I'm crushing super hard on this Gordon Voidwell single, Ivy League Circus. If there's any justice in the world this song will blow up right away.
A mix of Prince, The Tom Tom Club and old school Madonna, Gordon Voidwell manages to skewer the culture of privilege with a dance beat. The fact that he's adorable doesn't hurt his cause either. If I were a twelve-year-old girl I'd be writing his name on my trapper keeper right this instant.
Am I the only one who misses the tough, feminist Queen Latifah? This one?
Also, I just remembered a segment from MTV back in the day where Latifah is giving a tour of the video store she owned, commenting "adult films are in the back." I kind of loved the idea of renting a dirty video and then having Queen Latifah at the counter when I got there. Did I dream this?
Anyway, I blame Living Single (even though I love it.) If you haven't seen this opening in a while, do yourself a favor. God, I'm glad the 90's are coming back.
Still, I miss the Latifah who wrote U-N-I-T-Y, which was heavily featured in my favorite indie film as a teenager, Girls Town, a movie in which a 35 year-old Lilli Taylor plays a teenage mother from the ghetto (remarkably well, actually.)
It came out around the time I was only hanging out with riot grrls, none of whom were very into hip hop but ALL of whom loved, loved, loved U-N-I-T-Y.
(Note to Queen Latifah, you can't be a strong woman and be a closeted lesbian at the same time. Just saying.)
I absolutely cannot wait for Hercules and Love Affair's new album. "Blind" was the best song from 2008 without a doubt* (Pitchfork agrees with me.) OMG has a great interview with Andy Butler, the genius behind Hercules, and it's got me all kinds of excited.
If you don't know Hercules and Love Affair, you should. It's really just Butler, who is the producer/dj, and whomever he gets to sing with him. On "Blind", for instance, the singer is Antony from Antony & The Johnsons, securing the track's place as a new gay classic.
I'm not usually into dance music- my background is in punk rock. But there are exceptions. I love disco, for instance. Especially really highbrow Euro disco like Cerrone and Amanda Lear. But mostly I love acts that inject art into their dance music. I like acts that embrace the past without recreating it and simultaneously look toward the future. I'd put Goldfrapp in this category. I also loved Sally Shapiro's record when it came out and have been waiting for something new. (The most downbeat, depressing dance music ever! That's my sound!)
I recently heard a scholarly discussion about disco somewhere. I can't remember where it was. Maybe in a documentary? It was about the vehement hatred of disco in the seventies and how that was less of a reaction to the actual music than it was a reaction to gays, especially black and Hispanic gays, gaining power. It was a rejection of race mixing, of fluid sexuality and gender representation, that the disco scene embraced.
Anyway, all of this is offtrack. I really wanted to post about Andy Butler, because LOOK AT THIS PICTURE!
HUMINA-HUMINA-HUMINA-WHA!
This could have been taken right from Randy Blue's website. Now I'm going to look for his photo spread in old issues of Butt Magazine. I just KNOW he had one. How could he not?
*It's kind of a tie for me. I was also super crazy for Santogold's "L.E.S. Artistes" in 2008. Where is Santogold, anyway?
This is awesome. Kathleen Hanna has announced that she and former Bikini Kill members have started a Bikini Kill Archive online, where users can add their own memories and stories. Check it out!
Discovering Bikini Kill at fourteen was one of those life changing experiences. I can see from this site that I'm not alone and other people found their music as inspiring as I did. Everybody has their own favorite Bikini Kill song, but mine was always their only quasi ballad, "R.I.P.- Rest in Pissoff- ed ness" about a murdered gay boy.
But wait
There's another boy genius who's fucking gone
I hope the food tastes better in heaven
I know there's lots of rad queer boys up there
I hope every time they talk to you
They know they're lucky to be yr friend
I had never heard such a boldly queer positive song. Maybe I still haven't. I was fourteen and living in rural Washington State, and the message helped. So much so that maybe it saved my life. Who knows? My best friend Alice, who is still my template for awesome women (see every play I've ever written) and me both got our first tastes of self-esteem from this loud music, which said to us that even though we were weird and queer and gay etc. we were okay. Not only were we okay, we might just be fucking AWESOME.
God, I wish there were more bands like Bikini Kill today. I cringe when I think that Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift or whoever don't have strong alternatives telling girls and fags and outsiders to reject what they're being sold and to make their own way. Except for The Gossip I can't think of any radical females in the game.
Speaking of music, an old livejournal friend recently wrote that she wished there could be a freeze on straight dude music critics for a while, so that we could get some different perspectives. What would happen?
Would U2 finally fucking retire? Would under appreciated subgenres (by douche bag critics, that is) finally get the recognition they deserve? Like motown? The girl groups of the 1960's like The Ronettes and The Shangri-las? How about disco, which never gets the respect it deserves? And how about the fact that music critics always skip over New Wave in it's entirity like there was nothing between punk and grunge? To her view (and mine) critics act like music begins and ends with The Beatles and that Yoko Ono was just a musical footnote. BULLSHIT.
Let the ladies take over for a while. And the fags. Music history would look a lot different.
I went to a show with my best friend Jenny tonight.
I never go to shows. Well, I will if The Gossip is in town because they're too fucking good live to pass up, but other than that I never go to shows. I don't drink and I've become so anti social that I just can't take it, despite really loving music. It's weird, because I grew up going to shows in Seattle at least once a week. We'd take the ferry over and see as many shows as we could with the $20 buck we'd manage to wrangle together and just get older dudes to buy us drinks and food. One boy I was friends with had a 25-year-old Navy boyfriend who'd kind of take care of us. We could usually count on him for a 40 or a gyro or something (It wasn't safe, but it was fun. Where were my PARENTS!?) And in between all of this we'd catch shows by Bikini Kill and 7 Year Bitch and Babes and Toyland. (I once broke a bottle over somebody's head at an L7 show, but that's a story for another entry.) Or later, when my girlfriends brought straight boys around, we'd see Built to Spill and Modest Mouse and The Halo Benders. It was a pretty fun time in my life, actually, when I was in the city and not at my halfway house of a highschool. But I digress. I have no idea why 15 years later I can't stand being at shows. Except that I do...
The older I get, the more I find other people insufferable.
The show tonight was full of Type A personalities in skinny jeans with oversized glasses on. I look just like them, so I can't make fun. But going to shows feels different than it did then. The shows I went to then felt so exciting and subversive. This show felt like a middle school dance full of trust fund kids on coke. I don't know what the band was called, but they sounded like off brand New Order or a D grade Cure. Like when you're doing dishes or folding clothes or something and listening to New Order, but the whole album and not just the songs you know and love and there are all these songs that kind of just become background noise except for the moments when you're all, "What the hell New Order song is this? No wonder it wasn't a single!" They were like that. Like watered down New Order, not bad enough to dislike but not good enough to pay attention. Adequate... with synth!
I hope we get a wave of great new music soon because everything just sounds the same now. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of new bands, but I feel like the last time we got a whole wave of great music was around 2003 or so when The Yeah Yeah Yeahs et al were coming on the scene. And remember Electroclash? Remember PEACHES? God, I loved Peaches. Good times.
Anyway, about Au Pairs. Au Pairs are a band I'd always heard of, but never heard except for their performance in Urgh! A Music War! They were a major influence for a lot of the riot grrl bands I loved when I was a kid. Last weekend Jenny and I were shopping for records when I very stupidly passed up buying an Au Pairs LP, opting instead for the safer Plastic Bertrand album. I am a fucking dumbass. Au Pairs are so fucking good!
Au Pairs sound kind of like Gang of Four but with an awesome feminist, lesbian singer with a smokey voice. SWOON. And all of their songs are about super lefty even when they're not about gender issues. I love them really hard.
Listen to my favorite song right now, "It's Obvious."
Child is abuse is no laughing matter, but sometimes a song about is. Of all the pop songs about child abuse, "Hell is for Children" by Pat Benatar is by far the most hilarious. I can't believe we didn't use it in MilkMilkLemonade.
Be a good little girl and don't tell mommy a thing.
Be a good little boy and you'll get a new toy. Tell grandma you fell off the swing.
I had this cassette when I was a little gayling and it got so worn out from my choreographic laughably literal dance interpretations to it that it would barely play. Special props also go to benatar for penning the excellent theme song to the excellent film, The Legend of Billie Jean (which is also about rebelling against child abuse, weirdly.)
If I were to pick a second most hilarious song about child abuse it would have to be "When the Children Cry" by White Lion. Speaking of, I clearly remember my soccer coach calling White Lion a "bunch of fags." Talk about child abuse!
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