Thursday, December 06, 2007
Panic! at the Aviary
If you happen to have given up following all the new bands with names involving wolves, snakes and kids and decided to just focus on birds, then I've written the story for you. It's nice to see somebody forging new avian territory; doves, quails, owls and swans are all well spoken for.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
My Big Muff can beat up your Big Muff
Squinting in the glare of this week's music spotlight: the most powerful aural time warp since that day you heard "Please Don't Go Girl" in the express check-out line at Costco. Or at least Mil Mascaras. It's like returning to the mid-80s via time machine, only without all of that perestroika/Maggie Thatcher/rioting-at-North-London-Polytechnic unpleasantness.
Pants: Let's play a game called, What Year Was This Recorded?
Me: I like this game. It sounds, obviously, like 1984. Or, to give myself a margin for error, 1983-1987. It sounds a lot like the Jesus & Mary Chain to me. BUT! But. I am thinking there is a trick involved here, and that it was in fact recorded recently. I hope that's true. Am I right?
Pants: It's by A Place to Bury Strangers and it came out in 2007. Their MySpace page has the song that Radio K has been playing a lot lately, "To Fix the Gash in Your Head," and other songs. I like them because I like JAMC. The lead guy in that band makes his own guitar pedals.
Pants: Let's play a game called, What Year Was This Recorded?
Me: I like this game. It sounds, obviously, like 1984. Or, to give myself a margin for error, 1983-1987. It sounds a lot like the Jesus & Mary Chain to me. BUT! But. I am thinking there is a trick involved here, and that it was in fact recorded recently. I hope that's true. Am I right?
Pants: It's by A Place to Bury Strangers and it came out in 2007. Their MySpace page has the song that Radio K has been playing a lot lately, "To Fix the Gash in Your Head," and other songs. I like them because I like JAMC. The lead guy in that band makes his own guitar pedals.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Camera Lucida
My dear old pen pal and ace photographer Megan Holmes has a photo blog.
She is doing especially lovely work in color now. I like this snapshot of a YACHT/Thermals show in Portland best (click here for a closer view!) because it looks like a high school field trip. The posh girl in the front row has mistaken field trip day for class picture day, but has decided not to be embarrassed about it, because she really, really likes YACHT. Or is holding hands with the girl next to her. The girl with the red hair is trying to figure out how she is going to finish her science project and read all of The Scarlet Letter over the weekend. The boy with the thumb in his pocket, at this precise moment in time, has decided he wants to be in a band. The boy in the Gumbi shirt is trying to create a force field between his palms, and the kid raising his hand in the back just wants to know if it's time for lunch yet.
Megan has also been known to do miraculous things with portraits of Beth Ditto. Keep an eye out.
She is doing especially lovely work in color now. I like this snapshot of a YACHT/Thermals show in Portland best (click here for a closer view!) because it looks like a high school field trip. The posh girl in the front row has mistaken field trip day for class picture day, but has decided not to be embarrassed about it, because she really, really likes YACHT. Or is holding hands with the girl next to her. The girl with the red hair is trying to figure out how she is going to finish her science project and read all of The Scarlet Letter over the weekend. The boy with the thumb in his pocket, at this precise moment in time, has decided he wants to be in a band. The boy in the Gumbi shirt is trying to create a force field between his palms, and the kid raising his hand in the back just wants to know if it's time for lunch yet.
Megan has also been known to do miraculous things with portraits of Beth Ditto. Keep an eye out.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Sacred and Profane
Do you believe in his sweet sensation?
Do you believe in a second chance?
Do you believe in rapture, babe?
This juxtaposition flashed into my mind during Thomas Sokolowski's Andy Warhol: Camouflage Man lecture the other day. Sokolowski is director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and when he put up the still from the Warhol film it was like seeing Bernini's St. Theresa peeking out from behind Bookwalter's eyes.
For religious man, his life was sanctified because it corresponded to paradigms established by the gods in the time of origins. Eliade suggests that in the very distant past, absolutely every aspect of life, even the most basic bodily function, had a religious significance. He sees this reflected in the case of an Australian people called the Karadjeri, whose mythology provided them with a paradigm on the position to take up for urinating.
Do you believe in a second chance?
Do you believe in rapture, babe?
This juxtaposition flashed into my mind during Thomas Sokolowski's Andy Warhol: Camouflage Man lecture the other day. Sokolowski is director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and when he put up the still from the Warhol film it was like seeing Bernini's St. Theresa peeking out from behind Bookwalter's eyes.
For religious man, his life was sanctified because it corresponded to paradigms established by the gods in the time of origins. Eliade suggests that in the very distant past, absolutely every aspect of life, even the most basic bodily function, had a religious significance. He sees this reflected in the case of an Australian people called the Karadjeri, whose mythology provided them with a paradigm on the position to take up for urinating.
Clearly, this immersion of life in sacred values is total contrast with the experience of non-religious man, whose life has become desacralised.
As well as acquiring religious value from divine paradigms, particular aspects of the life of religious man could also take on a sacramental value. Thus in Indian tantrism, sexual union became a religious ritual.
-"Understanding the Sacred"Saturday, November 24, 2007
Critical mass
Leave it to Todd Haynes to get America to admit that drag is hot.
Slate
Cate Blanchett is Bob Dylan: Could there be a sexier above-the-title tagline?...Before, I thought of Cate Blanchett as a beautiful and gifted actress. After this crush-inducing performance, I'm seriously considering flying to Australia to stalk her.
Salon
And, mightiest of all, is Cate Blanchett's Jude Quinn, a quivering, neurotic, sexually alluring elfin presence, a changeling, a bundle of receptors half-open to the world and half-guarded from it...Her way of walking is a jittery amble; onstage, her movements have the precision, the meticulous grace, of a Balinese shadow puppet.
Rolling Stone
She burns through Haynes' head-trip odyssey like an illuminating torch. Blanchett's soon-to-be-legendary performance is not a stunt, it's some kind of miracle. Playing the skinny, androgynous Dylan in his electric years — when his hair stood on end to match his fried nerves — Blanchett extends the possibilities of acting. You won't see a better example of interpretive art this year by man or woman.
PopMatters
And then Cate Blanchett arrives. To call her work here magnificent is too undeserving an understatement. She is regal, almost unrecognizable...Blanchett is so callous and cool we can feel the vibe resonating off the screen.
And that's just a rivulet of the tidal wave of praise she's getting.
When was the last time America was this in love with an actress in drag? Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry does not count; that was a P.C. head-pat and a whispered, "How brave!" This is different. This is a sweaty, lustful, heart-doodling critical swoon. Jude Quinn has been declared hot. And that's remarkable, given both the seriousness of the gender bluff involved (Madonna in a vest he is not) and Jude's distance from conventional, pretty boy-girliness.
Women impersonating men on film are usually seen as more unsettling than crush-worthy because they point back to their real-life counterparts, who show us that male privilege isn't non-negotiable and that our gendered division of power is unstable. But Haynes has made his medicine so sweet and so tasty we never realize it's actually a big spoonful of queer theory. "I'm the only one with any balls," Jude says, and we never doubt him for a second, even with Haynes winking at us through the subtext. We just rush to join the fan club.
The Philly City Paper got it right when it said that "Jude's defense of the politics of personal transformation echoes Haynes' own journey from ACT UP activist to engaged auteur, one who realizes that queering the canon can be as powerful as shouting slogans." Haynes is queering the Dylan canon; he's just doing it with such a light touch that nobody else has said it in so many words yet. It seems to me he's also suggested what Jonathan Weinberg said about Duane Michals back in 1996:
Things are queer, not only because the world cannot be known, and all representations are fallible, but because of the transforming process of art itself. In Michals's beautiful photographs, queerness becomes an ideal; the circularity of the series suggests that the image is inexhaustible and unknowable. But in the end, art's pleasures, its humor and mystery, do help us know the world in all its queerness.
As in Michals's photo series, so in I'm Not There. All representations are fallible--so why not pile them on? Why not six Dylans instead of one? You can't exhaust or understand the man, so why not choose a film style (collage) that exaggerates his circularity, his multiplicity and his unknowability, rather than disguises them?
I was really more after the strangeness of what he had become as a man at that moment. How he was androgynous, but not in the way David Bowie would be androgynous a few years later, in the early '70s. It was almost more the way Patti Smith was androgynous. He was just this otherworldly creature. This otherness had crept into him completely by that point... On a purely superficial level, I just wanted a woman's body to occupy that place, so that this strangeness could come back.
-Haynes, Salon interview
Slate
Cate Blanchett is Bob Dylan: Could there be a sexier above-the-title tagline?...Before, I thought of Cate Blanchett as a beautiful and gifted actress. After this crush-inducing performance, I'm seriously considering flying to Australia to stalk her.
Salon
And, mightiest of all, is Cate Blanchett's Jude Quinn, a quivering, neurotic, sexually alluring elfin presence, a changeling, a bundle of receptors half-open to the world and half-guarded from it...Her way of walking is a jittery amble; onstage, her movements have the precision, the meticulous grace, of a Balinese shadow puppet.
Rolling Stone
She burns through Haynes' head-trip odyssey like an illuminating torch. Blanchett's soon-to-be-legendary performance is not a stunt, it's some kind of miracle. Playing the skinny, androgynous Dylan in his electric years — when his hair stood on end to match his fried nerves — Blanchett extends the possibilities of acting. You won't see a better example of interpretive art this year by man or woman.
PopMatters
And then Cate Blanchett arrives. To call her work here magnificent is too undeserving an understatement. She is regal, almost unrecognizable...Blanchett is so callous and cool we can feel the vibe resonating off the screen.
And that's just a rivulet of the tidal wave of praise she's getting.
When was the last time America was this in love with an actress in drag? Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry does not count; that was a P.C. head-pat and a whispered, "How brave!" This is different. This is a sweaty, lustful, heart-doodling critical swoon. Jude Quinn has been declared hot. And that's remarkable, given both the seriousness of the gender bluff involved (Madonna in a vest he is not) and Jude's distance from conventional, pretty boy-girliness.
Women impersonating men on film are usually seen as more unsettling than crush-worthy because they point back to their real-life counterparts, who show us that male privilege isn't non-negotiable and that our gendered division of power is unstable. But Haynes has made his medicine so sweet and so tasty we never realize it's actually a big spoonful of queer theory. "I'm the only one with any balls," Jude says, and we never doubt him for a second, even with Haynes winking at us through the subtext. We just rush to join the fan club.
The Philly City Paper got it right when it said that "Jude's defense of the politics of personal transformation echoes Haynes' own journey from ACT UP activist to engaged auteur, one who realizes that queering the canon can be as powerful as shouting slogans." Haynes is queering the Dylan canon; he's just doing it with such a light touch that nobody else has said it in so many words yet. It seems to me he's also suggested what Jonathan Weinberg said about Duane Michals back in 1996:
Things are queer, not only because the world cannot be known, and all representations are fallible, but because of the transforming process of art itself. In Michals's beautiful photographs, queerness becomes an ideal; the circularity of the series suggests that the image is inexhaustible and unknowable. But in the end, art's pleasures, its humor and mystery, do help us know the world in all its queerness.
As in Michals's photo series, so in I'm Not There. All representations are fallible--so why not pile them on? Why not six Dylans instead of one? You can't exhaust or understand the man, so why not choose a film style (collage) that exaggerates his circularity, his multiplicity and his unknowability, rather than disguises them?
I was really more after the strangeness of what he had become as a man at that moment. How he was androgynous, but not in the way David Bowie would be androgynous a few years later, in the early '70s. It was almost more the way Patti Smith was androgynous. He was just this otherworldly creature. This otherness had crept into him completely by that point... On a purely superficial level, I just wanted a woman's body to occupy that place, so that this strangeness could come back.
-Haynes, Salon interview
Friday, November 23, 2007
Gobble gobble
Thanksgiving! A time of rest and reflection. Of rosemary trees and cinnamon brooms. Of being condescendingly quizzed by your relatives on sports current events they are well aware you have no interest in, or knowledge about. I have been trying to come up with the reverse equivalent of this, and I've decided it would be if I were to go around saying, "Wow, Uncle Budward, you sure must be excited about the My Bloody Valentine reunion! And how about that farewell ESG show?!" Or even better, "Gee whiz, Uncie Kegger, I'll bet you've been up all night contemplating Butler's notion of performativity as it applies to the problematics of third wave feminist individualism!" After being told my tofurkey looked like a giant burnt potato and ordered to explain what I plan to be doing with my life in ten years, I felt an urge to slip away and quietly reassert my identity, perhaps by bathing, Scrooge McDuck-style, in a swimming pool filled with gay porn and Au Pairs records.
In lieu of said pool, I recommend the following:
In lieu of said pool, I recommend the following:
Monday, November 19, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Hiatus'd
Photo by Kathryn Yu
Electrelane announced their break-up/indefinite breather today. It makes sense in a sad, unfortunate way. No Shouts, No Calls was their The Woods, and their Aeroplane Over the Sea and their Loveless: a giddy but taxing career high; creative breakthrough and subsequent exhaustion; a point of no return. Where do you go after "In Berlin"? "Between the Wolf and the Dog?" "Five?" By way of memorial, explore this trove of live tracks from 2004...their cover of "More Than This" is heart-stopping. Rippling piano scales, massive Mia Clarke guitar, hushed vocal breakdown--Roxy Music Electrelanized. Covers should all be so lucky. And so should we.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Siren Nation
Even with an 250 extra words, there were a few things I couldn't squeeze into my Siren Nation story. First: a disclaimer that it's unrelated to the Village Voice's Siren Music Festival. No weird cross-continental collabo happening there. Second: a ton of sadly unused quotes that I feel deserve some kind of visibility, especially since I had such rich conversations with the people involved. So here's a small sample. If you happen to be in PDX this weekend and can spare the money, consider getting a pass, it should be a rad event.
Natalia Kay:
"I remember seeing Bikini Kill and Team Dresch when I was in college. I had never, ever, ever been to a punk rock show that was an all-girl band. And I had never seen an audience that was 95% punk rock girls. That was totally inspiring and empowering to me, to feel like I owned the space. I think that the reason why women's music festivals do really well is because the art that women are putting out there really speaks to a lot of women, and some men, who don't see that perspective being reflected—their own experiences being reflected—on stage, and being sung about by somebody and in any other way expressed artistically."
December Carson:
"It allows us to give back to the people of Portland, and to offer an opportunity for people to have active participation in the festival. We want it to be more two-way, to have the community be gaining more than just entertainment. I want it to be more than an entertaining festival. I want people to feel how culturally rich Portland is, and to walk away with that sense of, wow, there are these women who can do unbelievable things, whether it's directing a film, or fronting a band, or being a visual artist. So this will always be a component for us: to showcase the multiple talents these women have."
"I am a woman working in the music business, and I know from personal experience that women are not treated the same. And you can tell me that this battle is unnecessary, but I know, personally, that this battle is necessary."
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Season of the witch
HAPPY POGO HALLOWEEN!
WCBN's fabulous postpunk and new wave show, "Some Faraway Beach," did a Halloween theme on Sunday. There was no "Bela Lugosi's Dead" or "Death Disco," which was a shame (used in previous years, maybe?), but This Mortail Coil was inspired. Serene, quietly disturbing, a huge relief after the Misfits/Motörhead/DKs bludgeoning--total highlight of the set.
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, "My Wife and My Dead wife"
Virgin Prunes, "Lovelornalimbo"
Milkshake Melon, "What Did You Do with the Body?
Mx-80 Sound, Theme from Halloween
B-52s, "Devil in my Car"
Siouxsie and the Banshees, "The Killing Jar"
Front 242, "Tragedy for You"
Bigod 40, "The Bog"
The Misfits, "Halloween"
Motörhead, "Go to Hell"
Dead Kennedys, "Halloween"
This Mortal Coil, "Tarantula"
Ramones, "Pet Sematary"
WCBN's fabulous postpunk and new wave show, "Some Faraway Beach," did a Halloween theme on Sunday. There was no "Bela Lugosi's Dead" or "Death Disco," which was a shame (used in previous years, maybe?), but This Mortail Coil was inspired. Serene, quietly disturbing, a huge relief after the Misfits/Motörhead/DKs bludgeoning--total highlight of the set.
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, "My Wife and My Dead wife"
Virgin Prunes, "Lovelornalimbo"
Milkshake Melon, "What Did You Do with the Body?
Mx-80 Sound, Theme from Halloween
B-52s, "Devil in my Car"
Siouxsie and the Banshees, "The Killing Jar"
Front 242, "Tragedy for You"
Bigod 40, "The Bog"
The Misfits, "Halloween"
Motörhead, "Go to Hell"
Dead Kennedys, "Halloween"
This Mortal Coil, "Tarantula"
Ramones, "Pet Sematary"
Monday, October 29, 2007
Allegories of contamination
Not to put too fine a point on the devolution of this blog into a kind of Fag Hag's Digest, but:
1. Somebody could teach a really killer comp lit class on unsolved queer murder mysteries in Western history. It's a little on the fluffy side, for sure, but you could tether it to, say, Discipline and Punish in order to work the civic retribution and surveillance angles and call it "Unresolvable Deviance: Murder, Conspiracy and Queer Martyrology from Edward II to Pasolini." Spend at least a couple of days each on Christopher Marlowe, Tchaikovsky and Roger Casement. The syllabus writes itself!
2. Black White + Gray came out week before last. Patti Smith is a mensch, and you could zest a lemon on Robert Mapplethorpe's cheekbones.
1. Somebody could teach a really killer comp lit class on unsolved queer murder mysteries in Western history. It's a little on the fluffy side, for sure, but you could tether it to, say, Discipline and Punish in order to work the civic retribution and surveillance angles and call it "Unresolvable Deviance: Murder, Conspiracy and Queer Martyrology from Edward II to Pasolini." Spend at least a couple of days each on Christopher Marlowe, Tchaikovsky and Roger Casement. The syllabus writes itself!
2. Black White + Gray came out week before last. Patti Smith is a mensch, and you could zest a lemon on Robert Mapplethorpe's cheekbones.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Currying Canal Street
The greatest headline ever written?
MANCHESTER CURRY HOUSE HOSTS QUEER BED AND CHICKEN TIKKA CAKE ART
An art installation made out of a bed is now at a Manchester curry house, but it’s not by Tracey Emin.
Customers visiting Sangam Restaurant will wait to be seated on a ‘pink’ bed covered with incense and Urdu poetry, inspired by the artist's conversations with South Asian women who are lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.
It’s part of a project entitled Mixing it Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street, in which arts collective Sphere are combining aspects of Mancunian identity with places they are not normally associated with. The bed at Sangam (until October 12 2007) challenges the stereotypical view of Canal Street as white, male, and gay, and ‘Curry Mile’ as Asian and heterosexual... (Read more)
MANCHESTER CURRY HOUSE HOSTS QUEER BED AND CHICKEN TIKKA CAKE ART
An art installation made out of a bed is now at a Manchester curry house, but it’s not by Tracey Emin.
Customers visiting Sangam Restaurant will wait to be seated on a ‘pink’ bed covered with incense and Urdu poetry, inspired by the artist's conversations with South Asian women who are lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.
It’s part of a project entitled Mixing it Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street, in which arts collective Sphere are combining aspects of Mancunian identity with places they are not normally associated with. The bed at Sangam (until October 12 2007) challenges the stereotypical view of Canal Street as white, male, and gay, and ‘Curry Mile’ as Asian and heterosexual... (Read more)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
She should be so lucky
Since when does Kylie have the world's coolest backing band? It's like an all-star glam revival team recruited from Hedwig, Velvet Goldmine, Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La" video and Roxy Music c. 1972 as recreated by David LaChapelle. It's swell she can make a comeback and flop backwards over pianos and look just like Nicole Kidman and everything, but can we have some more of the band, please?
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Retail oddity
For shame, Target! If you're going to encourage the youth of America to emulate David Bowie, mustn't you hawk wigs and frocks and codpieces and no-budge Crimson Obsession liquid eyeliner alongside fedoras and skinny ties? (For the record, P-Fork said it first). Or at least include a helpful male cosmetics sidebar sponsored by L'Oreal? The narcissism and commercialism are well aligned, certainly, but there's more to the man than the trench coat from The Man Who Fell to Earth and the hoodie from the cover of Low (itself a still from TMWFtE). And when did Bowie wear a parka vest? Show me Bowie wearing a parka vest and I'll show you Lawrence Welk in a dashiki.
What we're dealing with here isn't so much Keanan Duffty inspired by David Bowie as it is Keanan Duffty ripping off the bits of Hedi Slimane that were emulating pretty London hustlers who were inspired by David Bowie. Although speaking of, it was brave of Target to have its web site stream Jean Genie, a song that is clearly about a hustler/Jean Genet/something more than the corporate heterosexuality tacitly endorsed by the ghosts of Target lines' past.
What we're dealing with here isn't so much Keanan Duffty inspired by David Bowie as it is Keanan Duffty ripping off the bits of Hedi Slimane that were emulating pretty London hustlers who were inspired by David Bowie. Although speaking of, it was brave of Target to have its web site stream Jean Genie, a song that is clearly about a hustler/Jean Genet/something more than the corporate heterosexuality tacitly endorsed by the ghosts of Target lines' past.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Lytton Strachey as rutabaga
I'll be in Minneapolis for the next four days. If you've got a hot tip on a Twin Cities art show/music festival/new vegetable puppet opera based on the life of Dora Carrington, let me know. Sanden Totten, I'm looking at you.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
A thousand words
This Towers of London album cover looks familiar somehow. The monochrome, the alley backdrop, the pink script, the scrappy boy-punk fraternity carefully posed to confront the world--it's almost like they're...referencing something through their iconography! Trying to mark themselves as inheritors of some kind of authentic legacy!
Right, then.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Das schlaue Füchslein
Radar: Your old guitarist, Cure frontman Robert Smith, is set to do a duet with Ashlee Simpson. Do you think he should be killed for treason?
Siouxsie Sioux: Who is Ashlee Simpson?
Radar: I love that you said that!
Siouxsie Sioux: No, really, who is he?
Black Magic Woman, cont.
Siouxsie Sioux: Who is Ashlee Simpson?
Radar: I love that you said that!
Siouxsie Sioux: No, really, who is he?
Black Magic Woman, cont.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Stealing Pink Flag is not the answer
Yesterday evening, somebody or a gang of somebodies broke into Jon and Mark's new house. Said somebodies shattered a window, came in through a back room and helped themselves to Mark's computer, a stereo, $10 worth of change and Jon's enormous CD collection, artists N - S. Thus, Music to Climb the Apple Tree By was spared, and Myrmidons of Melodrama was not. Some Wire disappeared as well, but only because it was in a stack on top of Jon's shelves, not because it was specially selected by the thieves. Before Jon told me this, I imagined a band of disenfranchised Wire fans roaming south Minneapolis, breaking into people's homes and seizing Situationist recordings in order to redistribute them to the populace. If they'd been doing that, they would probably have remembered to steal Entertainment! as well.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Blame it on the ocarina
Because really, people just don't get down on the psalmodikon, schreierpfeife and MIDI-pedalboard the way they used to:
Lauren Pelon: Women in Music, Someone Will Remember Us
4:00 - 5:30 PM, September 24, 2007
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Michigan League
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI
Lauren Pelon traces the story of women in music and performs music from around the world. The concert celebrates music written by, or for, women. Crossing the boundaries of time, distance and culture, Pelon sings and plays approximately 25 ancient and modern instruments, some designed for women and some forbidden to them.
This event is co-sponsored by Center for the Education of Women, School of Music Theatre & Dance.
Lauren Pelon: Women in Music, Someone Will Remember Us
4:00 - 5:30 PM, September 24, 2007
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Michigan League
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI
Lauren Pelon traces the story of women in music and performs music from around the world. The concert celebrates music written by, or for, women. Crossing the boundaries of time, distance and culture, Pelon sings and plays approximately 25 ancient and modern instruments, some designed for women and some forbidden to them.
This event is co-sponsored by Center for the Education of Women, School of Music Theatre & Dance.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Where precisely
Matos wrote in asking for some clarification of my last post:
Darbyshire [sic], Pauline Oliveros (who ran the Mills College dept of electronic music), Laurie Anderson, Bebe Barron, Clara Rockmore, Roberta Beyer, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Spiegel . . . wait, where precisely are women being written out of old-school electronic music history again?
I guess my concern isn't for "electronic music history," which inevitably includes all the big names he mentioned, but for the broader stories of women's involvement in music that are in told in popular press, film and television. Here I'm thinking especially of those media that are targeted towards little girls. These stories tend to focus on women as solo vocalists prior to about 1975 to the point of leaving out many important bands, to say nothing of drummers, producers, engineers, etc. Technicians are usually tremendously upstaged. So as a girl growing up in the U.S. today, you learn about women musicians, but only up to a point. You eventually deduce from mainstream sources (and the lack thereof) that women's participation was conditional, and absorb tacit assumptions such as "there weren't any women drummers before the 1980s, there weren't any female record producers in the early days, there were no all-girl garage rock bands," etc. Clearly, if you are a music critic or historian you are going to know these things aren't true. But if you're a 12 year-old and your only exposure to music history is, say, MTV and VH1, you're never going to hear about Delia Derbyshire and Pauline Oliveros and the Luv'd Ones and Mo Tucker and all the women who one way or another did musical things before mainstream history says it was culturally and realistically "possible" for them (you'll hear about the Velvet Underground, sure, but what major Velvets documentary has ever devoted serious time to Tucker?) Hopefully, if you're a precocious and resourceful 12 year-old you're going to get on the internet and find out about these people, but even then you're going to have to know what you're looking for and the digging is going to be hard and slow-going.
Any more thoughts, Matos et al.? Keep the dialogue going!
Darbyshire [sic], Pauline Oliveros (who ran the Mills College dept of electronic music), Laurie Anderson, Bebe Barron, Clara Rockmore, Roberta Beyer, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Spiegel . . . wait, where precisely are women being written out of old-school electronic music history again?
I guess my concern isn't for "electronic music history," which inevitably includes all the big names he mentioned, but for the broader stories of women's involvement in music that are in told in popular press, film and television. Here I'm thinking especially of those media that are targeted towards little girls. These stories tend to focus on women as solo vocalists prior to about 1975 to the point of leaving out many important bands, to say nothing of drummers, producers, engineers, etc. Technicians are usually tremendously upstaged. So as a girl growing up in the U.S. today, you learn about women musicians, but only up to a point. You eventually deduce from mainstream sources (and the lack thereof) that women's participation was conditional, and absorb tacit assumptions such as "there weren't any women drummers before the 1980s, there weren't any female record producers in the early days, there were no all-girl garage rock bands," etc. Clearly, if you are a music critic or historian you are going to know these things aren't true. But if you're a 12 year-old and your only exposure to music history is, say, MTV and VH1, you're never going to hear about Delia Derbyshire and Pauline Oliveros and the Luv'd Ones and Mo Tucker and all the women who one way or another did musical things before mainstream history says it was culturally and realistically "possible" for them (you'll hear about the Velvet Underground, sure, but what major Velvets documentary has ever devoted serious time to Tucker?) Hopefully, if you're a precocious and resourceful 12 year-old you're going to get on the internet and find out about these people, but even then you're going to have to know what you're looking for and the digging is going to be hard and slow-going.
Any more thoughts, Matos et al.? Keep the dialogue going!
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Genderphonics
The best thing in this month's issue of The Wire (the one with PJ Harvey on the cover) is Simon Reynolds' review of White Noise's Electric Storm, first released in 1969 and currently undergoing a reissue by Island/Universal. As interesting as the words are, it's an accompanying picture that clinches it: a small black-and-white photo of White Noiser Delia Derbyshire, bent over an array of reel-to-reel tape consoles.
It's an arresting image, not least because it seems like it shouldn't exist. We're not used to seeing photographic proof of women's involvement with audio engineering in the early 1960s; it wasn't supposed to have happened. Replace the console under Derbyshire's fingers with a typewriter and the photo slides into a historical context we can recognize. But as it stands, the image of a woman hard at work in a recording studio, her hair and clothes dating her as unmistakably 60s, inspires a kind of revolutionary disbelief. This isn't an ironic feminist collage, the kind that inserts grinning housewives into the cockpits of space shuttles. It's what actually happened. Women were involved in early electronic music; they did stand at consoles and splice tape and twiddle knobs, even in the presumed-to-be-all-male corridors of the 1960s BBC. That there was only a minority of them doesn't erase their existence. It's a shame our narratives of women's musical history don't accommodate them.
They certainly don't accommodate Delia Derbyshire, whose name survives primarily as the arranger and co-producer of the original theme to Dr. Who, which stands as one of the most icily beautiful pieces of pop ever used in the service of science fiction television. This was still the era when a record company could refuse to hire a woman by citing a men-only policy (Decca turned down Derbyshire in 1959), but the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was more enlightened and took on five women for its eighteen-member staff. Derbyshire worked there until 1973.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
When more is not enough
One thing people seem to be missing in the Britney VMAs fiasco is the built-in voyeuristic critique of "Gimme More." In the context of the song, it isn't Brit-Brit who wants more; it's us. "Gimme More" starts out as a straightforward club brag/sex invite not too different from the thousands of others that have supplied pop music with lyrical material for the last 60+ years. But then the story turns, and suddenly we're veering away from the territory of R. Kelly's "More and More" towards something closer in mood and critical intent to the Flying Lizards' "Hands 2 Take"***:
Cameras are flashing my way, dirty dancing
They keep watching (They keep watching)
Keep watching
Feels like the crowd is saying,
"Gimme gimme more, Gimme more, Gimme gimme more"(x4)
If it all feels repetitive and unforgiving, that's because the watchers are, too. We (and let's face it, we're all implicated) relentlessly demand more from Britney: more disaster, more trauma, more Bad Girl Mama baby-dropping and limo-exiting crotch flashes. We keep her in the sights of a Panoptical surveillance system so insatiable and vigilant it would make Foucault squirm.
At the VMAs, the premise of "Gimme More" was literalized to the point of absurdity, with the watchers at home and in the Las Vegas audience demanding more even as Britney served it up. By the time she was sleep-syncing, "I just can't control myself/They want more?/ Well, I'll give 'em more!" the entire spectacle threatened to collapse under the weight of its own self-referentiality. And in the end, it did collapse, because Britney didn't deliver on her promise. After previous years of python-handling and Madonna-kissing, the 2007 VMAs' spangly knickers, bleached weave and wobbly phoned-in stripper poses just weren't enough "more" by comparison. They were a whole lot less.
In a weird way, though, Britney did give us what we all wanted anyway: more failure. Nothing's as fun as kicking a diva when she's down, and Brit's been tremendously reliable in giving us glorious, inscrutable failures to consume and shake our heads at. For the time being, failure is her greatest strategy for success. Her real downfall won't come until the screw-ups cease to entertain, and the demands for more gradually fade into a silence that asks for nothing at all.
***"Hands 2 Take"
So you're, you're screaming,
you're screaming out for more
You got hands to take
Hey, what are you waiting for?
Anything you want
In the land of toll-free
At least in self abuse
There's a little dignity
Cameras are flashing my way, dirty dancing
They keep watching (They keep watching)
Keep watching
Feels like the crowd is saying,
"Gimme gimme more, Gimme more, Gimme gimme more"(x4)
If it all feels repetitive and unforgiving, that's because the watchers are, too. We (and let's face it, we're all implicated) relentlessly demand more from Britney: more disaster, more trauma, more Bad Girl Mama baby-dropping and limo-exiting crotch flashes. We keep her in the sights of a Panoptical surveillance system so insatiable and vigilant it would make Foucault squirm.
At the VMAs, the premise of "Gimme More" was literalized to the point of absurdity, with the watchers at home and in the Las Vegas audience demanding more even as Britney served it up. By the time she was sleep-syncing, "I just can't control myself/They want more?/ Well, I'll give 'em more!" the entire spectacle threatened to collapse under the weight of its own self-referentiality. And in the end, it did collapse, because Britney didn't deliver on her promise. After previous years of python-handling and Madonna-kissing, the 2007 VMAs' spangly knickers, bleached weave and wobbly phoned-in stripper poses just weren't enough "more" by comparison. They were a whole lot less.
In a weird way, though, Britney did give us what we all wanted anyway: more failure. Nothing's as fun as kicking a diva when she's down, and Brit's been tremendously reliable in giving us glorious, inscrutable failures to consume and shake our heads at. For the time being, failure is her greatest strategy for success. Her real downfall won't come until the screw-ups cease to entertain, and the demands for more gradually fade into a silence that asks for nothing at all.
***"Hands 2 Take"
So you're, you're screaming,
you're screaming out for more
You got hands to take
Hey, what are you waiting for?
Anything you want
In the land of toll-free
At least in self abuse
There's a little dignity
Monday, September 10, 2007
It's got to be boring
Somehow, I am not making this up.
On Nov. 28, 1976, Andy Warhol and a companion sat down with Jodie Foster at the Café Pierre in Manhattan to conduct a question-and-answer session for Interview magazine. Brandy Foster (misidentified as Randy) accompanied her daughter to the meeting, but soon split, leaving her youngest child, who had just turned 14, to fend for herself. Warhol asked most of the questions.
Andy Warhol: So, when are you going to get married?
Jodie Foster: Never. I hope. It’s got to be boring — having to share a bathroom with someone.
Andy Warhol: Gee, we believe the same things.
-Forever Jodie, Forever a Pro
On Nov. 28, 1976, Andy Warhol and a companion sat down with Jodie Foster at the Café Pierre in Manhattan to conduct a question-and-answer session for Interview magazine. Brandy Foster (misidentified as Randy) accompanied her daughter to the meeting, but soon split, leaving her youngest child, who had just turned 14, to fend for herself. Warhol asked most of the questions.
Andy Warhol: So, when are you going to get married?
Jodie Foster: Never. I hope. It’s got to be boring — having to share a bathroom with someone.
Andy Warhol: Gee, we believe the same things.
-Forever Jodie, Forever a Pro
Friday, September 07, 2007
Soda pop tastes good to me today, yeah
Miranda July stumping for Slant 6 in the New York Times! First generation riot grrrl solidarity in a family newspaper, just the way it should be. This almost makes up for the recent Rick Rubin/Gossip sketchiness. I feel the same way July does about the Soda Pop Rip Off record. That thing is a marvel: sixteen songs, original DC riot grrrl tenacity, three smart girls mixing it up in the early 90s Dischord treehouse. The finale, "Thirty-Thirty Vision," might be the best Slant 6 song ever were it not for the B-side of Inzombia, which I defend in spite of the title track. Heck, even that is kind of worth it for the experimental gutsiness, witchy organ meanderings and lyrics about doughnut varieties. Instrumental minimalism was a strong suit of theirs. Slant 6! Grrrl-tested, Miranda-approved.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Everybody into the Range Rover
The Gossip just won't stop blowing up. Today they're in the New York Times Magazine, bookending Lynn Hirschberg's combination state-of-the-music-industry address and Rick Rubin profile. That the Gossip can be called a "new" band when they've been around for over seven years is bewildering and sad, and makes the conclusion of the article all the more ominous:
Rubin headed back to his Range Rover. In the car, he said he had some live footage of the Gossip that he wanted to show me. "I saw the group at the Troubadour, and they blew my mind," he said. "It was the best show I've seen in five years. Afterward, I met with the band. They felt stressed, and they were having trouble writing songs. The energy in the room when they were performing was so intense, and I'm not even sure how we'd get it to feel like that in the studio. So we decided to record a live show during their European tour, and we're going to release a DVD of the live album as their first release."
Rubin looked pleased. Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the Gossip, is exactly what he has been looking for since he took this job at Columbia: she is an outsize personality in an outsize body with a Joplin-esque, bluesy voice. Ditto is the kind of artist Rubin loves — unique, ambitious and open to guidance. "For a band like the Gossip," Rubin continued, "the support of a record company like Columbia is still really important. I grew up in the independent music business, and you still really need the muscle of the majors. A record company call can still get you heard like nobody else."
Rubin paused. "That's the magic of the business," he said. "It's all doom and gloom, but then you go to a Gossip show or hear Neil [Diamond] in the studio and you remember that too many people make and love music for it to ever die. It will never be over. The music will outlast us all."
True enough. But what kind of "guidance" does Rubin have in mind? And what's all this about the Gossip needing his "muscle"? Last time I checked, they were pretty muscular on their own. Last time I checked, they were a radical feminist punk band saving the lives of queer misfit smalltown American youths one song at a time, too busy living their politics to save the corporate music industry from its own demise. Is that in danger of changing? Where do they go from here?
The Gossip and Neil Diamond. Peas in a pod.
Rubin headed back to his Range Rover. In the car, he said he had some live footage of the Gossip that he wanted to show me. "I saw the group at the Troubadour, and they blew my mind," he said. "It was the best show I've seen in five years. Afterward, I met with the band. They felt stressed, and they were having trouble writing songs. The energy in the room when they were performing was so intense, and I'm not even sure how we'd get it to feel like that in the studio. So we decided to record a live show during their European tour, and we're going to release a DVD of the live album as their first release."
Rubin looked pleased. Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the Gossip, is exactly what he has been looking for since he took this job at Columbia: she is an outsize personality in an outsize body with a Joplin-esque, bluesy voice. Ditto is the kind of artist Rubin loves — unique, ambitious and open to guidance. "For a band like the Gossip," Rubin continued, "the support of a record company like Columbia is still really important. I grew up in the independent music business, and you still really need the muscle of the majors. A record company call can still get you heard like nobody else."
Rubin paused. "That's the magic of the business," he said. "It's all doom and gloom, but then you go to a Gossip show or hear Neil [Diamond] in the studio and you remember that too many people make and love music for it to ever die. It will never be over. The music will outlast us all."
True enough. But what kind of "guidance" does Rubin have in mind? And what's all this about the Gossip needing his "muscle"? Last time I checked, they were pretty muscular on their own. Last time I checked, they were a radical feminist punk band saving the lives of queer misfit smalltown American youths one song at a time, too busy living their politics to save the corporate music industry from its own demise. Is that in danger of changing? Where do they go from here?
The Gossip and Neil Diamond. Peas in a pod.
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