Young Marble Giants making it work without a drummer/non-traditional line up. 1980 on British TV.
I like that they are not rock n’ roll cool at all. They are nerds in love with that they are doing.
Aren’t we all?
They appear to be playing a stadium in this one:
Archive for September, 2009
WURLITZER JUKE
Monday, September 28th, 2009GET ALONG DOGGIES
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Peggy from Pains of Being Pure at Heart found her bandmates vis a party. Number one question I hear from girls is “how do I find band mates?”. It’s tough. “At Parties!” is my suggestion of the week.
Also, a super cool site I have been checking out: Girl Drive which is also a forthcoming book, about the future of feminism. Nona Willis Aronowitz took a roadtrip with her friend Emma around the country and interviewed a bunch of cool girls and women, including a handful of musicians (Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Chicago’s own Ms. Alex White)
ALL THE GORIEST OF DEETS
Monday, September 21st, 2009The tour diary my tour last month with Katie Stelmanis and Ghost Bees is posted up in three parts on the Fender website, if you want to read alllll about it.
Here is an interview with self-made lady and all around interesting artist, Imogen Heap. Even when I don’t like a particular album, I am always super interested in how she produced them, how her ideas come about and what she is going for.
I am liking these Holly Miranda songs. They are a little too spacey and ethereal for daytime listening, though. She just signed to XL today and and and she is on tour with one of the many zillions of bands with the word ANTLER in the name. Also spooky, though in a more depressed-but-dancing way: TeenagersinTokyo –a mostly girls band from Australia, I think.
Also, I think Pens, the all girl British band are maybe the best thing I know about right now. This is them:
TITLED / KANYE BY THE POOL
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Magically, my book has started charting in the “rock” books section of Amazon, which is always dominated by two things: books about the Beatles and “I was on drugs–BUT LIVED!” tells alls. I saw this today–that I am closely trailing the clean-sober-and-Christian autobiography of the one time–I don’t even know what he played–bassist? xylophoner? in Korn. It made me think maybe if Girls Guide to Rocking had a more sensational title, like “Girls Guide to Rocking; How I found Bikini Kill, toured the world, and learned how to tune drums” or…? I dunno if that really makes it sound as intense as the Korn dudes tome. I hope that, like, 6 people buy my book on Amazon today so I can beat the guy from Korn’s confessional, even for a day. I just wanna beat him on this list and the “How to play a dijeridoo” book on the childrens music instructional list.
In the other news portion of other news, I have to say–Kanye’s thing at the VMAs were not exactly surprising. Especially not for him. This is not something I explicitly talk about in the book–and will in volume two (it’ll happen eventually!) is that there will be that guy. That guy who pops up and unsolicited, tells you YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG, MISSY. I have seen it happen at shows–some other bands manager or sound guy or another guy in a band will–not even knowing your band’s situation, values, training–pummel you with advice and an opinion about the right way to do what you are doing. There is a lot about this in non-specific terms in the book, that the way YOU want to do YOUR music is RIGHT–to counter the fact that YOU WILL MEET THAT GUY.
I have been swimming, at the YMCA pool, and some older sir just started walking next to my lane giving me pointers in this way that was really about HIM KNOWING RIGHT, under the guise of helping me. I got to end of the lane and said “You know, I am actually taking swimming lessons, and I don’t want ot need your help. I am in the pool swimming because I like to swim, not to do it perfectly.”
At our Nashville show on tour, Romy and I were sitting outside and a producer/manager who had no idea who we were started telling Romy how Ghost Bees should tour the UK and what sort of magazines to get in… for minutes. And finally she says “Actually we just got back from our second tour of England,” and then he was off on another thing, so he could find some sort of spot of authority that he could wield, until Romy and I just got up and walked away, amidst him almost berating her for Ghost Bees paying too much for their visas and tickets.
It sucks. But it happens. Some men, for their whole lives have been told their values and ideas are important, and their input has been valued, and they are really focused on their way being the PROPER WAY, who assume EVERY YOUNG WOMAN IN THE WORLD IS IN DIRE NEED OF THEIR ASSISTANCE AND INPUT. I feel like Kanye is that guy, the guy, who is pacing along side the pool with his vision, believing he knows best.
Here is a REALLY great article from Ann Powers, the pop critic for the LA Times about Beyonce and Taylor Swift, and the sisterhood of pop stars. That you MUST read.
(ALL CAPS CITY, Jessica Hopper, Mayor.)
DAYS OF YORE
Friday, September 11th, 2009Some of you might have read this on the news page or my Facebook zone already, but I have been out of commission a bit these last two weeks. My old friend and best bandmate, JJ, died, and I have been sad and it’s been hard to get back into writing and keeping up on everything in the way I was, so I am took a little break. Whenever there is a best-friend drummer mentioned in the book, it is her. A lot of the lessons I learned about being in a band with your friends came from our time playing together. We hadn’t been in great touch the last few years, since she moved back to LA, but I have been pretty sad about it–all memories lead back to her, and our band(s). Our old bandmate emailed me some pictures of our band, which I don’t think I had ever seen. My haircuts were kind of unfortunate, but in the days of nineties-emo, well, everyone had their grandpa’s haircut, even the girls.
Thats her with the pink hair, and me with the glasses and our bassist who is the reason, in the book it suggests to have a snack before practice. Our bassist was diabetic, and she would literally fall asleep in practice if she didn’t; kind of an extreme case, I know.
Doesn’t she look so tough?! Total badass, she was. I had terrible posture when I first started playing because I had to stare down at my strings or else I would freak OUT.
THEY JUST WANNA THEY JUST WANNA
Thursday, September 10th, 2009Article from the Guardian about the lasting influence of Cyndi Lauper
“Ironically for a record about girl power, Lauper didn’t write the original song that eventually became her anthem – Girls Just Want to Have Fun was written by Robert Hazard, yet Lauper took the track (previously tinged with misogynistic sentiments), cast a gender reversal on it, got Ellie Greenwich to sing backing vocals and made it into the rallying cry it remains today. Many artists claim to hate the song that made them famous, but Lauper remains proud of her signature song, calling it an “anthem for females everywhere”.