: Takin’ it to the streets

By Alyx Vesey 6 Comments

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Turn on Their TVs
Tags: Angela McRobbie, Caleb Stine and Eric Diga, Don't Let Go, female-address music videos, Futuristically Speaking . . . Never Be Afraid, Gender Politics and MTV: Voicing the Difference, If Children, Lisa A. Lewis, male privilege, NSFW, Please Concrete, Settling Accounts With Subcultures: A Feminist Critique, the street, Wye Oak, Yo! Majesty

In her rad book Gender Politics and MTV: Voicing the Difference Lisa A. Lewis (drawing from Angela McRobbie’s seminal essay “Settling Accounts With Subcultures: A Feminist Critique”) recognizes that the street as a cultural space traditionally off limits for women and girls, both in subcultural practices and music video representations, as rape, harassment, and objectification could befall them. McRobbie argues that these gendered standards of space are formed out of a broader system of social inequality, which Lewis believes is resisted through “female-address” music videos, or music videos that feature female artists in a subject position, which can reconfigure the normativity of male privilege through appropriation of the street with female subjects interacting with it.

So, tonight I’m going to post two new(ish) music videos that show ladies and girls engaging with the street. Enjoy!

Yo! Majesty
“Don’t Let Go”
Futuristically Speaking . . . Never Be Afraid

Note: NSFW, but worth watching at your desk if you’re chained to a cubicle.

Wye Oak
“Please Concrete”
If Children
Directed by Caleb Stine and Eric Diga

Apr

Add “The Hip Hop Wars” to your bookshelf

By Alyx Vesey 7 Comments

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Open a Book
Tags: Bea Arthur, hip hop, Jean Grae, Lupe Fiasco, Mary Kearney, NHHPC, Raquel Cepeda, Tricia Rose

Saturdays aren’t always about going out. Sometimes they’re about mourning the loss of a feminist icon by eating cheesecake and watching episodes of The Golden Girls (R.I.P., Bea Arthur). Sometimes people like to curl up with a book and nest on a Saturday night (I’m one of these people tonight; I’m finally picking up Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and it’s breaking my heart).

If you’re looking for a new book, I recommend The Hip Hop Wars, a new book by Tricia Rose. (FYI, on my list of bad-ass professor ladies I want to be when I grow up, Tricia Rose is up there with my thesis adviser Mary Kearney.)

Rose breaks down contemporary issues in hip hop to contextualize and debunk many essentialist claims made about hip hop. The first five chapters focus on what detractors often purport to be wrong with it (that it causes violence, that it suggests the ghetto is a wasteland, that it hurts black people, that it destroys American values, and that it demeans women). The next five assuage a critique on what defenses people have made for it (questioning what it means when people say hip hop is about keeping it real, that it isn’t responsible for sexism, that some women arebitches and hoes, that hip hop cultural figures don’t want to be role models, and that nobody talks about hip hops positive attributes). The final section seeks to answer some of these questions, pointing to the importance of grssroots activism, the rise of independent hip hop, and progressive figures in the game (specifically mentioning documentarian Raquel Cepeda, and MCs like Lupe Fiasco and Jean Grae, one of my all-time favorites).

(Note: I may be doing a disservice to the blog by skipping out on Jean’s show in ATX tonight, but I kinda need to nest tonight. If you have means to get to the Scoot Inn, though, you should go. She’s amazing live.)

This book really puts hip hop in a larger context and in the present. There’s a lot of discussion of contemporary MCs, which is appreciated, as hip hop scholarship can tend to get stale (i.e., dwelling on the 80s and early 90s, neglecting any female MC unless her name is Lil Kim or Queen Latifah). Rose also does an admirable job of dialoging MCs with one another and framing them within an increasingly conglomate music industry. She also critiques the charity organizations that hip hop figures put together, suggesting that they actually do little to change the hardships of urban poverty in America. Thus, she also pays attention to the American underground and considers why an alternate business model, alongside the increasingly ubiquity of digital media, may help level the extreme wealth promoted and maintained among hip hop’s elite.

And finally, she does something that scholars tend to shy away from doing — providing solutions to some of these problems, endorsing community building, activism, non-profit work, and that trusty word Obama likes to use, volunteerism. She even provides a list of organizations she found out about in her research as a way to get started. So pick up a copy (if from your local library or bookstore, so much the better), and then figure out a way you can get involved. If there’s a local affiliate of the NHHPC in your area, start attending some meetings. And if there isn’t one, start your own chapter.

Apr

Linder Sterling: Radical feminist cut and paste

By Alyx Vesey 3 Comments

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Ask "Is It Art?"
Tags: 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You, A Certain Ratio, collage art, Durutti Column, ESG, Factory Records, Linder Sterling, Lucy O'Brien, Manchester, menstrual jewelry, NSFW, post-punk, The Buzzcocks, Tony Wilson

If you don't get why I love this artist's work, we cannot be cool

So, my partner, Chi Chi, is reading 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You by Tony Wilson, the recently deceased yet immortal Mancunian television personality and, more importantly, one-time proprietor of Factory Records. Cheech keeps relaying to me humorous anecdotes and anarchic folk tales, reminding me why Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Party People is one of my favorite movies. The movie’s subject was post-modern before music biopics were post-modern.

However, there are two things I’ll point out as unfortunate about the movie that documents Tony Wilson’s life (in which he is but a minor character) and they both involve the absence of women.

1) Where is ESG? They were a New York-based punk-funk sister-act that Martin Hannett (the label’s go-to producer) helped commit to record and who opened the The Haçienda, Factory’s night club, the womb of Madchester. But more later. I have a feeling we’ll be talking more about them in subsequent blog entries.

2) More importantly, where is Linder Sterling, a Mancunian art student and leader of overlooked post-punk band, Ludus? She was circulating in the scene in the late 1970s, around the same time that Factory was signing A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, and a little band called Joy Division (they don’t need a link, do they . . . oh, okay).

Hmm. Maybe her absence from the movie has something to do with how she proclivity to wear black dildos and raw meat in Ludus’s performances (despite being a vegetarian — the lengths some will go to for art!). Missed opportunity, Winterbottom and company. This imagery sounds like cinematic gold to me. (Note: For more on this, I recommend reading Lucy O’Brien’s chapter “The Woman Punk Made Me” in Punk Rock: So What?)

Anyway, Linder was there too, I swear. She got her start at Manchester Polytechnic, piecing together collages out of magazines, suturing pornographic images, sports, shiny cars, and even shinier appliances into something thoroughly punk and thoroughly British. Something like this.

The only proper way to watch polo

However, she got her start putting this little bit of business together for the Buzzcocks. Observe the cover she made for their single Orgasm Addict. Maybe you’ve seen it before.

Slippery female bodies and irons, together at last

Anyway, she’s awesome. In addition to music and art, she dabbled in making accessories. She’d fashion earrings out of coat-hanger wire and lint, dipping them in glue and red paint so that they’d resemble used tampons. Appropriately, she called these pieces “menstrual jewelry.”

And even though she’s become a part of history, as all of punk has, she’s still vital and working today. She’s welcome to any hypothetical dinner party I throw, as long as she throws a tampon into the (veggie) shepherd’s pie.

Apr

Vogue Shape Issue: What about Adele?

By Alyx Vesey 4 Comments

Adele; image taken from dailymail.co.ok

Now, a lot of people have commented on the Vogue Shape issue. Jezebel, among others, has mentioned that the issue fails to address how the magazine (and the fashion industry) perpetuates unrealistic and damaging beauty standards and, ultimately, that the issue does little to suggest that Vogue intends to change its game plan by regularly hiring models who aren’t over 5 foot 9 and under 120. Thus, this issue is exceptional, not an actual attempt to change the status quo.

All of this is fair. I was pretty disappointed with the issue overall. Don’t get me started on how the magazine praises the “thin” body type of scrawny half-sisters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon (who smoke, twirl around clear-liquid soups, and don’t eat during their interview) as possessors of a gamine jolie laide. Or that model Doutzen Kroes represents the “athletic” body type. What about the Williams Sisters? What about getting ol’ Thunder and Lightnin’ to make another appearance? She’s the reason why female biceps are the hot fashion accessory) yet is considered too fat to model for Gucci. Some impossibly thin fashion designer was the magazine’s pick for the “tall” body. And even though Beyoncé is the cover girl, her interview is all about how strict her diet and exercise regimens are (man, if ever a lady could pull a Chaka Kahn and let it all go and look fierce in a muumuu, it’s B).

All in all, business as usual. One dainty stillettoed tiptoe forward, four clomping platform heel steps back (though, I will admit that I was really interested in artist Wangechi Mutu, representing the “pregnant” body and I totally wanna hang out with best friends and fellow shorties Olivia Thirlby and Zoë Kravitz, who, based on their article, seem fun and have an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary fashion).

However, I was heartened by the appearance of Adele, the young blue-eyed soul singer from East London who won Best New Artist at the Grammys earlier this year. I love her. She seems young and brash and fun and mouthy and unapologetic about her body (I love that the article mentions that she went to an In-and-Out Burger after the Grammys and wanted to get two milkshakes, one for each award she received). Also . . . damn, that voice.

That girl has got some chops. The song makes me cry every time I hear it. Chills. But she also seems really down to earth and relateable. Like when she sang “Cold Shoulder” on Saturday Night Live and jumped back from the mike gleefully after she finished? Adorable. (Note: Sorry, I can’t find the clip — if you find it, be a sport and share.)

Also, she should be in Vogue. The girl is gorgeous. Not gorgeous for a big girl. Gorgeous. Period. She’s got some face and she’s got some figure. Aren’t pretty people supposed to be in a fashion magazine sometimes? It can’t always be about editorial edge.

The thing is, Adele shouldn’t be exceptional. And she shouldn’t be labeled as “curvy” (or, rather, she shouldn’t be positioned as “curvy” in contrast to Jane Birkin’s maigre daughters — the term reads like such a euphemism for “fat” in this context). Nor should she be contained, restrained, or airbrushed, as some folks speculate her curve-masking photo for Vogue was doctored. At a UK size 14, perhaps its better to call her “average” or “normal,” as she sits comfortably alongside the average American woman.

Or maybe she could represent the “fat” body type and confront (hopefully to remove) the stigma that comes with that word. Come to think of it, she should be posing with Beth Ditto, the proudly full-figured lead singer of The Gossip, herself a major influence on British blue-eyed soul singers like Adele (as a tangent, what is wrong with America when we let a national treasure like Beth Ditto become more popular in the UK?).

Get over it, Vogue. Open up modeling opportunities for people of all body types and let your models double-fist their milkshakes on set. I know you won’t, but you fucking should.

Apr

R.I.P., Lil Rounds

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment

Lil Rounds singing the hell out of Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You"

It’s with a heavy heart that I report that Lil Rounds, the gorgeous, scrappy mother of three from Memphis, is out of the competition to be the next American Idol. And they kicked her out so anti-climactically — right at the beginning, after the awful, hokey group performance of the Jackson 5′s “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” tying last night’s disco theme together in a heinous way (also, did anyone else notice that the obligatory Ford music video was for Lykke Li’s “I’m Good, I’m Gone”?). She didn’t even get to be in the hot seat! They just sent her home, letting her kill “I’m Every Woman” one last time.

I’m sad for a few reasons. One, Lil Rounds had such an awesome, promising start in the competition. She was my early favorite. Do you remember when she performed Mary J’s “Be Without You” at the very beginning, securing her a spot in the Top 12? Do you remember how she, to borrow from judge Randy Jackson, “blew it out the box”?

The thing is, she could never really hold onto that (though I liked her renditions of Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” and Martha and the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave”). She kept choosing goopy ballads or copying iconic artists (I mean, you can’t touch Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, much less copy her look — you just can’t). In short, it seemed like she had a hard time figuring out who she was. If I were a judge, I’d be like “listen to less 80s-era Whitney and more Sharon Jones.”

But also, this was a bad season for ladies. I wanted Alexis Grace to have the chance to develop. I wanted Megan Corkrey (later Megan Joy) to be as good as her audition. And I hope Allison Iraheta, the rad 17-year-old girl with the whiskey voice and hair straight out of Jem and the Holograms who narrowly escaped elimination tonight, gets the prize (or at least gets to square off with boy-next-door Kris Allen and the divisive, gender queer, Hot Topic rocker Adam Lambert — I’m beyond done with the white boy appropriations of sub-Timberlake Matt Giraud and sub-Michael McDonald Danny Gokey).

And, of course, Lil’s exit needs to be put in a larger context around the show’s troublesome history with race. Black people have it harder on Idol, especially the ladies. Tamyra Gray was let go before her time. So was Jennifer Hudson, though she seems to be doing well. Mandisa was also an early favorite of mine (though her lack of tolerance for the LGBT community is unfortunate). Fantasia Barrino was the first female African American winner, but she hasn’t received nearly the mainstream success that fellow winners and Southern girls like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood have gotten. Paris Bennett was let go the season that the insufferable Taylor Hicks won (man, talk about white boy appropriation). The worst for me was the finals for season 6, when it seemed that the darker and less normative the contestant was, the quicker they were let go (LeKeesha Jones, Melinda Doolittle), until we were left with the white boy beatboxer and the mixed race, purity ring-wearing, Christian who could pass.

Anyway, I hope this isn’t the last we hear of Lil. She’s got a great voice, a great name (!), and a lot of heart. Hopefully, she can figure out how to market it.

Apr

How did you celebrate Record Store Day?

By Alyx Vesey 9 Comments

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Go to the Movies
Tags: Alamo Drafthouse, Brendan Toller, end of an ear, Glenn Branca, Grimey's, i need that record, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, KVRX, Mike Watt, Napster, Payola, record store day, Telecomm Act of 1996, Thurston Moore, Trash American Style, Wal-Mart

So, Sunday was Record Store Day. For the record (haha, unintentional pun, haha), I celebrated it by reshelving my CD collection and putting this blog together. A good way to spend it, I think.

But I also extended my celebrating into yesterday, when I saw I Need That Record at the Drafthouse, sponsored in part by Austin record store End of an Ear.

Hmm. It was okay. It covered its bases:
1. Talk about the emergence of radio in the U.S., starting in the 1920s
2. Talk about Payola
3. Talk about Telecomm Act of 1996, and how much power deregulation gave to major corporations
4. Talk about Wal-Mart and big box chains
5. Talk about the price hike of CD sales starting in the 1990s
6. Talk about Napster
7. Talk about digital technology, and how this has impacted potential consumers’ relationship to the music industry
8. Talk about how this impacts local/independent record stores, and encourage you, the conscientious buyer, to give your money to them
9. Load your documentary with statistical evidence that underlines points 1-8

One thing I’ll give this movie, apart from its noble message, is that it made me wanna go on a tour of the midwest and northeast, which is primarily where all the record stores in this documentary are located (I think I gotta make a trek up to Nashville this summer to check out Grimey’s). Also, the documentary’s brianchild, Brendan Toller, got some indie heavyweights like Ian MacKaye, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, and (my favorite curmudgeon) Glenn Branca to volunteer their services as talking heads. That’s cool, if for no other reason than to know that maybe me or you (yes, you) can get ten minutes of face time with them to talk about how The Man is evil. Sure, fine. The Man is, in fact, evil. I’m cool with that.

Also, the documentary wove in some neat archival and news footage. Good on you, Toller.

As a documentary, though, it’s a bit film school 101. Toller seems really set on letting you know he can be clever with imagery — if, by clever, you mean putting together collages of pop stars, splicing reels of pre-existing film footage to make fit your piece’s context, and shooting unnecessary, clearly scripted bits of magic realism (there’s a clearly staged gag that involves a snobby record store clerk making fun of some patron’s purchases). I think these conceits weren’t really needed and, if anything, diverted from what he was trying to accomplish.

Also, as a former deejay, I don’t dig how Toller sets up radio to be the enemy of independent stations. Granted, some college stations are corporatized, but some (like good ol’ KVRX) fight hard to stay local and independent. Give them some love! They’re part of community-building too!

But my big feminist itch was WHERE WERE THE WOMEN IN THIS DOCUMENTARY? Seriously. There were only two women interviewed in the entire documentary (one of whom co-owned Trash American Style, a record store in Danbury, Connecticut — I took off my heels and ran barefoot and was still late to the screening, so help me out with her name). I can rattle off the names of least four past and present lady record store clerks within my friend group. And there have gotta be some record stores run by women (if you know of any, or shop at these places, lemme know — I’ll make those stores top priority on my at-this-point hypothetical record store tour). Hell, I’d be cool with some fellow lady music geeks digging through some crates and talking about records they like on camera. And if Thurston Moore gets to be a talking head, why can’t Kim Gordon? I’m not suggesting something as gross as a “Women and Record Stores” documentary — just integrate us into the damn conversation.

This, of course, doesn’t even get into how Caucasian this documentary is, once again emphasizing that music geekery is a white man’s game. If you object to this representation, let Toller know how you feel.

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Feminist Music Geek