A lot of me today. I posted a review of Girls Got Kicks for Scratched Vinyl this morning and my Bechdel Test Canon entry on Saving Face for Bitch just went live. To honor (or inadvertently counteract) GGK‘s spirit, I put on my radioactive pink Converses and went for a walk. Now I think Chantal Akerman, some reading, another visit to Old Love, and a cat nap are in order.
Archive for the 'Feminist Music Geeks Open a Book' Category
11
Jan
12
Getting Kicks and Saving Face
Courtney E. Smith; image courtesy of boston.com
I recently emailed Courtney E. Smith some questions to coincide with the release of her book Record Collecting for Girls, which I reviewed earlier for this site. She was good enough to answer my questions.
You discuss issues of sexism in relation to music fandom and connoisseurship throughout the book and in various interviews to promote it. Why did you write this book and what do you hope to accomplish with it?
I wrote this book because I love reading this kind of book. Be it, outside of music, stuff by Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, or Sloane Crosley or in music from [Nick] Hornby, [Chuck] Klosterman, and [Rob] Sheffield. But in the realm of music it started to bug me that there weren’t editorial music books from the female point of view. I wanted to know what some of the women portrayed in these books thought, what their side of the story would be, what songs they’d say they listened to. I thought I’d write the kind of conversations I have with girlfriends.
More than anything, I hope it makes people think talking about music can be fun. And that it makes them laugh.
Do you identify as a feminist? If so, how do you define feminism for yourself? Does it inform your book project?
I’ve been a feminist since I was 16 and read an essay in Sassy about it. That inspired me to read Susan Faldui’s Backlash and I was blow away by the statistics she presented. That lead to Betty Friedan, Naomi Wolfe and through the years everything from Pink Think to Manifesta. I grew up in a small town in Texas where a higher premium was placed on being pretty than being smart. It always bothered me and it was nice to find a world of women acknowledging the distance between the value of men and women.
I agree with and support the dictionary definition of what a feminist is: a person who believes in equal rights for women economically, socially, and politically. It’s pretty simple and I don’t understand how anyone could not identify as a feminist. Being a feminist and a woman informs everything I do.
You use the word “girl” in your title and relate your childhood and teenage years to your professional and personal experiences as an adult. How do you define the word “girl” and how are you using it in your title?
To me, girl is a noun identifying a female. I am using it a little bit mockingly, and a little bit lovingly, in the title of this book. When you think of a record collector, stereotypically, the image that will be used in pop culture is like Steve Buscemi in Ghost World. And a music snob would be Jack Black in High Fidelity. I can’t think of a single image of a female record collector as an archetype, because it’s not seen as a female domain. And I think that’s dumb, because we all know female music enthusiasts, collectors, and fetishists. They’re no more few and far between than the male variety. With that stereotypical archetype in mind, I think it’s a funny bordering on absurd to attach “for girls” to it.
At the same time, I’m pretty fascinated by the “for girls” culture. It’s empowering when you’re The Golden Girls, because older women owning that term and referring to themselves in whatever manner they choose is endearing. And it’s unacceptable to some people when it’s “the girls’ guide to…” because they see the pink ghetto. I’m well aware that music books, even those written by women, are rarely marketed to women. If we buy them it’s a bonus but men are the target audience. Putting “for girls” in the title forces it to be a music book marketed to women. And in the end that was very important to me.
What’s the first album you received and did it influence you in any way?
I honestly couldn’t say what the first album I received was, but the first one I saved up my allowance to buy was Julian Lennon’s Valotte in 1985. It was interesting because vinyl was on the decline culturally and as a kid it was a lot more economically viable to buy cassettes and even more so to tape songs off of the radio. Julian didn’t have a huge influence on me, but the first time I played Bananarama for my mother and she told me it was horrible did — it was the first time I realized that all music was not created equal. Up to that point I’d listened mainly to my parents’ record collection and lived in a world where everything was good. But when I started to like my own music, the pop music of the era, and was told it wasn’t good, it made me start to think about how people picked the music they liked and what made it good or bad. I still think about that all the time.
The book focuses a lot on your romantic relationships with men and connects it to your music fandom. How do you engage in music fandom with women? Are there fundamental differences between how you engage with music with men and women?
In my experience, women are less likely to wear their opinions about music on their sleeves. You hardly have to mention something to a guy and he’ll immediately spill everything he thinks about an artist like he’s been forming these opinions for years, even on things he barely cares about, along with as many statistics and bits of useless information as he’s been able to memorize. This confidence in talking about music isn’t always present with women. It’s often more of a question, a conversation and less of a factual history about the band.
Something happened recently where a guy friend asked me to send him some hate-filled songs because he was ramping up to take someone down at work. The way he talked about it was bordering on violent and he has a physical stature that I don’t. He could beat someone up while I could not. I found that informing what sort of songs I put on this mix for him. I edited out a lot of songs I’d put on angry revenge mixes for myself. If I made that playlist for a woman, it wouldn’t be the same at all. But, at the same time, if the guy who’d asked me to make him a playlist to get amped up were a physical weakling, it would have been different as well. In the end the fundamental differences depend very much on the individual person.
The Beatles vs. Stones essay in my book is a direct response to the debates I have with my friend Marisa. She loves the Stones and I love the Beatles. I am forever coming up with arguments to stop her cold or trip her arguments up. I want to tackle it from every angle and make her admit I’m right, because that’s how we talk to each other. I wouldn’t have that conversation in the same way with a more sensitive person, whatever their gender.
Since a lot of the book focuses on ex-boyfriends, you might open yourself up to criticism that you’re really just writing about boys. Do you think this is sexist? If so, how would you counter that critique?
If we can agree that Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live and both of Sheffield’s books are sexist because they use romantic relationships as storytelling devices to get at a universal idea, then I’ll agree that me writing about boys is sexist. If not, then I think there’s a double standard at work in that idea.
In addition to comparisons between Chuck Klosterman and Rob Sheffield’s more personal writings on music, your book follows Marisa Meltzer’s Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, Sara Marcus’ Girls to the Front: The True Story of Riot Grrrl Revolution, Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl, and Out of the Vinyl Deeps, a collection of Ellen Willis. Apart from crudely lumping you together as cisgender white ladies, you all tend to focus extensively on memoir with rock music as the predominant genre of analysis. Do you put yourself in that context or do you see yourself apart from it? Also, how do you conceptualize race, whiteness, and sexuality in relation to gender in your work and with this book?
I think that’s a fair comparison, although my book is a lot more editorially driven than the ladies you’ve listed here, save Kristin Hersh whose book is a straight memoir. I think Ellen Willis is much more in the vein of music criticism and Marisa Meltzer is music history, both with touches of personal anecdote. My book is really light on criticism, because I don’t fancy myself a music critic, and a mishmash of memoir and history with a dash of how-to for the less musically aggressive.
This book is based on my own world view, however. To expect it to address race and sexuality outside of my experience would be to ask it to be disingenuous. By way of an example: there is a lot to say about female superfans, especially as it relates to boy bands and teenage girls. I think there are tons of fascinating social dynamics at play there but I didn’t write about it because it was never my experience. I don’t relate to Beatlemania. I didn’t have a favorite New Kid. I thought the Backstreet Boys were creepy. They’ve all been in my life, but it’s nothing I felt like I had enough experience and position to take on.
The most poignant part of the book for me was when you talked about going to a music store as a kid and the instrument salesman assuming you were buying a clarinet when you wanted to play drums. As someone who picked up a guitar last year and teaches music history workshops for Girls Rock Camp, I can certainly relate. Do you hope this book is a resource for young girls? If so, what do you hope they get out of it? What do you think of organizations like Girls Rock Camp? Do you think they are an effective way to get girls involved in music?
I absolutely do not think young girls should read this book. Teenagers, sure. I think it has YA appeal and I think putting history in context is important or else you have no understanding of how you earned the rights you have today or what still needs work and attention. I’m a big fan of things like Girls Rock Camp and providing role models for girls that show them girls can play music.
The problem for me is that I get stuck on how I felt growing up. Again, small town in Texas. There weren’t resources like Girls Rock Camp readily available. For me, getting to play drums felt like a fight. I had to fight with the boy who was the leader of the drum line the entire time I did it just to prove myself. So did the one other girl who played drums in my grade. And I stopped my junior year in high school because I got tired of fighting. It was so much work to feel like you were constantly bucking tradition and never good enough, with no support system in sight. I think it’s important to have icons in pop culture, for those girls who don’t live in cities or have progressive parents, who normalize the idea of girls doing whatever they want to do — be it professional musician, comedienne, writer, whatever. And to reinforce ALL THE TIME that it’s an achievable aspiration.
You also discuss the dearth of all-female bands in our contemporary moment. What do you think of Beyoncé touring with an all-female band? Conversely, how do you feel about mixed-gender bands?
I think very few people notice who Beyoncé’s backing band are. The casual observer probably doesn’t and the shows are so 100% about Beyoncé. I’m glad she’s doing it, but until it starts getting discussed in Us Weekly and on Entertainment Tonight, I’m not sure how much of an impact it’s making in the wider pop culture sense.
I had a friend who, when his band was looking for a new keyboardist, wouldn’t audition any girls because he thought it was too hard to take a girl on the road. In his mind there was too much of a chance that someone would try to sleep with the girl and it would cause tension. Women are still subject to the sexual whims of men, in the sense that it gives them a reason to not consider us equals. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean they’ll always let you, including in music. I think there’s a difference in mixed gender bands that are founded by women and those founded by men. I think that behavior is a lot more scarce when women are running the show and setting the boundaries.
Who are some of your favorite female instrumentalists and vocalists and why? What kinds of vocal styles and performance styles most resonate with you?
I’ve always really liked Bonnie Raitt and Melissa auf der Meyer’s guitar playing. You can’t deny Merrill from tUnE-yArDs and Kaki King as drummers/percussionists but obviously I think Janet Weiss is one of the best female drummers ever. In the world of jazz piano I like Blossom Dearie, Shirley Horn, and Nina Simone. In pop I like Kate Bush and Christine McVie. Imogen Heap creates some interesting soundscapes too. There are certainly a lot of well-known female bassists, but it’s hard to call out any as favorites. I think bass is one of those instruments that needs a whole band around it to be interesting most of the time. I think the vocalists and styles that resonate with me are like anyone: they’re the ones you can personally relate to, that make you feel something. I feel like I might listen to lyrics more than most people and makes me want to designate songs to occasions.
You come to this project from a professional experience in the mainstream music industry, ostensibly bringing fringe or indie artists into the mainstream. What do you think the current generation of artists relationship is to mainstream success? How are female artists conceptualizing this, in your experience?
From 2000 to 2010 the idea that indie bands needed to sign to a major label to have mainstream success seems to have disappeared. I think Death Cab were the last of the indie bands who felt they had to do that. It’s partly because major labels are shrinking but also because indie labels are growing. The playing field seems a bit more level so a band like Vampire Weekend can choose to sign to XL Records instead of a major label, stay in a world of people they actually like while marketing their records, have greater control over how they’re marketed, and achieve the level of mainstream success they’re comfortable with. Just a few years ago bands like TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs felt they had to move on from indies to majors to be successful and make enough money to survive.
From what I can see, in indie culture female musicians and bands are less likely to go for mainstream success. I don’t blame them either, because it involves a lot of compromise or an obnoxiously strong will to be a pop star and stay true to yourself. It’s hard work and you’re under appreciated. It’s a lot easier to stay in the world you’re comfortable with.
As a music industry professional, how do you think the industry has changed for women, if in fact it has? Do you consider the wave of prominent female music supervisors like Alexandra Patsavas to be a positive change? What future are we passing on to the next generation of industry professionals?
I think it’s a lot more important that there be more female artist managers, A&R people, marketers, producers and programmers than music supervisors. Ultimately the choices in music placement for film and TV lies with the director, so it’s a more important to have more female film and TV directors than music supervisors.
And music supervisors also can’t do much unless there are female A&R execs signing more female bands and working with their managers to make sure their marketing budgets are the same as their male contemporaries. And you need women in business positions, heading up labels and their marketing departments, who are cognizant of how they treat and market female artists.
As someone who worked for MTV as a music programmer, what did you think of this year’s VMAs? What performances and artists resonated most with you? Also, what do you think of Odd Future’s recent cultural ascendancy?
I thought that Britney tribute was weird. And the Amy Winehouse tribute could have been better — just one song, sung by Bruno Mars, really? Beyoncé and Adele killed it. I get the spectacle factor with Chris Brown, but I wish they’d stop asking him back. I don’t get the spectacle with Jay-Z and Kanye, they’re just rapping about rich people problems now. Every show that lacks a host tends to feel a bit disjointed. I felt like I didn’t know when the show was going to be over this year.
Odd Future reminds me the ascendancy of CA hardcore after punk: a bunch of young dudes with little life experience shooting off the big mouth.
Finally, I was pleased to be interviewing a fellow Texan (I’m from Houston). To close, what playlist would you put together for people who need exposure to our home state’s rich musical history?
Some important ones to know:
Buddy Holly “That’ll Be The Day” — obviously one of the greats in the history of rock ‘n roll, from the little town of Lubbock.
Blind Lemon Jefferson “Black Snake Moan” — one of the first commercially successful blues musicians and the greatest country blues musicians, he’s most closely associated with Dallas but lived all over Texas.
Bob Willis and His Texas Playboys “Cotton Eyed Joe” — when you think of traditional country music, you probably think of Bob Willis. But also Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, and Lefty Frizzell, in their respective niches of country, were respectable Texans who defined the genre.
Ornette Coleman “Congeniality” – one of the jazz greats who traveled all over the world but hailed from Ft. Worth. His The Shape of Jazz to Come is a must-own.
Willie Nelson “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” — Willie grew up that funny part of central-verging-on-west Texas that was heavy in Czech and German influence. I like to think it informed his view as an outsider in country music. This song in particular is one we all had to learn and sing at my kindergarten graduation ceremony.
Josh T. Pearson “Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ” — I knew the guys in Lift to Experience from going to shows and house parties in Denton while I was in college. They were amazing and under appreciated in the US at the time and that appears to still be the case with Pearson’s solo album some 10+ years later. It’s amazing.
Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” — Houston has an ever-fluctuating hip hop scene. The whole Fifth Ward lifestyle is so foreign to me, I didn’t realize what paranoid, crazy gold this song is until years later.
Erykah Badu “Tyrone” — A classic track from possibly the most innovative soul singer to come out of Texas. But she’s more than just a soul singer. She’s a rebel through and through — and that’s a bit of her Texas spirit, even though she might be an enigma to most native Texans.
Beyoncé “Crazy In Love” and Solange “Sandcastle Disco” — Yes, the Knowles girls are also from Houston. I don’t know that it influences their music anymore, but it’s hard to shake your Texas roots completely.
Tripping Daisy “Sonic Bloom” — This band was the precursor to the Polyphonic Spree. While the latter creeps me out, Tripping Daisy were the gateway drug into the north Texas and Oklahoma psych rock scene of the ‘90s that included the Flaming Lips, Mazinga Phaser, and Captain Audio (the precursor to the Secret Machines). Obviously a lot of what these guys did was related to the belated reverence the ‘90s started placing on the original TX psych rock band, the 13th Floor Elevators, but quite a bit was influenced by Texas Anglophilia for bands like Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine.
Janis Joplin “Me & Bobby McGee” — She might seem like a flower child owned by San Francisco but Joplin is from the shithole east Texas town of Port Authur, known for it’s oil rigs and nothing much else. It made her a tough girl.
Pantera “A New Level of Power” — one of the greatest heavy metal bands in the world came out of Arlington, home of the Six Flags theme park and the Texas Rangers baseball team. It’s not my thing, but it speaks volumes about how the boredom of growing up in a cement suburban wasteland can be parlayed into music.
Phil Ochs “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” and George Jones “She Thinks I Still Care” — Ochs’ history on its own is very interesting and tragic, but more so to me is how he marks the division between country and folk. In the ‘40s hillbilly music was a part of the folk genre, by classification. But after McCarthyism hit in the ‘50s, the music industry needed to separate hillbilly and cowboy songs so they didn’t seem red — and the term country was born. Ochs is markedly folk, in the sense that he became a protest singer who you could compare to Dylan. He came from the same time as George Jones, a well-known Texas country star who couldn’t be more different. In the ‘30s there was no separating Woody Guthrie’s identities as a folk singer and a hillbilly. It’s remarkable how far apart folk and country grew in just a decade and Ochs is the personification of that divide in Texas.
Kelly Clarkson “Since U Been Gone” — worth noting that the first winner of the cultural juggernaut American Idol is a Texan.
George Strait “All My Exes Live In Texas” — whether you like country or you don’t, you know George if you’re from Texas. He’s a state hero and one of the main faces of the neoclassical country music movement in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He’s a big part of the reason cowboys dress up in pearl button down shirts, nice felt hats and tight pants.
Miranda Lambert “Only Prettier” — Lambert is picking up the reigns where Loretta Lynn left off. She’s one of the roughest and most interesting country artists out today and, being from a small town in Texas herself, does a great job at capturing that feeling in her songs.
Courtney E. Smith made her name in the music industry as a programmer for MTV, working on shows like Subterranean and helping break bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Fall Out Boy, and Vampire Weekend. Given the ascendance of female industry insiders like music supervisors Alexandra Patsavas and Liza Richardson alongside the popularity of music geek memoirs from Rob Sheffield and Julie Klausner, I was interested that Smith wrote a book about her own music fandom, tying it to gender and professional experience. I wish I could endorse Record Collecting for Girls, but I can’t.
Cover to Record Collecting for Girls (Mariner, 2011); image courtesy of thehairpin.com
Prior to reading Record Collecting, I heard some rumblings that this book is all about boys. I originally dismissed such criticism as sexist. High Fidelity is really about girls. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded Smith using relationships as the lens through which she evaluates the significance music has in her life if it weren’t the only one. But it is pretty disconcerting that heterosexual romance seems to be the primary way she relates to music. It would have been nice if she had focused more on industrial concerns, specifically the collapse of distinctions between indie and mainstream. And for a book that Megan Jasper and Melissa Locker endorse for its girls’ night candor, Smith has little interest in exploring how music informs her relationships with women, much less platonic male friends.
Heteronormativity is a considerable blind spot in Record Collecting. Apart from her fixation on ex-boyfriends and a relative lack of consideration for the homosocial dimensions of female music fandom, she dismisses Smiths fans as potential romantic partners while failing to note the band’s sizable, intergenerational queer following. As the cult of Morrissey is also kept alive by pockets of Chicano youth, any real consideration for the racial dimensions of popular music would have also been welcome. Such concerns are unchallenged here, as are the cultural biases that go into Smith’s musical preferences. She admits to enjoying the Pussycat Dolls as a guilty pleasure, but doesn’t acknowledge that poptimism and related strands of music criticism explode such notions and genre biases in popular music. Smith is a rock fan, making minor allowances for hybrid artists M.I.A. and some pop acts. But much of the music she claims here, including all of the artists in her top five, is made by white rock musicians. This goes unchallenged, as does her own white female privilege.
Meanwhile, I wonder who's in Hailee Steinfeld's top five. I'll make you a mix, girl!; image courtesy of nylonmag.com
My biggest problem with Record Collecting is that I don’t know who this book is supposed to serve. What is its larger purpose? Is this book a feminist project? Is it a guide for young women? I also stumble over her definition of “girls”. Despite hailing them in the title, Smith doesn’t seem especially interested in actual girls. The closest she comes to discussing issues related to age is in the chapter where she considers if there could ever be another Madonna. She doesn’t offer any insight into the music industry adult women are passing down to girls. She mentions a dearth of all-female bands in this contemporary moment, but overlooks efforts like Girls Rock Camp entirely. This is truly a lost opportunity, as the most poignant moment in the book is when Smith recalls going to a music shop as a preteen because she was interested in playing the drums. The male sales clerk assumed she was looking for a clarinet.
Perhaps I’m asking too much of this book. Maybe Smith just wanted to write a zippy memoir and I should judge it as such. Sheffield’s Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is quite flip at times, but I wasn’t disappointed that it didn’t represent loftier societal and political goals. He wasn’t speaking on behalf of dudes, so why should I expect Smith to be an ambassador for women and girls? However, Sheffield tempers his witty, quotational style with moving passages about how his music fandom developed in relation to adolescence, his sisters, his late wife, and his dying grandfather. Smith probably doesn’t want her work compared to a memoir from an established male music journalist, and I wouldn’t blame her. Smith is a professional, and helped establish many of the artists Sheffield and his colleagues cover. I would love to read the book that examines this with greater depth. But unfortunately, Record Collecting could have been so much more than what I got off the page.
Cover to Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press, 2011); image courtesy of upress.umn.edu
Many have praised Out of the Vinyl Deeps, an anthology of former New Yorker pop critic Ellen Willis’ essays from the late 60s to the early 80s edited by her daughter Nona Willis Aronowitz. Julie Zeilinger sung its praises. Maura Johnston noted that Willis’ radical politics still hold relevance. Nitsuh Abebe and Sarah Jaffe opined who Willis would be listening to if we hadn’t lost her to lung cancer in 2006. NYU recently held a conference in her honor to coincide with the book’s release, and moderators Aronowitz and Devon Powers also spoke with GRITtv. Allow me to join the chorus. I loved this book. Reading it felt like a personal affirmation. I literally hugged it upon completion.
Vinyl Deeps is a necessary intervention. I’ve neglected Willis for some time. I read a reprinting of her essay “The Star, the Sound, and the Scene” in Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock and her forward to Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, compiled by Willis protégées Evelyn McDonnell, Ann Powers, and Barbara O’Dair, some years ago. Yet I took for granted her streamlined prose, vital ideas, and compromised historical significance. I rectified the situation by reading her work online after Amanda Petrusich gave her a shout out during a roundtable discussion about female music critics for NPR.
By the time I got around to knocking out In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, an oral history I’d borrowed and left unread by my bedside table for over a year, I knew enough about what Willis contributed to music criticism to recognize that treating her like a footnote was an injustice. Indeed, In Their Own Write spends chapters volleying opinion between critics about just how brilliant Griel Marcus, Robert Christgau, and Lester Bangs were and whether Bangs would like Radiohead (he wouldn’t, but I bet he’d love Monotonix). Willis is basically reduced to being one of Christgau’s ex-girlfriends who stopped writing about pop music before Ronald Reagan was comfortable enough in the White House to locate the big red button. No mention is made that she started a criticism program at NYU and abandoned music writing because she knew she couldn’t use the master’s tools to dismantle his house. If I lived through the New York Dolls’ implosion and Rolling Stones erecting massive stage shows sponsored by Jōvan Musk, I’d probably quit too. Inflatable penises are one thing. Brokering endorsement deals elicits no sympathy for the devil.
Mick stating the obvious; image courtesy of intlmusicsnobs.com
This is especially vexing because I think Willis would be an exceptional gateway into rock criticism for people who might be put off by the bloated prose of pretentious fanboys with Artistic Inclinations. Marcus and Christgau were singled out for trying to intellectualize the form, and Bangs’ gruffness was largely posturing. Willis, however, didn’t couch or embellish. Her formidable intellect meant she didn’t have to. As a feminist, she probably couldn’t. When you’re so often silenced, you learn how to state your case in ways that are succinct, clear, and indestructable to outside manipulation.
Reading for the revolution; image courtesy of newyorker.com
What I love most about Vinyl Deeps is Willis’ honesty. She brings in personal experience to inform her biases but doesn’t let it overshadow her work. I especially relate to her conceptualization of fandom. She loved Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, and because their work meant so much to her, she had to call them out on their misogynist tendencies. She empathized so deeply with Janis Joplin, who she believed to be a genius, that she proudly refused to straighten her hair. She felt Creedence Clearwater Revival’s music so deeply that she had to dance to their records in order to clarify her thoughts when drafting an essay. While I don’t personally understand how someone can listen to CCR’s plodding choogle and not be offended each time John Fogerty announces that he “hoid” it through the grapevine like he’s in blackface, I do believe that you have to experience music through the body to get it. If you get sweaty like Iggy Pop, so much the better. But I do have a similar need for corporeal abandon when listening to the John Spencer Blues Explosion, a band that endured the same charges of minstrelsy that I believe CCR deserved to have waged on them.
It’s also a treat to see her evolve opinions on Dylan, Reed, David Bowie, punk, race, and the British Invasion’s Big Three, as well as roll her eyes at Simon and Garfunkel’s pretensions and call out the Newport Folk Festival and Woodstock as shams. And while some may object to how much she writes about white dudes, it’s also quite refreshing that she wasn’t a chick writer relegated to covering dolly pop stars or obscured all-female rock bands. She does lionize Joplin. She also contends Joni Mitchell’s mystical old lady persona, argues that Patti Smith is playing into misogyny by assuming a rock god pose (an argument I’ve made and Ann Friedman insinuated), calls bullshit on Carly Simon’s class privilege while digging on “You’re So Vain,” and deconstructs Bette Midler’s stardom. She also champions long-forgotten bands like Eyes. Refreshingly, she doesn’t give female artists a pass by virtue of their sex. One of my favorite passages in Vinyl Deeps is in a write-up on the National Women’s Music Festival, where Willis admits that many of the acoustic acts’ tentative, sensitive music and performance styles made her want to crank up “Satisfaction.” Having seen Radical Harmonies, I certainly understand that inclination. I’d pipe in some Gravy Train!!!! or Nicki Minaj. I’d refuse a cutesy acoustic cover of Khia’s “My Neck, My Back.”
Though the title suggests recovering something antiquated and forgotten, Vinyl Deeps proves that Willis’ criticism is just as relevant as ever, both in the work it has influenced from others (myself included) and in it’s own write. In the forward, current New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones encourages readers to play these essays again and again. I’d recommend dancing with them too.
02
May
11
Bone Boatwright, Kitty Wells fan
Earlier tonight, I finished Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. This was probably not the best book to complete while viewing the second season of Twin Peaks for obvious reasons, but nonetheless I’m glad I read it. Far gladder than I am to be watching Twin Peaks, which I may abandon after Laura Palmer’s killer is revealed mid-season. Actually, I could devote an entire post to believing David Lynch’s work to be ”good in theory.” Why bother? Flow recently ran a great column about media studies and the neoliberal academy, which addresses concern about scholars privileging quality programs like The Wire over other shows. This is the same field that killed many trees for the aforementioned cult TV series.
But back to Allison’s novel. Most people know going in that the semi-autobiographical accounts of sexual assault and child abuse Glen Waddell inflicts in his stepdaughter Bone Boatwright are horrifying, and that the casual racism demonstrated by many of the protagonist’s family members in a pre-civil rights South Carolina is appalling. But if Allison didn’t have an ear for dialog and unsettling way with words, it wouldn’t be classic feminist literature alongside Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, Audre Lorde’s Sister/Outsider, Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back, and many other important works I recently saw discarded at a local used book store. Undergrads! Pack them when you move.
Kitty Wells; image courtesy of cmt.com
Also, I’d imagine we’ll one day be putting Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism on this list. Can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail. For now, I’ll direct you toward editor Jessica Yee’s response to mainstream feminism’s lack of commentary on it, as well as Elevate Difference’s book review.
One thing that surprised me about Bone is how deeply she identifies with female country singers. Having read Skeeter Davis’ memoir, Bus Fare to Kentucky, and witnessing the strength many southerners draw from Christianity, Bone’s love of gospel music made sense. But I was touched by how Bone finds her voice by listening and singing along to heroines like Patsy Cline and the immortal Kitty Wells. Bone identifies with Wells’ “Talk Back Trembling Lips” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” which steel her resolve and provide catharsis.
April was Sexual Assault Awareness month. However, these forms of violence devastate throughout the year. Thus, make sure to donate to the rape crisis centers that serve Cleveland, Texas or support organizations like Girls Educational and Mentoring Services or share information on other groups that need our help. Remember, it’s never too late to help women and girls reclaim their voices.
Cover to Black Girlhood Celebration (Peter Lang, 2008); image courtesy of news.illinois.edu
First, a belated moment of silence for Loleatta Holloway and TV on the Radio’s Gerard Smith. Now a moment of silence for Poly Styrene and Phoebe Snow. You will all be missed.
In other news, I wrote a review for Ruth Nicole Brown’s wonderful Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy for Scratched Vinyl. Check it out.
31
Jan
11
Put Just Kids on your bookshelf
So, I’ve been sick all weekend and it’s trickled into today. The cedar fever really is no joke in Austin. This has derailed me from a lot of things, among them practicing David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and making a coherent pass at a post of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (a three-star movie in need of elaboration). I’ll try again after I wave a white flag and get some drugs. Basically, I’ve been able to do three things. One is some light editing for my partner’s e-zine and an abstract a friend and I are pitching. The second is re-watch The L Word. I discovered that Dana is kind of an idiot and the sex scenes can run together in a dispiriting fashion, though my love for Alice Pieszecki endures. Finally, I completed Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids, which I started yesterday.
Just Kids cover (HarperCollins, 2010); image courtesy of statesman.com
Despite some initial reservations about Smith’s gender politics, I’ve warmed up to her music and was especially motivated to read Just Kids after she won the National Book Award for Memoir last November. I endorse it. As writing, Smith’s lovely prose recommends itself, as she honors her profound relationship to a man who grew up and grew into his talents with her in a New York wiped away by AIDS and gentrification.
I also feel I have a better understanding of Smith’s rejection of femaleness. Her stance against feminism always bristled against my convictions, and interpreted her reverence toward male cultural icons as misogynistic. As I elaborated upon these feelings in a previous post, my friend Curran challenged my position and noted that Smith’s fandom was largely reserved for queer and/or queerable men and that she herself might identify as trans. While Smith never states as much in Just Kids, she mentions her disgust toward the hyper-feminine beauty ideals she grew up around in the 50s and makes specific reference to having little regard for the female body as culturally proscribed.
What I may have previously believed to be categorical hatred might actually be personal disregard. While I reject the idea of femaleness or femininity as singular–indeed, it’s a discursive, contradictory interplay of a variety of identities–I think I have a deeper understanding of where and when she came from and how that informs her art. This regard for autonomy seems especially clear when Smith discusses her disavowal of the decadence surrounding in New York during the later half of the 1960s and into the 70s. She believed drugs and sexuality were sacred, and thus only engaged with them for sacred purposes. Unlike many of her generation, Smith didn’t believe in copping or hooking up as means to an end.
But what’s special about Just Kids is the love she shared with Mapplethorpe. Once her lover and always her friend, the story is actually about the evolution of friendship and the cosmic connections forged between a masculine woman and a homosexual man who existed within the binaries of male and female and black and white that they played with. As someone whose first boyfriend was her oldest friend before he came out, I could certainly relate to the trajectory of their relationship, though Smith and Mapplethorpe shared something far deeper and queerer than most intimacies I’ve experienced.
The book courses their chance meeting to their affair to the development of their twin language to their artistic collaborations and years of silences. He champions her poetry and music. She strains to understand his fascination with sadomasochism. He photographs Horses. She cradles his urn, as a dream she had of him turning into dust foretold. It might be one of the best love stories I’ve read in ages. A few weeks before Valentine’s Day, reserve Just Kids for the person who understands you past language and memory.
Cover to Marisa Meltzer's Girl Power (Faber & Faber, 2010); image courtesy of pastemagazine.com
Do kids still go to book fairs? I hope so. In grade school, I always anticipated them. It was at book fairs that I got some of my favorite titles, including Dyan Sheldon’s Tall, Thin, and Blonde, Sherryl Jordan’s Winter of Fire, and selections from Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series. Well, that and the odd Garfield digest because dammit if that lasagna-eating tabby didn’t garner my affection at an early age. But I’d also grab those biographies and user-friendly historical surveys about Beethoven or alternative rock. Hence why I bring up book fairs for a post on Marissa Meltzer’s Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music–it’s great for the sixth grader who’s just starting to pick up a guitar or headphones and wants some direction toward ladies who rocked when his/her parents were coming of age. If I could assign readings for my Girls Rock Camp music history workshops, I would. Perhaps I’ll tell them to consult their local library or give it a skim on Google Books. Not that I endorse Google as an intermediary.
However, I’m not sure Girl Power will do much for folks who were there or have a deeper understanding of women’s contributions to alternative rock, riot grrrl, Lilith Fair, and pop music in the 1990s. I anticipated how sentences would end before my eyes registered closing punctuation marks. Like, I was there when everyone bought Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. I’ve seen Courtney Love . . . evolve. I wore barrettes and black nail polish and made bedroom wallpaper fashioned from magazine images. I remember when girls pretended to be the Spice Girls at junior high talent shows. I didn’t know about riot grrrl in 1993, but after college and student radio, I think I could teach an undergrad course on it.
This isn’t to dismiss Meltzer’s efforts, as she succinctly outlines the players, the period, and the stakes with user-friendly, assured prose that evinces her success as a music journalist. However, I wasn’t surprised by any of her findings and was frustrated by how little there was for me to latch onto. I do commend Meltzer for attempting not to present the decade as a halcyon era whose promise hasn’t been fulfilled in subsequent generations of female musicians. However, I would have appreciated more context about why this decade is especially significant to the development of women in popular music beyond being the time in which Meltzer, some of her respondents, and her peers experienced and identified with music for the first time. At roughly 140 pages, there’s little room to explore these issues.
I certainly appreciate Meltzer’s acknowledgment that riot grrrl and alternative rock were largely the pursuits of white, middle-class musicians and that these subgenres are often privileged by third wave feminists, who reflect these racial and class identities. I empathize with her surreptitious attitude toward women’s music’s earnestness, its influence on the development of Lilith Fair, and the transphobic practices of some women’s music festivals. However, I don’t think she does a good job presenting counterexamples. Her chapter on girl groups focuses almost exclusively on the Spice Girls, without addressing the group’s racial make-up or discussing black female vocal groups like En Vogue, SWV, TLC, or Destiny’s Child. When she talks about solo artists, she inadvertently constructs a binary between commercially friendly confessional singer-songwriters like Fiona Apple or jailbait bubblegum starlets like Britney Spears. Hip hop reached its peak during the decade and several female emcees were responsible for its success, but folks like Salt-N-Pepa, Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott, Da Brat, Foxy Brown, Lady of Rage, and Sistah Souljah get at-best minimal attention. R&B artists like Adina Howard and Aaliyah confronted and challenged cultural assumptions of black female sexuality. Selena’s influence continues to grow. Here’s hoping subsequent editions of the book include them.
This book is a good start, but begs to be dialogued with books like Sara Marcus’ Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. I’d love to get feedback on what seventh grade musicians thinks about how these books represent their musical periods. Better yet, let’s hear how they might be honoring, improving upon, or dispensing with their legacies altogether. I have a hunch Meltzer and Marcus wanna know too.
16
Dec
10
In celebration of all Rat Girls
Cover to Rat Girl; image courtesy of examiner.com
Let me start this post by making it be about me, so that I can then make it be about somebody else. Last week, my writing kind of took a hit. I’m confident that my work is strong enough to take criticism. I’m also pretty lucky to have a supportive readership and not tangle too often with commenter vituperation the way so many other smart bloggers I know contend with on a regular basis. However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t annoyed by charges against indulgent rhetoric that’s love-drunk on GRE words. It’s not inaccurate, but it seems sexist to knock a woman for using big words or bridge tenuous connections, especially one who grew up reading the work of music critics like Ann Powers. But folks hate on Joanna Newsom for throwing around words like “etiolated” in a song. But have you rolled that word around in your mouth? It’s kind of awesome.
I don’t mean to compare my prose to Newsom’s verse. Likewise, I don’t mean to suggest I’m in the same room as Throwing Muses founder Kristin Hersh, who is a queen of challenging song form. I just get where they’re coming from. It’s clumsy work to stumble into an elegant sentence. It’s embarrassing to write your feelings down and pass them over to someone else. It’s also liberating when you surprise yourself and tap into something unexpected and true. And as beloved as Hersh’s band was in the early offing, boy did she get shit for bending words. Witness Robert Christgau’s dismissal of her work as bad poetry.
Her elliptical flourishes are all over Rat Girl, an adaptation of her diary from age 18. It was a big year for her. She became friends with super-fan Betty Hutton, who she met while taking college courses. Her band (which she co-founded with stepsister Tanya Donelly) got signed to British underground powerhouse 4AD, then the first American band to hold the distinction. She also battled with bipolar disorder. I dealt with depression at 18 basically by retreating further under the covers to block out all the light that could seep into my pitch-black bedroom. She gave up lithium after becoming pregnant, confronting audiences, video directors, and producers with her pregnant belly.
Rat Girl is kind of hard to pin down for a review and I’m having trouble finding fault with it. I recommend Marisa Meltzer’s Slate write-up, which I linked in a previous post. Anyone familiar with Hersh’s rudderless songs can imagine that linear storytelling is not her thing. Yet I think this memoir gets closest inside the protagonist’s head, expanding and contracting as her mind ambles past the thoughts in her head with the actions that transpire between 1985 and 1986. I realize that drafting a list to break down what I liked about an autobiography as elliptical as Rat Girl doesn’t honor its spirit, but here goes.
1. Hersh’s candor toward her internal feelings about mental illness is astounding. Especially when she talks about not being able to see people like Hutton because she doesn’t want to burden her with her problems. Her empathic writing recalls Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ariel. Yet I like that she’s always trying to shake off the black cloud hanging over her head or use it productively to her advantage. There’s claustrophobia, but she also acknowledges how time, setting, circumstance, and people allow a person’s perspective to shift and expand.
2. Since Hutton eventually calls Hersh out on going MIA after a particularly harrowing bout of depression, I’ll use this as a transition to say that I really like their kinship. They don’t seem to have much in common. Hutton often gives Hersh advice on stardom and glamour that her young charge doesn’t want to take, in part because she suspects such tips destroyed her mentor when she was a celebrity. Yet they get each other’s oddities on a fundamental level. 4AD co-founder Ivo Watts Russell connects with Hersh on a similar level. I appreciate that Hersh’s internal universe is conscious of this. Recognizing that some people really love you and are capable of staggering generosity is sometimes the one thing that lifts you out of your brain’s darkest depths.
3. Betty Hutton attending a Throwing Muses concert with gold hair and a priest as her plus one? Amen.
This woman would later go on to become one of the Throwing Muses' earliest fans; image courtesy of usatoday.com
3A. An early Throwing Muses show sounds epic. Their stage set-up included lights, projections, and a TV monitor blaring static with mannequin legs growing out from under it. If only I weren’t 2 in Houston and was 18 in Providence. I also wish I could have helped defend them against sexist, lazy sound guys but they held their own.
4. The Throwing Muses were a group of smart, considerate kids. When confronted with the news that Hersh is pregnant, they figure out how to play quietly so as not to disturb that baby and makes sure its mom gets plenty of rest. Disbanding is never an option because they’re committed to what they’re doing. I’m pretty sure most bands would have kicked Hersh out of the group she co-founded.
4A. Hersh loves how being pregnant makes her feel like a superhero. Likewise, her band mates are fascinated by it.
4B. It’s not commented upon, but my guitar instructor pointed out that they must have had tons of support from their parents. Gigging steadily and getting signed when you’re 18? Some older person cares, financially or otherwise.
4C. Hersh never really discusses her blended family with stepsister Donelly–only the one she formed with her, drummer Dave Narcizo, and bassist Leslie Langston. But I like the glimpses into their acquired sisterhood, like when New Englander Donelly corrects Atlantean transplant Hersh on the correct pronunciation of “thing” and tries to remove “ya’ll” from her vocabulary. Hersh’s defense of the offending second person plural term makes this Southern girl nod with approval.
5. I learned about the universal couch, which you can find in any venue. It’s something of a home for the band when they’re alone and a prison when they’re strapped to it by music journalists chasing the buzz while missing the point. Their line of questioning is often so wrong-headed and I love how Hersh and the Muses play around with them, especially when they make assumptions about Hersh’s feminist politics. I also love when Hersh says that she’s missing so much great, original music from the bands they’re touring with by being subjected to pointless interviews.
6. It’s never revealed who the father of her child is, nor does Hersh discuss what it was like to pick up the guitar at 14. They’re just facts. Hersh seems to have evolved past both of them. While I wanted to know more about how Hersh learned to master her instrument as someone almost a year into playing my Epiphone, I’m glad she bypassed the conventional narrative of a girl becoming self-actualized by her guitar. At 18, this was probably the farthest thing from her mind. Plus, rock journalists seem to be reminding her enough how exceptional it is to be a woman who plays electric guitar that she probably wanted to bury any recollection of the initial clumsiness that comes from developing the muscle memory to play scales, chords, and strumming patterns.
I'm not going to explain how I came to this instrument -- can't you tell what it means to me?; image courtesy of flickr.com
7. I love how she veers into tangents and mental in-roads about the nausea induced by the sight of greasy donuts or the thrill from swimming in violent, cold water or the exact color of a chord or the power of pausing to look at Christmas lights or how her band is like spinach or whatever else runs through her brain. Her (ugh) musings seem (ugh ugh) thrown together and edge toward hippie wisdom possibly inherited by her bohemian parents, except they’re often brave and profound. Again, the one thing I hope people take away from this book is what a great writer Hersh is. Some of the sentences she puts together absolutely floor me.
I know that Hersh’s book will be met with resistance. Some may think it’s just one structureless yarn from a talented white girl who’s making herself crazy. But I think her decision to write herself out of depression and soldier into her twenties with a band and a kid on her terms is pretty admirable. I believe the complicated ways in which she expresses and documents this exhilarating time is honest. I think she nails how time passes in life — that nothing seems to happen until everything transpires at once. For anyone who thinks they may relate to this great skein of an autobiography, I highly recommend it.
Kristin Hersh's Rat Girl (Penguin, 2010); image courtesy of citypaper.com
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am stoked about Throwing Muses’ leader Kristin Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl. I don’t have time at the moment to read it, but hope to get to it and review it around the holidays. Between it and my late grandmother’s correspondence from Belgium in the early 1970s, I anticipate a late autumn full of interesting recollections.
Rat Girl follows a smart impulse by detailing one monumental year in the singer-guitarist’s life. So often, memoirs have a compelling start but then slog their way toward the present, leaving whole stretches of time unexplored. At 18, Hersh was diagnosed as bipolar, became pregnant, and found critical success with the band she co-founded with stepsister Tanya Donelly. Geez, and I thought my 18th birthday signaled upheaval. Also, dig Gilbert Hernandez’s cover, which makes Kristen at Act Your Age wish Rat Girl were a graphic novel. If only.
I’m somewhat new to Throwing Muses, having only a peripheral awareness of them before this year. I’ve since gotten into them and their big hit “Not Too Soon” (a Donelly song) will always be with me since it’s the first song I learned to play on guitar.
But I’m struck by Hersh’s crackly alto, assured guitar playing, off-kilter dynamics. I’m especially struck by her abstract lyrics, which often deal with mental anguish, desire, and femininity in ways both disorienting and ingenuous. Between Throwing Muses and the Breeders (which Donelly formed with Kim Deal between her exit from Throwing Muses and founding of Belly), I see no reason why you’ll ever need the Pixies.
The brief summation of plot alone warrants attention. However, I’m especially interested in reading about unlikely Throwing Muses fan Betty Hutton, a former singer and musical film star from the 40s and 50s. Hersh elaborates on it in a recent interview for NPR’s All Things Considered. For those unfamiliar, Betty Hutton is probably best known through Björk, who introduced me and many others to Hutton through “It’s Oh So Quiet,” which was a renamed cover of Hutton’s “Blow a Fuse.” I profess only a perfunctory understanding of Hutton, but can’t wait to learn more about her and the affinity she shared with Ms. Hersh.
