Sarah Lipstate, aka Noveller; image courtesy of loumuenz.com
So, perhaps you’ve seen the trailer for It Might Get Loud. I’ve seen in at two different movie screenings. For the uninformed, it’s a documentary about how “three icons get together” in the name of rock. These three icons are guitarists Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, U2′s The Edge, and The White Stripes’ Jack White.
I bet you know how I feel. The words you want are “wank” and “decadeism,” accompanied by an eye roll.
Now, apart from confirming my suspicions that The Edge relies too much on effects pedals, I don’t have any real beef with these dudes. Oh, I also think the whole stage name business with the aforementioned David Evans is dumb, but duh. It’s just — why these three? And then comes my obligatory question that is often met with a compromised answer, if it’s even addressed: where are the guitar-playing women, girls, and/or people of color?
I’ve provided at least two counterexamples for the women – Marnie Stern and St. Vincent. Today, I’ll add one more. Sarah Lipstate, aka Noveller. Her gloriously named Red Rainbows comes out this fall. Can’t wait.
Full disclosure: Sarah and I were acquaintances at KVRX. We never hung out, but I always knew she was really talented (and not just with guitar — for example, I once saw her play a theremin at a house party). When we were at KVRX, she was recording as one half of One Umbrella, for whom she also made experimental films, which she continues to do (she’s a UT RTF alumna as well). She’s also performed with Glenn Branca and finished a stint with Parts & Labor. And I’m really excited to see her breaking out on her own. You should be too.
Wanted to post this real quick, because it’s silly, I’m a little work-fried, and the emphasis on the “soundtrack” is a big part of the joke.
With a little more plot, I’d totally see this movie. I like a good lady road-trip movie (see also: Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, a movie I should probably write about in terms of soundtracks, 80s pop iconography, and funny ladies).
Some other things I love about this fake trailer:
1. Are Alicia and Alanis real-life friends? Do they eat vegan meals together somewhere posh in LA? They seem like they like each other. I’d record my friend flipping me off on a digicam.
2. I don’t really have much use for Alanis as a singer or funny lady (I don’t like “My Humps“). But she’s really great here. And, apparently, she can sum up her life with a shot glass.
2. The use of The Sea and Cake’s “Weekend” when Alicia’s mother dies, complete with the photo falling off the table. Normally, I associate this hazy pop tune with a Sofia Coppola movie I made up in my head. It involves a quiet French couple, slouchy yet tight and impossibly fashionable black ensembles by Marc Jacobs, and grey skies. This is funnier.
3. The way Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk” slows down when Alicia goes from happy to hysterically sad.
4. Some of these bands aren’t real. I’ll let you go through the names and pick them out. Unfortunately, Mates of State are very real (cheap shot!).
5. That said, the fake band names and the real band names are often similar enough that it’s not easy to tell them apart if you don’t already know who’s who. The pseudo-Juno font and the implied presence of Fox Searchlight helps sell it.
6. The soundtrack’s presence gets so excessive that songs start playing on top of each other. Of course they do. Just like life.
Tonight, I thought I’d throw up a couple of lo-fi music videos that rely on cheap effects, low-budget animation, and deliberate use of image distortion. In other words, the point is that the videos look “bad.” You know, because obviously a music video doesn’t have to look “good” and cost a lot of money to grab your attention. Bad can even mean good.
Oh, and sometimes bad can be political. The Erase Errata clip abides by this principle.
Pens
“High in the Cinema” Hey Friend, What You Doing? (in stores September 15, 2009)
Think of this post as an extension of this one. Only it’s different, because this is a new group of girls with upbringings, influences, opinions, and dispositions.
1. Let girls talk, even if they might potentially be disruptive. They might just want you to pay attention to them. Rather than tell them to be quiet and fret that they aren’t listening, try and engage them and talk to them. This might make them listen, especially to their own words and those of their peers. You, the instructor, may learn something as well by asking a girl to share with the group what she’s telling a friend in the corner and having that girl drop some science on the class.
2. Make sure to intervene when a girl says “you’ve never heard of _______?” to another girl. Try and spin it like, “well, not everyone can hear everybody.” Be honest about the things you didn’t know and learned from your friend Kristen when you put this workshop together. Condoning that behavior may make loud girls quiet and quiet girls unable to participate. Correcting that behavior gently may help them all to listen and share.
3. Don’t forget how important Selena continues to be for many girls.
4. Don’t take credit for putting Selena in the PowerPoint (good contribution, Kristen).
5. Allow yourself to get really amped when girls yell out names at images of bands and musicians they recognize and love.
6. Let yourself dance with the younger girls when they do the wave during the Gossip/Sharon Jones mini-dance party at the end of the workshop.
7. Remember how exciting it is when a girl tells you she learned about a musician from her mom.
8. Be kind and respectful when some girls let you see their band perform during rehearsal (thanks, ladies from Chucky’s Unknown Children).
9. Some girls might read your blog. Be humble and grateful when they tell you this and remember them as you try and make this space more inclusive.
10. Not all girls like the same things from session to session. Overall, these girls had little use for Björk or riot grrrl. However, they did seem to like The Runaways, Erykah Badu, and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.
11. Always highlight female musicians who play unconventional instruments. Don’t make a distinction between cool and uncool instruments. After all, X-Ray Spex’s Lora Logic played the saxophone.
12. Remember all the bands and artists you didn’t include that the girls mentioned in case you get to give this workshop next time.
13. Always make extra copies of the mix CD in case girls want to give a copy to a sibling/cousin/friend.
Today is my 26th birthday. I’d like to take this moment to celebrate two stellar talents and fashion icons-to-be in the music industry. It is not my intention to essentialize or tokenize, but I thought, in the wake of talking about Beth Ditto, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, it might be nice to acknowledge the chic and gloriously out-there fashion contributions of women of color (who aren’t Rihanna, M.I.A., or Santigold). So look and listen! And if you’re like “what about _______?” or “you forgot _______,” please contribute.
Ebony Bones
British sensation Ebony Bones made a big debut at SXSW last year. I missed her, but luckily my friend Haylee didn’t, so if you get into Ms. Ebony Thomas’s post-apocalyptic punk-funk, thank her. To me, her clattering, cavernous sound contrasts perfectly with her vibrantly colored attire which oscillates between “society lady” and “road warrior”. I don’t think her debut album, Bone of My Bones, has come out here yet, though it’s already big in Japan. They’re onto something.
Janelle Monáe
Kansan up-and-comer Janelle Monáe recorded her first album back in 2003, but is just now starting to court mainstream attention. She’s since captured the attention of OutKast (who put her in Idlewild) and has gone on the road with No Doubt this summer. I really love her flair for the dramatic and her knack for weaving showtime and children’s music in her new wave sound and complimenting it with an androgynously glamorous, contemporarily retro look.
Cover of Sleep It Off; released on ZE in 1984, reissued in 2004
I know it’s poor sport to frame comparisons of artists as “better than worse than” and that this exercise can take on sexist dimensions, especially when talking about women, but I strongly believe that I’d like Lady Gaga better if she was a little bit more like Cristina. Specifically because fewer dance pop artists have been more critical of the wealth and fame machine in recent memory than Ms. Monet-Palaci.
Now, it’s possible that you don’t know who Cristina is. I didn’t know myself until ZE Records reissued her two full-length albums and Pitchfork wrote about them. To be brief, Cristina was a darling of the New York mutant disco scene in the early 1980s and was primed to be the queen of pop before another one-named club denizen took the title. A former Harvard student born from well-to-do parents, she dropped out, started working at The Village Voice, got involved with and later married a British retail heir and ZE Records co-founder Michael Zilkha, and did what any bored society girl might try to do. Start a recording career.
Her sound was at first lush and funky but became more harsh and angular. It was weird and gallery-friendly and oh-so-of-the-moment (in no small part due to producer Don Was). She even got a young Kevin Kline to do a duet with her (1978′s ”Disco Clone”). It was a fun and bubbly time. If you pair anything off either Cristina album with, say, something off Garçons’ Divorce or Queen Samantha’s The Letter, you’ve got a naughty party coming your way.
(Note: Garçons’ Divorce is hard to come by — twice out of print. Maybe this is why I’ve never heard their song “French Boy” at a gay bar, because I totally should. ZE Records has included many of their songs on their Mutant Disco compilations.)
Now, before you yell “class warfare!” and tune out, let me explain what Cristina did with her clearly classed position and what it contributed to her recording career. Rather than dismiss her upbringing, she made it the point of critical inquiry of her songs, especially in her second album, which is the focus of this post.
Rather than Madonna and Lady Gaga, who came from outsider perspectives that were trying to get inside, Cristina took her position as an insider to write about how the double-dealing, drug addictions, loveless marriages, closeted homosexuality, not-so-closeted homophobia, compromised affairs, high-life careers, elitist education, corporate greed, and luxe trappings (which, by 1984, formed in the wake of considerable gentrification in New York) were empty, cruel, predictable, and stifling to gender and class relations.
Surprisingly, she took all of this toxic material and made it humorous and fun to dance to. Yet at the same time, her music has a pessimistic, sinister edge, nulling any potential lyrical comparison to, say, Vampire Weekend. Much of this is in Cristina’s vocal delivery, which evokes Maude Lebowski‘s deadpan, arched New England finishing school accent. When she sings “I watch my friends decay around me and I view them with distaste” in Sleep It Off‘s opener “What’s a Girl to Do?,” I can’t help but wonder if she just slipped arsenic into the Dom Pérignon and is watching them die in the corner, burning their wallets with a lighter.
So, yeah. This was pop music. But it wasn’t going to get her on the pop charts. Sleep It Off tanked, perhaps in part because 1984 proved to be such a big year for Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Texas. After divorcing Zilkha in 1990, she moved back to New York and occasionally writes literary essays. I haven’t read them, but I’m interested. If she fashioned herself as a sort of art-pop Dorothy Parker, her subsequent literary work has gotta be interesting.
But Cristina should also get a little credit for being game about distorting or manipulating her body for artistic purposes and self-reflexive effect (so should Lady Gaga, who often takes couture to cold and weird extremes). In her time, Cristina never did anything wth her look that’s akin to Lady Gaga — perhaps because no one outside the New York art scene was paying much attention, perhaps because she would’ve thought wearing a Kermit the Frog jacket was ridiculous — but she, along with graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude, cooked up the disturbingly beautiful, deliberately strange, and inherently constructed image for her second and final album. Perhaps Goude was really pleased with the look of Sleep It Off, because he did a similar design for Grace Jones the following year.
Cover of Slave to the Rhythm, released in 1985 on Island Records
Cristina’s album cover takes a lovely, modelesque profile shot of the singer and stretches her neck to graceful but useless grotesquery. A long neck on a woman is often remarked upon as an asset, especially for models. It’s also a home for the singer’s instrument. But this neck? And how about the cuts and ridges and hastily applied tape? Whereas Jones’s cover distorts her image in a smoother, more seamless manner, Cristina’s cover is rough, cut-up, and damaged.
Thus, this cover reflects Cristina’s key message — that which is beautiful and idealized in our culture is flawed, and the deception of its perfection is just at the surface.
Hey everyone — it’s that time again. This time next week, the showcase for session two of GRCA will be wrapping up and you don’t wanna miss it. You should go. Here’s the lowdown:
When: Saturday, August 1, 2009.
Doors open at noon, show starts at 1 p.m.
Why you should go is the easy part. A group of girl campers — many of whom have never played before — are picking up their instruments, forming bands with other girls, writing their own songs, and learning how to raise their voices, wail on their instruments, and be heard.
Saturday’s showcase will also feature a silent auction for autographed rock items both classic and contemporary, gift certificates from local merchants, and SXSW wristbands. All proceeds support scholarships for low-income campers. More than half of August 2009 campers attend GRCA with some scholarship support.
I keep forgetting to write about Cotton Incorporated’s Fabric of My Life ad campaign. But there seems to be a demand (specifically from my friends, the Kristens, who urged me to do a write-up at lunch today). So, let’s turn this draft into post, friends.
In a nutshell, three female singer-songwriters (Jazmine Sullivan, Miranda Lambert, and Zooey Deschanel, respectively representing R&B, country, and crossover indie pop) retool the jingle to let you, the (female, aged 18-34) consumer see just how easy, functional, versatile, and, above all, hip and stylish cotton is. The campaign, created by DDB, was launched in April, with 30-second spots running on television and the Internet.
To my knowledge, the print campaign will launch sometime this summer. This could suggest that the campaign isn’t doing so well. My hunch, though, is that magazines, now crippled by the recession, have been tightening their advertising budgets throughout the 2000s in the wake of several publication folds as more people have become reliant on computers, search engines, and social media to provide them with information.
The campaign has a micro-site, complete with extended versions of the television ads, behind-the-scenes-footage, interviews from the spokeswomen, customizable interactive style books, and Facebook applications. Personally, I thought the micro-site was pretty useless. I built a style book and didn’t need Cotton Incorporated to tell me that I like bright solids, flats and sneakers, minimal yet quirky jewelry, and an overall elegantly off-kilter look. I’ve been dressing myself for some time now. But the micro-site’s existence is interesting and a clear indication of how advertising is evolving and making itself appear more individualistic and available to John and Jane Websurfer.
I find the television ads interesting too, though I never actually saw them on the big glowing box in my living room (I saw them on the little glowing box in my office). While part of the same campaign, the three spots stand alone. They feature three different narrators with different musical styles, different “personal” styles (I assume these women have stylists), and different fan bases. Thus, they cultivate different images for themselves, which is evident in the narrative differences in both the songs and the ads. The two things they all do are 1) stare out a window as if inspired — perhaps by cotton? — and 2) play dress-up at the end of each ad, with the final shot being a closet door.
With Sullivan, we have an aspirational narrative — the opening line, ”they said it was only a dream, and dreaming was only for fools” is accompanied by images of Jazmine at a photo shoot. As the song goes on, Jazmine assures us that dreams “are alive just like me and you” and “can be real if you let them.” We see her being touched up by various (African American, one white) stylists, strolling through an upscale urban area (that I’m guessing is Philadelphia, where she calls home), writing in a local coffee shop, and talking to (African American, one white) students in a music school.
With Lambert, we have a “back to my roots” narrative — the opening line “took a shot, shooting for the stars, working overtime” is accompanied by the glammed-up singer being photographed at a red carpet event. The next line “you and I know it’s a struggle for the high road; I keep it simple though” coincides with images of Lambert on her tour bus, writing, playing guitar, and cuddling her dog. Upon her return home, we see an excessive display of folksiness — feeding the chickens, tending to a horse, and fly fishing (!).
Finally, with Deschanel, we have a “personal day” narrative — the opening line “woke up today, it was another lovely day” underscores Deschanel performing a concert, before running off-stage (rather sheepishly) and reappearing at home, working on a song at the piano, where she also keeps Post-It notes. From there, she wanders the (Los Angeles?) streets, walking a bike around, looking for banjos at an outdoor market, and hitting up the record store.
I’d like to point out some disparity in popularity. In my estimation, Sullivan and Lambert are similarly matched as representatives of their genre — not superstars like Beyoncé and Carrie Underwood, but young, established artists with a growing fan base. This can be crudely calculated by the number of hits their YouTube clips received (13,655 for Sullivan, 13,884 for Lambert). Deschanel’s clip, however, was viewed 144,032 times. I don’t think this has to do with her popularity as a musician–She and Him, her project with M. Ward backed by Merge Records, is what my partner terms “NPR-big”. Rather, I think Deschanel the spokeswoman gets to capitalize on two key aspects of her public persona that the other two artists can’t–she is also an established actress and fashion maven.
And it’s pretty easy to see how these narratives play into generic conventions, and how those conventions are raced and classed. Sullivan, a black woman and R&B singer, is aligned with the city, her neighborhood (but not her home, which we don’t see beyond her closet), and educational programs within her community to “set an example” and ”make a difference” (and probably shoulder some burden of representation). Lambert, who was raised in Lindale, Texas–a small, Christian, predominantly white farming community in East Texas– eschews the glitzy artifice of the entertainment industry for the “realness” of her roots. Deschanel, who was born into an entertainment family, lives in a quirky but assuredly upscale (and potentially gentrified) neighborhood that was bought by her career as an actor from a reputable family, which affords her considerable creative and leisure time.
So, while the spokeswomen may serve to be all things to all (female) people and get those people to buy from Cotton Incorporated, who those people are tellingly different from one another.
Rihanna's new hairdo; image provided by New York Daily News
So, I’ve been tracking coverage of Rihanna’s new haircut (yes, it was considered news by many in the blogosphere). Last week, she updated her trademark edgy pixie cut with a shaved base. Perhaps people are so used to her short hair or the new cut looks fairly similar, but I haven’t noticed much of a hubbub. I guess because of the to-do over Kristen Stewart’s Joan Jett mullet, I was expecting more of a stir. Perhaps a homophobic panic. More specifically, I anticipated potential linkages made between the hair change and speculation over her dealings with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, as last month they agreed to a court-ordered separation agreement following Brown’s much-reported assault against Rihanna last March.
However, most people seem to be pro to neutral with Rihanna’s haircut (Bossip is an exception). And I guess that’s good. I like the hairstyle. If she wanted to go bald, that’d be cool with me too. It’s so strange to think that she still once had a long, tumbling mane of hair, perhaps a hold-over from her beauty queen days as she transitioned into her current cultural role as pop star. I definitely prefer her with short hair; it maximizes her features, suits the dark robotic edge of her synth pop, and queers her in some interesting ways. Perhaps it gets us a little closer to style icon Debbi from Repo Man.
Rihanna with long hair, back in October 2007; image courtesy of People
But I’m also curious as to the racial dimensions of Rihanna’s haircut, and what the shave may mean. I admittedly don’t know much about hair and women of color, other than an awareness that hair is both a source of contention and a space for play, particularly for women of African descent. Indeed, the Barbadan pop star’s decision to shave her head is culturally very different from, say, Tilda Swinton, requesting a buzz job. Some detractors of Rihanna’s new ‘do may perhaps read the shortening, straightening, sculpting, and now, buzzing of her hair as a disavowal of her “natural” hair. They may read pop singer Cassie’s half-shaved look or model Amber Rose’s bleached buzz cut similarly.
Of course, subscribing to this reading blindsides the multicultural aspects of this discussion. Rihanna is from Barbados, a Caribbean island with integrated African, Middle Eastern, and European communities. Within those communities exist several more ethnically distinct cultural origins. Thus, while Rihanna’s accent marks her as Barbadan, what that identity is in terms of racial and ethnic categories is far more difficult to extract. Furthermore, Cassie is of African American, Filipino, West Indian, and Mexican heritage. Amber Rose is of Italian and Cape Verdian descent (at least that’s what Wikipedia told me). So they both exist within and outside of African American identities.
I admit I don’t have answers. And, as a white woman, it’s easy for me to say “Rihanna shaved her head — cool,” which is not my intention. Instead, I’m submitting this post as a conversation-starter, a point of entry to talk and think more critically about the dimensions of racial, ethnic, and gender identities. It may seem like “just hair,” but its supposed obviousness and frivolousness demands more critical inquiry.
Back in September 2007, Björk headlined the Austin City Limits Music Festival (’round these parts, we just call it ACL). She came to support Volta, which was released in May of the same year. Many of my friends were clamoring to go, and may have interpreted my reticence to go as snobbish or elitist (or maybe they thought I was just being a hater). I would’ve loved to have seen Björk — I’ve been a huge fan since I was ten — but knew I wasn’t going to be happy with her show in a festival setting. It would’ve been hot, I would’ve been sweaty, I probably wouldn’t have been able to see her, much less hear her, and there weren’t enough other musical acts I wanted to see that in my mind validated buying a pass. It very well may make me a hater.
All of this is to say that, apart from actually being there, the performances in Björk’s Voltaïc is exactly how I would have wanted to see her. It’s a must-see.
Voltaïc is actually a four-disc set, complete with one DVD of music videos for songs from Volta, one CD comprised of remixed versions of songs from Volta, one live CD, and one live DVD featuring two very different musical performances. This last aspect of the collection will be what I focus on in this post.
The first performance on the DVD is a concert in Reykjavík. The venue is Langholtskirkja Church. She performs several pieces from Medúlla, which features songs primarily arranged in a capella and the voice providing a myriad of surprising instrumental possibilities. She has a mixed choir backing her for songs like “Mouth’s Cradle” and “Who Is It?” and what I wouldn’t give to have been in that ensemble. And when she does perform with more traditional instrumentation, as she does with “The Dull Flame of Desire,” she is backed by an all-female Icelandic brass ensemble. Churches tend to be built for sound, and Langholtskirkja is no exception. The space allows Björk and her various ensembles a larger, deeper, richer sonic resonance for their musical interplay.
The second performance, which is from a show in Paris, is a wild, post-global, post-colonial affair. Fitting for a tour to promote an album that boasts songs like “Earth Intruders” and “Declare Independence,” the set is draped with flags that depict frogs and trees as national emblems. Female members of the backing band are slathered in day-glo war paint and feathers.
It may be easy to theorize these accoutrements as reductionist in their allegiance to primitivism (or as petty theivery to the imagery global pop stars like M.I.A. have popularized), but I hasten to abide by this argument without knowing more about Icelandic folklore. Also, there is a concerted effort made to juxtapose traditional instruments with electronics, thus providing a larger set of possibilities for how popular music can sound and how it can be made. On this stage, a harpsichord and a brass ensemble can co-exist with a Reactable, a Tenori-On, and a tricked-out drum kit. Likewise, the instrumentalists are notably mixed gender (though not mixed race); Jónas Sen plays harpsichord, Chris Corsano of Don Caballero is on drums, Mark Bell and Damian Taylor fiddle with electronics, and Björk’s brass ensemble appear again, suggesting that this new nation will be run by a bunch of pissed-off female warrior punks who have no real use for man’s phallic preoccupation with guitars. It’s a world I’d be fine with.
But both performances put primary importance on the voice, as it’s clearly the instrument Björk values most. Indeed, she is quick to remind, the voice is an instrument, and thus the vocalist is not simply a site of objectification but a portal of subjectivities. You get a sense in these performances, which are at such contrast with one another, how sensitive, durable, and complex Björk’s intonation and phrasing are and just how distinct her voice is. Oh, that voice. If we want to borrow from Roland Barthes and his discussion of the grain of the voice, we might put Björk on one end of the spectrum and, say, Neko Case, on the other. If Case’s voice has no grain, and is perfectly pitched and clear, then perhaps it would be fair to say that Björk’s is all grain — excitingly, exhuberantly, defiantly flawed.
I also appreciate how Björk incorporates stage presence as an extension of her voice, and how the performances capture this as a set of discursive practices than singular entity. Maybe I come up with the word “reverent” because of the venue, but her Reykjavík performance is meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. By contrast, her Paris performance is, to borrow from the title of an earlier tune, “violently happy” (made all the more remarkable for me when I read that she was sick during that particular show).
Likewise, I appreciate how she uses clothing to convey mood and reflect the tone she’s trying to convey in her set list. In the Reykjavík show, we see a slinky, celestial Björk in a form-fitting sequined dress, purple tights, red wedges, and her hair wrapped in braids. Through fashion, Björk suggests that this performance will be self-possessed, intimate, and a bit sensual (amen!). In the Paris concert, however, her costuming is wild and colorful, pairing wide, brightly patterned, ruffly dresses with metallic leggings that allow her to take up maximum space on stage. Notably, her hair is down, waving about her shoulders. Her feet are bare. This is a great physical reflection of her set list, which emphasizes the punkish electronica of Volta, Homogenic, and Post.
And yet. All of this madness, all of this self-containment, all of these contradictions, and all of this joy is organized by one pixieish Icelandic woman who thrives on the beautiful chaos generated from multiple players, multiple instruments, and multiple personas. But she’s the same person who responds to the end of each song with a shy nod or a politely clipped “merci, bien!” Whether in church or going hunting, she’s always Björk.
