Charlotte Richardson Andrews

Dyke comix, from Second Wave counter-culture to the New 52

2012-02-02T02:04:00.000-08:00

My DIVA feature on the herstory of lesbians in comics is out today. I'm not ashamed to say that writing it sent me a little crazy. Its such a niche branch of comics, with roots in Second Wave feminsim and late 60s underground counter-culture publishing, so all those early artists and volumes proved tricky to track down and draw out. The power of the lesbian phone tree came good, and I ended up e-talking with Mary Wings, Trina Robbins and Roberta Gregory, the real 70s matriarchs of dyke comix. Can you imagine emailing with women who were creating lesbian legacies in a pre-internet world? Seeing the PDF panels of 'Sandy Comes Out' in my inbox one chilly November morning was a BIG deal. I spent an obsessive amount of time drawing up timelines and cruising Amazon and Ebay, to moderately successful ends, for obscure issues, and spent a lot of cash padding out my collection with volumes I could ill-afford. I plan on pouring everything I've amassed into a bumper-sized zine at some point.

In the mean time, head to Queer Zine Archive Project to download a copy of Roberta Gregory's Dynamite Damsels.

And because there appears to be a tag limit in Blogger: Wimmins Comix, Gay Comix, Tits N Clits, The 24 Group, Dianne DiMassa, Leanne Franson, Erica Smith, Girl Frenzy, Alison Bechdel, Erika Moen, Carrie McNinch, Arial Schrag, Michelle Tea, Laurenn McCubbin, the Hernandez Bros, Jennifer Camper, Nicole J Georges, Cristy C Road, Ross Campbell, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Gail Simone.

"Step into your grace"

2012-01-31T09:12:00.000-08:00

I dig Tori's advice about how women should navigate aging. I think she means embracing the process, and owning the value in it. But I quibble with the word "grace", mostly because it has such well-behaved connotations. When bestowed upon women, its a word rewarded to a very obedient and composed kind of beauty. Its also, in my experience, a substitute for "careful".

I guess it suits Tori, because she's made her icon outta princessy high femme, and so the "great queen" is, for her, a fittingly regal progression; but I really enjoy seeing older women being loud and subversive, crashing their way through old age, wearing purple and really fucking things up.

Sometimes I've got the jungle under my skin

2012-01-26T09:14:00.000-08:00

I wrote this, in response to Chuck Klosterman's beatdown of Tune Yards and their Pazz and Jop win. Seems like a pertinent time to post some of my Feb 2011 conversation with Merrill that didn't get published in the final interview, mostly the parts concerned with age, beauty/gender standards, feminism, facial-hair and finding freedom in queer/androgynous voices.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/26/chuck-klosterman-tune-yards

***

ME: You said in a previous interview that, “in my experience that its really good for women of all ages to see other women being weird and bizarre and loud, so I wondered if we could talk about what weird, bizarre loud women have inspired you, and also I would add to that that your dad pointed out earlier that a lot of the work you put in (to Tune Yards) was during your 20s and that you didn't really start feeling like you were successful until after 30s, which is really empowering considering that the majority of successful pop women tend to be under 30.

MERRILL: Isn’t it weird? Which unfortunately also connects with what physical image they’re able to convey at that age. I mean they’re beautiful, model-ish, but - and I’ve talked to other women musicians about this - its hard to be un-groomed, no make up - as a woman

ME: Anywhere, let alone on stage.

MERRILL: Exactly. Its been really hard for me, even in pictures of myself that I think are great - they don't always get a good reaction from people because I don't….maybe I have…I don't, an atypical image for a woman to present.

ME: Just the fact that you even have to be aware of that is upsetting.

MERRILL: I know. Men have a lot of pressure, but they have a way wider range, they can be a really doofus-looking dude, like real pot belly, and still get respect for what they’re are. Even stuff like…having hair on a woman’s upper lip….I’ve noticed….and that was a huge deal for me growing up. All these things that keep coming up are like teenage things for me, like shaving every hair on your body. When people see pictures of a woman with hair on her upper lip, its like - she has a mustache and that makes her too masculine for what is considered beautiful.

ME: It's the gender binary.

MERRILL: Mmm hmm. And every woman I know has hair on their upper lip, and most of them shave that shit, or wax it. If I were ten years old right now, I wouldn't know that. I wouldn't have any examples of women with facial hair in the imagery I see. And so to be a woman with hair on her upper lip….I don't wanna be "the girl with mustache", necessarily, but I do wanna provide…and that's with everything, I mean, that's one example.

ME: Do you feel like your always having to navigate whether you stay true to what you believe in or do you compromise who you are?

MERRILL: Totally. And I usually chose not to compromise who I am.

ME: I wax, and every time I do it I feel like I kinda betray some of the things I believe in, but I had a conversation with my mum, and she said the things is, as women, there are already so many obstacles laid out in front of us, so you have to pick your battles. As an artist, you’re allowed to fuck things up a little, there’s more of a space for you to do that.

MERRILL: I know. Its true. I may, at some point, say I can’t stand this anymore. On the comment boards, every comment is about my facial hair, more than it is about my music. It hasn't really been like that - that's more like the nightmare in my head. But I think, unfortunately, that's so in this culture, involved with image, that’s the first thing that happens; Its not about the music, its about what the picture is…and I don't wanna be the poster child for this one thing, I wanna be my artist self. And there are enough hurdles, so at some point, there are these things I have to give myself permission for, and that means, you know, the way I dress and things. Its constant; like, do I wanna fight this battle? I just wanna do something where I don't have to explain myself.

ME: Kathleen Hanna said she had very few women to emulate when she was growing up, and had to be the idol that she wished she’d had. I can think of many women in pop who had facial - not that that's your defining feature, of course…

MERRILL: I mean Patti has always been someone who embraced the masculine image, and…not embraced, took it! Like, “this is MINE now”. She appropriated it. And I appreciated that. I mean Ani DiFranco, I always say although with her…I was a freak for her when she first came out because who else was doing what she was doing when she came out…her voice, it was gnarly at the edges, and she was all about not being pretty and conventional, and being fiery, and while I don't connect with the music as much any more, it was so important for me to have that. She was the like the primary female icon in a world of….I mean even like, I can love Tori Amos at times, but there was a femininity with her that I didn't connect with. And then there’s thee women like Miriam Makeba, who come form different cultures, who’s voices are allowed to take on this different character. People ask me sometimes if I’m ever compared to Nina Simone and I’m like….yes, but no, that's not like…her voice is so epic, and so her own, that I hate to make that comparison, but she has that “what gender is she?”

ME: I remember asking my mum the first time she played me a Nina record - “is this a man or a woman?”

MERRILL: Totally. Listening to her, I realised that in music, there is this ability to shake off those stifling ideas about what women are 'meant' to be.

Mansplained

2012-01-26T03:15:00.000-08:00

"Mansplaining is such a fantastically accurate term for an all-too-common phenomenon. However, it is often controversial. This is mostly because it calls out men for a behavior they often don’t know they’re doing, and this in turn raises the defensive hackles. Mansplaining is generally defined as any instance in which a man explains a subject to a woman despite that woman’s personal experience with said subject or proven expertise in that subject."

via http://www.lawsonry.com/891-look-kitten-i-am-too-a-feminist-fauxminism-and-men/

Leafy crackle underneith my feet, a good beat/crunch beat crunch beat

2012-01-23T02:24:00.000-08:00

"Their sound may be a mix of eclectic record samples and new-school GarageBand beats, but they place themselves proudly in the wider tradition and legacies of groundbreaking hip hop women. “We’re definitely a part of that. None of them gave a fuck,” says Cat with approval. “Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Lil’ Kim. They said whatever they wanted to say. And Missy! She sung, she rapped.” “And she made her own beats,” adds Stas. “That’s really important to us.”"

My interview with Stas and Cat, of rad Seattle/Sub Pop rap duo THEEsatisfaction, which also appears in the Wears The Trousers 2011 Yearbook.

So scratch my name on yr arm

2012-01-20T03:22:00.000-08:00

Behold! The mighty Stardust pencil, one of the most coveted stationary items of my early school years. I was a super imaginative Piscean child, prone to serious and perpetual daydreaming, and I remember being very clearly convinced that the Stardust, with its iridescent constellation pattern clustered over lacquered cosmic black, would double-up as both treasured writing utensil *and* magic wand, a little like The Magic Paintbrush. I had no idea they were still being manufactured (h/t to Paperchase).

Down the vagina trail

2012-01-17T06:31:00.000-08:00

"This journey has taken me to Afghanistan where I had the extraordinary honor and privilege to go into parts of Afghanistan under Taliban. I was dressed in a burqa and I went in with an extraordinary group called the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and I saw first-hand how women had been stripped of every single right women can be stripped of, from being educated, to being employed, to being actually allowed to eat ice-cream. For those of you who don't know it, it was illegal to eat ice-cream under the Taliban. And I actually saw and met women who had been flogged for eating vanilla ice-cream, and I was taken to secret ice-cream eating place in a little town, and we went in to back room where women were seated and a curtain was pulled around us, and we were served vanilla ice cream, and women lifted their burqas and ate this ice-cream, and I don't think I ever understood pleasure until that moment, and how women had found a way to keep their pleasure alive"

"It did not start with Stonewall"

2012-01-10T08:05:00.000-08:00

Dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup

2012-01-02T09:43:00.001-08:00

12 To Watch In 2012

2011-12-22T03:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Ludi Valentine's blog Silicone Valley, I now have a new crush (oh hai Danni Daniels), and an improved knowledge of sex toys, and phthalates - eeek! Valentine is one of the rad queers featured in my article 12 To Watch In 2012 for DIVA magazine's January/Feb issue (on sale today), which includes protest singers, poly advocates, political activists, rockers, artists and awesome transdyke women. Glad I got to write/publish this; its my queer feminist answer to the deluge of fawning, malecentric best-of lists that happen round about this time each year. Here's hoping 2012 will be SASSY.

Blueberry skies: Best of 2011

2011-12-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

True Widow's As High As The Highest Heavens & From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth bagged the #1 spot on my best music of 2011 list over at The Guardian because I have rinsed that album like no other this year; narcotic riffs, echoing harmonies, bone-rattling bass lines and aching tempos. Seeing them live at The Macbeth was probably my favourite gig of the year.

2011 was good year for guitar albums: True Widow, St Vincent, EMA, Japanese Voyeurs and Anna Calvi all upped the game in diverse, inspiring ways (courtesy nod to PJH's harp/guitar work on Let England Shake). Progressive danc/electro-types also did well, with Austra, Planningtorock, Gazelle Twin, Katy B and Emika, and undergroundish hip hop came big, with THEEsatisfaction, Shabazz Palaces, Danny Brown and UK vet Jehst.

A lot of the gals I didn't get to include on this list will end up on the Wears The Trousers end-of-year list, but honourable mentions of all genders include: Azaelia Banks, Lana Del Rey, Beyonce, SBTRKT, Machinehead, Yelawolf, Rihanna, Rustie, Colleen Green, Chelsea Woolfe, Tu Fawning, Hollie Cook, La Sera, Planningtorock, Love Inks, Pettybone, Nitty Scott, THEEsatisfaction, Grimes, Veronica Falls, Razika, Drugstore, Ghostpoet, Katy B, Wiley, Left Lane Cruiser, Daedelus, Jamie Woon, James Blake, Paul White, Danny Brown, SBTRKT, Blood Orange, Little Roy, Samiyam, Wild Beasts, Amon Tobin, John Maus, A Dancing Beggar, Canibus, Tom Waits, Willy Moon, Gang Gang Dance, Factory Floor, Tyler The Creator, Kreayshawn, Nicola Roberts, Mastodon, Cosmic Dead and Lasers From Atlantis.

Grau top 10 tracks of 2011 in video:

I'm New Here - Jaime xx and Gil Scott Heron

2. Hudson Mohawke - All Your Love

3. Active Child - You Are All I See

4. Japanese Voyeurs - Couldnt find a good live version of Smother so here's my favourite 2012 JV track, Milk Teeth

5. Michael Kiwanuka - I'm Getting Ready

6. Jehst - Starting Over

7. Emika - Count Backwards

8. DELS - Violina

9. PJ Harvey - The Last Living Rose

10. Barbara Panther - Moonlight People

Wears The Trousers 2011 Yearbook

2011-12-15T05:39:00.000-08:00

You can enjoy a big ole slice of independent, UK-based femalecentric music press with your Christmas cake this year, because the Wears The Trousers 2011 Yearbook is now available for pre-order! Its printed on thick, uncoated paper, features the awesome Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs in superheorine covergirl pose on the front, and for a mere £5, you can expect to enjoy:

Interviews with tUnE-yArDs, St. Vincent, Tori Amos, Ane Brun, Zola Jesus, My Brightest Diamond, Joan As Police Woman, Alela Diane, Emmy The Great, Dum Dum Girls, EMA, Eleanor Friedberger, La Sera, Lisa Hannigan, She Keeps Bees, Drugstore, Big Deal, Tennis, Sharon Van Etten, Gazelle Twin, Amy Klein, The Sandwitches, Jenny Wilson, THEEsatisfaction, Jennie Abrahamson and more!

A rundown of our top fifty albums of 2011!

A peek into the future with a look at some of next year’s most promising artists and albums!

Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Reserve your copy here.

Feeling for my shoes

2011-12-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

"In the fall it was better than at other times of the year. That was because of harvest season, cotton picking, corn pulling and so on like that. There was more money around then. In the spring of the year there wasn't much of anything because people were trying to get themselves straightened out over the winter season. Along about June and July things begin to pick up to where you could get hold of some money. September, October, November and sometimes up through December and sometimes January, that's when you really had to get it. Didn't make no difference what kind of hustle you had to do, you had to get it right through then. Those were the big months, that's when the money was floating around. When things would start to fall off, I would go back to Memphis and kind of take it easy until the next season came"

Blues player and Robert Johnson's on/off travel companion, Johnny Shines, quoted in Elijah Wald's Escaping The Delta. I love the idea of seasonal music in this sense, of artistic trade syncing in to economic tides in a kind of mutually rewarding cycle - hard, calloused hands in the fields rewarded with coins that fall into the palms of hungry guitar players, the music blooming out just as the crops are cut down.

Paws up!

2011-12-12T02:25:00.000-08:00

Photographing Magnus is almost impossible unless he's coaxed into curling up for a snooze on my lap. He's a blur of fur, rocketing around the house at amphetamine-style mph, all stripes, baby claws and shark teeth. Its fascinating to watch his tiny kitten body instinctively perfecting the maneuvers of adult cats; he's cultivating a clumsy, juvenile kind of elegance - prowling, stretching, leaping - stalking us from room to room, saucer-like eyes peeping out from hidden spots, neat white paws tucked under his chin, belly low to the ground and the arc of his back easing out, bottom in the air, a little wiggle....then POUNCE! Its terrifyingly funny, the audacity of this tiny furry thing who launches his miniature frame at us with all the confidence of a Safari predator, ruthless when he's awake and leisurely affectionate in repose.

King of book mountain, having toppled the neatly piled stacks.

Home again

2011-11-23T05:02:00.000-08:00

Stoked to see Michael Kiwanuka getting props for that lovely jumper-clad perfomance on Jools last night. Here's my Tour Dates interview with him, which ran back in May:

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-073/2011/05/20/2594-michael-kiwanuka-home-boy

and the preceding First Sight feature: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/05/first-sight-michael-kawanuka

THEEsatisfaction @ Jazz Cafe 17.11.11

2011-11-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

Debut UK show for this Seattle duo, and they rocked it. Jazzy, abstract, queer hip hop joints - including every track bar 'Early Bird' from their THEESatisfaction Loves The Sa-Ra Creative Partners EP - and the cutest synchronized two-step before a surprisingly protracted and kinda shambling headline set from Shabazz Palaces.

http://theesatisfaction.bandcamp.com/

Don't forget to douche!

2011-11-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

Taken from a 1971 edition of a well-known, mainstream women's magazine that was still in print up until this year. Suspect chick lit, pro-domestic violence editorials, tragi-comic slimming ads, vagina deodorant and procreation propaganda. Thank fuck for the second wave, eh?

"I love you, Lisa, I love you," Richard said. "No," she whispered, but without conviction.

"I've talked to a friend who is experienced with girls and he says that she isn't the only one and that some girls are brought up by silly mothers who didn't fancy sex themselves and influence their daughters to be afraid of it, too"

Bubble boobs.

Queer kitty

2011-11-14T03:44:00.000-08:00

So it turns out we have no idea what sex Magnus is. The folk we adopted him from didn't bother to check before they brought him round, and our own lackadaisical examinations have failed to really clarify anything other than a healthy abundance of fur. We should find out when we get the vaccinations sorted. My pa says he'll keep calling her Magnus, even if she turns out to be a grrrl kitteh, which I totally approve of. We're bouncing quite sweetly between pronouns when I call to check up: "How's he doing?" "Is she eating well?" etc.

Tiger style.

Pouncin'.

Oh hai.

Just curling up for a cat nap. Don't tickle me, yeah?

Reading the charity inserts from Saturday's Guardian. Checkin' out the puppies.

Camouflage kitteh.

Mighty paw.

Lounging.

ZZZzzzz

Make your soul burn slow

2011-11-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

"The 'Occupy All Streets' T shirt was created in support of the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement. Rocawear strongly encourages all forms of constructive expression, whether it be artistic, political or social. 'Occupy All Streets' is our way of reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street. At this time we have not made an official commitment to monetarily support the movement."

Rocawear's official statement on co-opting the #occupy movement for a quick, dirty buck.

Enter Magnus

2011-11-11T05:01:00.000-08:00

My pa has adopted a kitten, Magnus. It's a big name for such a tiny fur ball (he's just 7 weeks old), and one I have to resist typing in capitals. I think he'll grow in to it. I stopped off to meet him at my dad's house on the way to the St. Vincent show at Southbank last night. He's the first feline we've welcomed into the family since our beloved Eric passed away, 2 years ago this September. Raise yr paws for the new RA kitteh!

Fat Joe on LGB folks in hip hop

2011-11-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

Major props for the LGB-friendly discourse, Fat Joe. Not sure I'd co-sign the "gay mafia in hip hop" theory though, as fabulous as it sounds.

Interview: Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs

2011-11-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

“I'm not a big fan of the babydoll look, and riot grrrl's overt sexuality thing looks-wise. I have mixed feelings towards it. I think, as a women in music, it can be a bit of a cheap trick.” She's a fan of Babes In Toyland's Kat Bjelland, who, incidentally, never specifically allied herself to the riot grrrl movement. “The way Bjelland mixed her image and her music was brilliant. She snarled, and sweated and screamed”. But Alice feels using sex in rock as any kind of feminist message would be futile in the pervading climate of raunch pop, “where all these pop star women are sex on a plate with a soundtrack. If you want to be taken seriously you have to not let the pressure to be like that effect you.”

My interview with Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs. I really, really dig JV, who put out a promising debut, Yolk, earlier this year. They're a young London outfit who make dirty, petchulant rock full of psychology and graphic novel references. Romily is a whip smart front woman, and the UK rock scene needs more of her ilk. We talked about steering away from the "grunge revivalist" label, sexist rock criticism (sigh), the guitar pedals she puts together between JV tours, yearning for a pre-internet era and using comic strips as an alternative to social media marketing. Salute.

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-077/2011/10/01/2623-japanese-voyeurs-the-comic-strip-presents

Found: Cambodian Grrrl - self publishing in Phnom Penh

2011-11-08T06:39:00.000-08:00

Anne Elizabeth Moore is the former co-editor and associate publisher of the now defunct site Punk Planet. Cambodian Grrrl is a diary of her time teaching zine production to a group of young female students at Cambodia's Euglossa Dormitory for University Women.

It is a tiny, slim thing, less than 100 pages long, and a heart-breaking account. Moore knows this, and is at pains to sustain a sensible, reportage in the face of the injustice, corruption, beauty and potential she encounters in Phnom Penh. It is fitting then that she owns the power of her encounter, promptly and honestly, at the beginning of the book, when recounting the moment she first introduces herself to the shy Euglossa students.

"An means to read in Khmer. You will not say this out loud though, point out that you think it is funny that a writer would be named to read, until I put my hands up like a Sampea in front of my eyes, spread them, and pretend to be engrossed in the invisible text written across my palms.

"An," I say. "We will have a relationship based on reading"

And then, finally, you will laugh. And my heart will rend open like a ruby red grapefruit."

It is the closest to indulgent that Moore allows herself to get in an account that is all the more moving for its economy of emotional vernacular, and the encounter captures the shy and tender way Moore and the Cambodian girls go on to negotiate their ensuing relationships, across the divides of culture and language.

Moore is conscious of her privileges - as a white, 1^st world teacher, as a visitor, and ultimately, as a narrator. It's an account free of the West’s ugly, assumed sympathy-style discourses, and yet, for all her balanced narration, Moore’s love and respect for the Cambodian girls is there, vulnerable and implicit, a careful, complicated and abundant thing free of romanticism.

There is no great reveal at the end, no gratifying final scene or promise of safety for the girls of Euglossa or their genocide-wracked country, but reading about the simple power of zines, unfolding, in action, in Cambodia, is an aching and radical thing.

http://www.anneelizabethmoore.com/

All oppression is connected, you dick

2011-11-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

"Even in friendly conversation
I get the bell hooks-ian urge
to kill mother-fuckers who say stupid shit to me
all day
bitter branches of things I cannot say out loud
sprout deviant from my neck"

Full transcription here: http://jessicaannabelle.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/all-oppression-is-connected/

Shimmer and rot

2011-11-05T02:11:00.000-07:00

First Sight: Cold Specks

2011-11-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

My First Sight feature on Al Spx's deep south-style songstress Cold Specks, fresh off her spellbinding performance on Jools Holland this week. Out in today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/03/first-sight-cold-specks

St. Vincent interview, with bonus triva

2011-10-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/oct/27/st-vincent-strange-mercy

Also, tidbits that were shaved off for word count purposes:

- Clarke played in two bands before joining the Polyphonic Spree: Terminal, a junior school outfit that turned out Iron Maiden covers (Annie rocked a purple Ibanez bass guitar), and heavy noise band Skull Fuckers, a side project that came about during her stay at Berkeley College of Music.

- She doesn't own an acoustic guitar. The one she plays on Strange Mercy's end song, Year Of The Tiger, was borrowed.

- On Year Of The Tiger: "It’s based on a piano melody my mom used to play when we were little. We used to dance around to it and pretend to be native Americans”.

- Clarke will be appearing in the new season of Portlandia, the TV comedy show created by Fred Armison and Sleater Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein; the pair previously featured in her awkwardly hilarious video for ‘Laughing With A Mouth Full OF Blood’. She knew Armison pre Marry Me days after opening a show for him, and met Carrie after a St. Vincent show in Portland. For the record, her favourite Sleater Kinney album is All Hand On The Band One, though we agreed that Dig Me Out had some fine numbers on it too.

Some things you lose, some things you give away

2011-10-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

I shredded 6 (nonconsecutive) years worth of diaries today, late 90s/early 00s stuff. It felt liberating to purge all those words. The idea of permanently destroying a diary would have horrified me as a teen.

The gods of lost and found clearly approved, because half an hour later I discovered a cache of unread zines I'd tucked away months ago and promptly lost under the kipple.

Active Child interview

2011-10-18T05:47:00.000-07:00

"There's a hymnal magic to You Are All I See; is it possible the churches of Gossi's childhood inspired him to apply the same reverence to the intimacy of romance and lyrical self reflection? “Definitely. Religious or not, when you’re in a church or a cathedral you feel a sense of calm or inspiration just being in that space; they're kind of designed for that. That's always been something that I wanted to pull out in my own music.”

My interview with Pat Gossi AKA Active Child, on break-up albums, rap music, harp appreciation and seeking the spiritual in secular music.

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-077/2011/10/01/2624-active-child-heavenly

Found: Audrey Niffenegger - The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel

2011-10-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

I read this on the weekend and remembered why I want to write/create graphic novels (though Niffenegger herself would refute that this book belongs to that aforementioned medium). Startlingly beautiful, and totally inspiring.

Romi Klinger interview

2011-10-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

From strap-on scenes and lesbian reality TV to pin-up, role model and fashion entrepreneur: my interview with the Real L Word star Romi Klinger in the lush November edition of DIVA magazine, on shelves now.

True Widow @ The Macbeth 12.10.11

2011-10-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

Amp-reverberating narcotic rock, all the way from Dallas. Satisfying to feel those baselines up close and in my bones after months of stoner reveries from one of the best albums of 2011.

Because they will try to convince us that we have arrived, that we are already there, that it has happened.

2011-10-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

I penned a feature for Comment Is Free, on the closure of First Out Cafe/Bar, the falling pink pound, and why queer spaces everywhere are so vital.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/11/gay-club-scene?commentpage=3#start-of-comments

I want more

2011-10-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

"I want more. When I’m talking to someone....their art is one side of them, there is so much more. And when the consumer begins to realize that what you are getting is one tiny iota, the art, the document, the after-effect of what lead up to a person becoming what they are...so what?"

Lydia Lunch, on interviewing.

NYC 2011, part 2

2011-10-03T05:32:00.000-07:00

Pilgrimage picture; I did not stay here.

My hotel was situated on a street full of live/silk flower wholesalers.

Bird on Broadway

Fat kitteh at Bleeker Street Records. This should be a prerequisite for every rekid shop.

Joe Jones, Metal Zitar #4 1971

Carlita Carvalhosa, Sum of Days

(Gauze curtain maze, hung with microphones/speakers that record and broadcast the chatter and sounds of passing visitors in MoMa's atrium, layering each day's audio on top of the previous, with the oldest fading to whispers as each day/recording is added)

Romare Bearden, Jazz II Deluxe 1980

Various, Happylife 2010

Revital Cohen, Phantom 2010

("A novel peripheral nerve interface allows regenerating axons to grow into microchannels incorporating embedded electrodes. This neural implant enables sensations to be inserted to the device, or for activity to be recorded from movements" which I think translates as 'machine that records the twinges of phantom limbs', yes?

Johanna Bresnick and Michael Clud Hirschfeld, Mouth To Mouth 2006

(The Torah, administered in pill form)

Prayer Companion, 2010
(In which nuns from Poor Clares at St Joseph's in York recieve prayer prompts from a machine that sources people's feelings, worries and concerns from RSS feeds and global news sites)

Johan Linden and Olivier Gregoire, Check Mate 2009

(Sexxxy chess board, complete with "diletto" chess pieces)

Emily Read and Chen Hsu, Homeless City Guide 2007

Deana Lawson, Thai 2009

Newark airport sunrise, around 5 a.m

Homeward bound

Major and micro NYC press.The pink, blue and yellow cover is Gay Genius, a queer anthology. I highly recommend you head here to purchase http://www.sparkplugcomicbooks.com/books/gaygenius/pages/gaygenius.html

'Cruel' - St. Vincent

2011-09-29T11:02:00.001-07:00

From desperate times

2011-09-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Latest batch of Wears The Trousers reviews, for yr reading pleasure:

Hardxcore political punk from transnational outfit Pettybone, http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/09/pettybone-from-desperate-times-comes-radical-minds/

90's indierock/riott grrrl supergroup ish from Wild Flag http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/09/wild-flag-wild-flag/

Razika's Swedish ska pop debut http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/08/razika-program-91/

Drugstore's bittersweet return LP, Anatomy http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/09/drugstore-anatomy/

Lanie Lane @ Bush Hall 20.09.11

2011-09-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/08/first-sight-lanie-lane

Pauline Black interview

2011-09-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

The parallels between Thatcher's Britain and the violent unrest that David Cameron's government have inspired are not lost on Black. “2Tone got together was to address social pressures and inequality and I see no reason to stop doing that now we're older”.

The legendary Pauline Black, lead vocalist of The Selector and first lady of 2Tone, on Black By Design, her just-released autobiography, conscious reggae, losing Amy Winehouse and Poly Styrene, the origins of ska and its women, and the London riots. Read through to the end for her articulate David Starkey smack-down. Rude gyals fi life.

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-076/2011/09/01/2620-pauline-black-black-is-back

Gazelle Twin interview

2011-09-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

"Like Andersson, Walling's works offers the possibility of queer tropes. The Entire City is steeped in sci-fi aesthetic, a traditionally fertile space for deconstructing gender and exploring 'otherness'. “It fascinates me, certainly, and queerness is an interesting thing to have in pop. People like Bowie lived it, to some degree” she ponders. “I suppose what I set out to do - which is not always what you end up doing - was to bulk out my form, hide my face and remove my gender and personality from my performance, but I think the feminine is still very present in what I'm doing”.

I interviewed the lovely Elizabeth Walling, aka Gazelle Twin, the lady behind one of this year's best releases, The Entire City. On queer tropes, computer game scores, supernatural childhood experiences and her primal song-writing process ("I never start out writing lyrics, I just sing sounds; in a way they're quite feral. No matter how vague the sounds may be, I can always return to them and carve words out of them later on")

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-076/2011/09/01/2618-gazelle-twin-stories-from-the-city

Tomboy

2011-09-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

She can't feel, she's no queen

2011-09-10T04:57:00.000-07:00

I was invited to write a little something for the Evening Standard this week on PJH's Mercury win. Here's the original draft, which they tweaked a little:

Let England Shake is an utterly worthy record, and recognizing Harvey’s continuing ability to break ground is important, but its difficult not to feel a twinge of regret for some of the younger, equally deserving debuts who were eclipsed, perhaps unfairly, by PJ’s established legend. Her undeniably innovative repertoire has had the downside of creating a unwitting, token female icon, the kind of one-in one-out role the male-dominated, white indie music world reserves for a handful of talented women in each rock generation (Janis, Patti, Chrissie). She’s been elevated by the music press as the ultimate measure and go-to comparison for many a fledgling female artist with a guitar - an incredibly reductive situation that also serves to undermine some of her own success as feminist role model - and this rather complex privilege makes Harvey’s win a complicated one, even more so given the serious and ongoing lack of female Mercury Prize winners and nominees (4 out of 12 this year), an issue we’re addressing at Wears The Trousers with our all-female Venus Prize.

***

I'm a huge fan of PJH, despite her shaky non/feminist stance (repetoire rich with feminist discourse whilst publicly distancing herself from the F word - whether as an ultimately failed attempt at preserving herself from pigeonholing/stigma in the boyindierockworld or through what she once described as a genuine ignorance about the radical *sigh* notion of gender equality) but I know a bunch of successful female artists - women I've interviewed in some cases - who had to fight off PJ comparisons early on in their careers. Harvey's contributions to music and feminism are redoubtable, but the fact remains that boy rockers are regularly cast as gifted son-and-heirs of their hallowed male predecessors (Dylan, Page, Cobain et al), whilst a whole generation of women who have arrived after Harvey's archetype, even ones who sounds NOTHING LIKE HER, are held up to her legend and denounced as wanting.

This kind of strategy maintains the hegemony; it supports the fallacy that talented males outnumber talented females in indie rock's sphere of influence, and further. Its not about PJ's ineffectiveness as an artist and/or role model (plenty of girls picked up Fenders after Dry) - its about how the old boy network position her as a do-not-pass-go measure, a bad-girl Eve who ate the apple and did something that no other rocker girl to come will ever surpass.

First Sight: Lanie Lane

2011-09-09T02:17:00.000-07:00

Crushin' on Aussie songstress Lanie Lane in today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/08/first-sight-lanie-lane

Americana riffs, jazzy feline vox, pin curls, lip lacquer, a 1957 Framer guitar called Betty; real purdy.

Amsterdam 2011

2011-09-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Made me think of the cafe in Dark City. Food for a dystopian future.

Love.

Anarchist kitteh.

Antique sugar chips.

The hound who stole our sandwiches during an illicit stoner session in Vondelpark.

I fell in love with this gaggle of queer little people we spotted in a art gallery window display. Short, fat, semi naked, ripe and juicy coloured, half-formed indeterminate genitalia, rouged lips, a sense of mischief and collective purpose and action about them. Gobble gobble.

Little Roy speaks on Battle For Seattle

2011-09-08T04:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.battleforseattle.com/

End Of The Road festival 2011

2011-09-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Tune Yards. I got sunburn (or 'TY glow') watching this show. Big and excellent noise, as always.

Austra.

The Black Angels

The unexpected red star firework launched half-way through Mogwai's set.

The Lazy Susans. Totally awesome mum-and-dad type band with killer violin solos and 2 other band members (a stand up bass player and wheelchair-bound vocalist/multi-instrumentalist) I couldn't fit in to the photo.

Big Deal.

Moroccan friends of Tinariwen. Didnt catch their band name, though we had a good chat before this impromptu gig and one of them turned out to be an ex Camden market stall trader. All sorts eh?

Hollie Cook + Little Roy @ 100 Cub 25.07.11

2011-08-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

"Here in this machinery I have gone beyond that"

2011-08-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

A scrapbook of images, sounds and moving pictures from the steampunk exhibition at Kew Bridge Steam Museum. I didn't expect the Tesla coil demonstration to be so Frankenstein and traumatizing. The noise! Aural shock treatment, a frequency to rattle bones and shake terror into yr marrow. The scale might be hard to gauge from the video, so let me assure you: it was at least 5ft tall.

As if all the gigantic steam-powered machinery (most of which was too big to capture in full through a lense) hadn't already reminded us how puny the human form can be next to the behemoths we create.

Mini, less panic-inducing Tesla coils.

Tea dueling kit.

Neo meets the Oracle

2011-08-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

"The algorithms of Wall Street may be the cyber-equivalent of the 80's yuppie, but unlike their human counterparts, they don't demand red braces, cigars and champagne. What they want is fast pipes....
Meanwhile, a transatlantic fibre optic link between Nova Scotia in Canada and Somerset in the UK is being built primarily to serve the needs of algorithmic traders and will send shares from London to New York and back in 60 milliseconds. "We are running through the United States with dynamite and rock saws so an algorithm can close the deal three microseconds faster, all for a communications system that no humans will ever see," said Mr Slavin. As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14306146

Neo: Are there other programs like you?
The Oracle: Oh, well, not like me. But... look, see those birds? At some point a program was written to govern them. A program was written to watch over the trees, and the wind, the sunrise, and sunset. There are programs running all over the place. The ones doing their job, doing what they were meant to do, are invisible. You'd never even know they were here. But the other ones, well, we hear about them all the time.

Things I can hear right now when I turn the music off

2011-08-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

High whine of the broken intercom buzzer.
Wailing child.
Homely hum of above flat's boiler firing in to action.
An unfamiliar sitcom theme tune coming from next door's TV.
Aeroplanes, taking sleepy people to exciting places.
The occasional passing police-car siren.
Teenage boys from the neighborhood chatting, laughing and smoking in the stairwell.
Tired car engines, pulling up and switching off.

Womanthology - all-female comix anthology

2011-08-07T03:43:00.000-07:00

Play like a girl

2011-08-02T02:32:00.000-07:00

"I grew up in a small, all-white Midwestern town and the “United States of America” that I was being taught about in school – the one in which we all believed in equality, freedom and justice for all, the one where Americans were the good guys and everybody in the world loved us – was essentially reflected back to me except for some seemingly small inconsistencies. Learning that black people had somehow been excluded from the equation did not make sense to me, and I couldn’t make that fit in to who I thought ‘we’ were. Also, when I was twelve, a teacher gave me John Hersey’s book Hiroshima to read for extra credit. Learning that our country had used such a horrible weapon on civilians also seemed incomprehensible to me. I really did believe in the ideal version of America that was presented to me in school. At the time I concluded that something had gone wrong somewhere, and because the school system was the thing right in front of me I decided the problem lay there. I could see that we did not educate according to democratic principles and I thought that if we did do that we would create a truly democratic country, the place where everyone really did have equal opportunity for participation and growth. That was before I understood that the school system was simply supporting the economic system, which is in no way democratic"

http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/08/wii-11-ann-hackler/

Mad inspiring interview with Ann Hackler, co-founder of The Institute For The Musical Arts in Massachusetts, a teaching, performing and recording facility dedicated to supporting girls and women in music and music-related business. 25 years of alternative education and successful DIY music feminism. RAD.

I live and die, through England.

2011-08-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/07/review-atp-ill-be-your-mirror-london/

Interview: FOE

2011-07-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-075/2011/07/15/2602-foe-coke-fiend

"For Clarke, FOE represents a meeting of noisy alt sounds and more refined, pop song structures. Her Tumblr is a mixed paean to twisted rockers such as Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor, and artists on the wholesome, clean-cut end of the pop spectrum. Though her Genie In A Coke Can EP may have given the impression she was parodying pop, she confesses a deep respect for it. “I think people got the wrong idea with Genie In A Coke Can; I think they thought I was attacking pop, which wasn't the case. I love artists like Celine Dion, and big power-pop ballads; I think a lot of people do, but it’s not cool to admit it"-

I talked to Hannah Louise Clarke, aka FOE, for this month's issue of Tour Times (the one with Grinder Man on the front), on pop, dressing-up, lost friends, playground torment, and how her old band Arthur almost opened for Queen Adreena one time. She also talked about how she'd like PJ-style longevity, which made me marvel, for the zillionth time, at how a woman who has had such a problematic public relationship to non-allegiances with feminism continues to be the ultimate pinnacle icon for young (predominantly white/indy-leaning) female songwriters.

I want yr double cheeeeeese

2011-07-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/07/japanese-voyeurs-yolk/

"Alice poses an empowering figure against the sludgy punk noise and fertility themes of Yolk. As the principal songwriter, she’s both brutal and poetic, a little-girl voice projecting a grown-up sensuality from the centre of the distortion-fuelled maelstrom. On ‘Get Hole’, where she cries, “The nights are long, and I am lonely / I want your love but I want it slowly,” she voices an assertive desire, and even ‘Double Cheese’, with its lascivious slacker innuendo and wild-out solo, feels kinky and unabashed, a sweaty, teen hormone fest done grrrl style"

Gazelle Twin - The Entire City

2011-07-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/14/gazelle-twin-entire-city-review

First ever 5/5 at The Guardian Film&Music, for Gazelle Twin's The Entire City. Eerie/sensual gothtronica, queer tropes, sci-fi film score atmospherics - how could I not love this?

"I like NONE of them" - Sean Price on female rappers

2011-06-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

Women's Library Zine Fest 25.06.2011

2011-06-26T03:41:00.000-07:00

More Crackers Please collage by Bill Savage, which served as the backdrop for the Le Tigre karaoke video Keep On Livin', which I am in for about 3 seconds, looking awkward and ginger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0yumFIbq7U&feature=player_embedded

DIY feminist history posters of inspirational women from Shape & Situate zine, #1 and #2, curated by the super lovely Melanie Maddison.

http://remember-who-u-are.blogspot.com/2011/06/shape-situate-posters-of-inspirational.html

Joana Vasconcelos by Michelle Mendonca, from Shape & Situate #2 http://www.facebook.com/Michelle.R.Mendonca?ref=ts

Jennifer Maidment's cute, smudgy rendition of me, inked on the day, for Rachel House's Feminist Disco Project (see below for a selection of the in-progress display) http://www.jennifermaidment.com/

Selection from Rachel House's Feminist Disco Project

My haul, including an original 1979 copy of Spare Rib magazine!

Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

2011-06-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote most of this review during what was later confirmed to be an infected wisdom tooth episode. Weird blue Ibuprofen pills left over from NYC + Afrocentric, neo noir space-age hip hop. Some seriously beautiful joints on this album, and also some of the sexiest cover/sleeve art I've had the pleasure of running my fingers across (the picture does not do it justice - lush black felt and twinkling gold flake leaf).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/24/shabazz-palaces-black-up-review

The First Ever London Sex Worker Film Fest

2011-06-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

Buzzing over The First Ever London Sex Worker Film Fest yesterday at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, which featured films by and about sex workers (female, male and trans) from around the world, panel discussions from sex workers, academics and allies, and a very sweet after-party (LL Cool J's Doin' It - the perfect striptease song).

Here are some points I found the event and its participants affirmed/expanded:

Sex workers are not always the criminals/victims that we imagine them to be, but are often autonomous, intelligent and empowered.
When it comes to 'protective' legislation, sex workers are often the last people to be consulted, if at all.
After the state, its often well-meaning, left-leaning white feminists who continue to make sex work dangerous for workers. By trying to 'protect' (force) women/workers out of sex work, it is pushed under ground, where it cannot be regulated. This creates a culture where women/workers *are* exploited and abused.
If we continue to vilify/pity sex workers and outlaw a profession that offers crucial, mutually rewarding services to society, we will never create safe spaces, and sex workers will continue to work under needlessly difficult and dangerous working conditions.
According to one of the film makers, studies and statistics on victims of sex trafficking actually reveal the problem is nowhere near as large-scale as governments/states would have us believe, and that the people classed by the government as victims of trafficking are often migrant sex workers who are simply traveling to find better wages and working conditions.
The fight against sex trafficking often undermines true sex workers. Laws that are meant to protect victims of trafficking are often misused to vilify/threaten/abuse migrant sex workers, who should have the right to travel and work safely.

Resources:

Support, networking, activism for sex workers, activists and allies: www.sexworkeropenuniversity.com

English classes for migrated sex workers: http://www.xtalkproject.net/
FB event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=218282878199125&ref=ts

Scrub you clean/now you forget what you mean

2011-06-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

Major double take in the 'beauty' aisle at Richmond House of Frasier this morning. Little pink tubs of fat girl hate on sale via Bliss, a spa-turned-product line based in NYC. According to their site, they also peddle fat shame products such as the fatgirlslim treatment kit.

In my fantasy, a gaggle of beautiful rad fatties storm the Bliss offices/spas and wash their little empire away in an orgy of wild, pink bubble soaked destruction.

Kate Harding, debunking the criminal sham that is the BMI index

"Mutant and proud"

2011-06-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Lawrence should get a medal for managing to make a totally cringe-worthy line of script, which she was forced to say not once but twice, sound only moderately sappy.

Things I liked:

Jennifer Lawrence and her totally rad acting skills.
Fassbender, turning out a smokin' young Magneto.
January Jones in diamond form. Hot damn.

Things I did not like

Kevin Bacon as Shaw. No cravat! Shaw is hulking, hairy, intimidating and charismatic. Bacon is far too lean/serpentine to pull this off.
January Jones as Emma Frost. JJ has that ice-blonde thing down fer sure, but Emma, for all her coolness, is also mad sexy and totally at ease in ridiculously teeny outfits. Felt like I was watching a super frigid Betty Draper play dress-up. Uncomfortable.
Moira MacTaggert. WHERE WAS THE ACCENT PLEASE?
The script. Painful in places. See above.
Travel sickness. Too many scene/location/era changes.
Pervading lack of atmosphere/true suspense.
Too many plots spoil the broth/film etc.
You know things are bad when you find yourself willing the montages to be over. Zero fun!

Things I am undecided on:

James McAvoy, doing Xavier's early smugness exceeding justice. I suppose I prefer to think of Charles as a wizened prof, bald and nobly transcending the ego/mistakes of his youth.

"This is an ongoing institutionalised bank raid"

2011-05-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

"The award-winning documentary film Inside Job does for banking what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change. It's an hour and 20 minutes that quietly and clearly documents the appalling corruption that brought the global economy to the brink of collapse. Made by American Charles Ferguson, it is about to be released as a DVD in the UK. It needs to go viral, and kickstart public pressure on the faltering Vickers commission on banking reform. As the film points out, each banking crisis in the last 25 years of deregulation has been progressively bigger and costlier, culminating in the massive bailout of 2008. Yet effective reform has stalled, all the key players and institutions are still in place: business as usual."

TV party tonight

2011-05-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

TV programmes I am looking forward to this year:

The Real L Word season 2
True Blood season 4
Weeds season 7
Walking Dead season 2
Amber Rose's Behind Her Shades (pending a network pickup)
The rest of Game Of Thrones

Play-deducing aspects of a person's character (however superficial) by the TV they watch: another form of covert supermarket-basket detective work, an activity I engage in frequently. Just call me Charlotte Holmes.

Ken Clarke and the culture of shame in the public/political sphere

2011-05-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

This is about Clarke, but it is also about all the women - left-leaning and otherwise - who have been disappointingly cautious and almost sympathetic in their attempt to positions themselves away from potential, tarring accusations of 'opportunistic scary validated feminist' (Shami Chakrabati, Melanie Phillips, Suzanne Moore).

Moore points out that: "in terms of the law, some rapes are more "serious" than others. Sentencing and punishment vary according to circumstances and aggravating factors". So what? Clarke may have been "right" in a legal definition sense, but his belligerence revealed an inadequate understanding of rape. The fact remains that the legal system for which Clarke speaks CONSISTENTLY FAILS THE VICTIMS OF RAPE. His inabailty to sensitively phrase this issue does excuse his proposals. He revealed a worrying if predictable POV that ignores the still pervading culture of shame that victims face - 75 - 95% or rapes in the UK still go unreported, shame culture is alive and kicking - and is attempting to capitalize on the post-rape trauma that victims endure by introducing a cost-cutting measure that will give perpetrators a 50% jail time discount, despite the persistent offenders stats that prove short/custodial sentences frequently lead to more rape.

He FUCKED UP! There is no shame in pointing this out! It should make absolutely no difference that other MPs have used this event as a chance to crow hypocritically at Clarke. His attitude and proposals are NOT ok and the fact that he is one of the Tory party's most progressive (ha!) members should not lessen our ire.

Also, here is a depressing/positive piece penned by Roseanne, on the "staggering sexism and class bigotry" she endured during her sitcom years, and her rad survivor spirit: “This is no fucking character! This is my show, and I created it—not Matt, and not Carsey-Werner, and not ABC. You watch me. I will win this battle if I have to kill every last white bitch in high heels around here.”

Slutwalk

2011-05-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

I love it when friends can articulate stuff yr too scrambled/burried with worked to arrive at yourself. Inbox chitchat winz via this neat and thoughtful comment on Slutwalk, from my bredrin Pablo K, of The Disorder Of Things.

"I like the boldness of the message. I like the way it reclaims a word. I like the activism that is going alongside it and think the message is right, i.e. 'no one is a slut, and no one deserves to be raped'. My problem is this: if some people are made uncomfortable by it, and if those people are rape survivors, then some caution is in order. Is this a case of women standing up for each other in general and ignoring the experiences of those who have actually been through rape? Or is it something survivors can support in general? I don't really know the answers to those questions :) But those would be my questions for friends and comrades who find it empowering"

http://www.facebook.com/#!/slutwalkuk

Prove It On Me

2011-05-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Pough agrees that we should feel positive about this generation of high profile r&b and rap women who are supportive of each and contribute, whoever precariously, to bringing sapphic visibility to the pop mainstream".

My first ever feature for Diva magazine came out today! I wrote about sapphic disruptions in the *still* very much heterocentric pop world, with a specific focus on mainstream r&b/rap pop laydeez Rihanna, Jessie J and Nicki Minaj, and nods to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith - the original rowdy dyke mamas. Gwendolyn D. Pough (author of Check It While I Wreck It) lent her very expert voice to the piece too. Proudface.

http://www.divadirect.co.uk/diva-magazine-june-2011.html

Rihanna and the rise of raunch pop

2011-05-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

"I hate that my four year old's favourite song is S&M. At home, we've banned the music channels because of what they're putting out at any time of day, but that doesn't stop us hearing the full uncensored version at, to give a few recent examples, an ice skating rink during half term, a holiday park disco - for kids and numerous shops. This stuff is corrosive. The message it sends about what women are and what they are for is deeply harmful."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/12/rihanna-raunch-pop

First Sight: Michael Kiwanuka

2011-05-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

Michael Kiwanuka, profiled for The Guardian:

"A 23-year-old north London singer-songwriter with the voice of a 1960s US soul man, a vintage sound brimming with yearning and cracked joy"

Boycotting the wedding

2011-04-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

I like this story, about a Belfast pub who have made "a safe haven for our customers so it's somewhere they can go without hearing, or seeing, or talking about" the royal wedding. I also like current vogue for goth wedding cakes. Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas was real good for the ready-roll icing industry.

I think we're all entitled to a healthy degree of escapism, and I can see the comfort to be had in participating in archaic, gilt-edged traditions, especially when everything around us is scary and volatile, but I won't be watching/celebrating the Kate Middleton/Prince William wedding. Here's why:

Glamorizing marriage when gay people still do not have access to that right is wack.
I believe the monarchy as an institution is bloated, gross, an emblem of Empire and false economy as a tourist draw.
The wedding will cost MILLIONS - at a time when libraries and hospital wards are closing, and vulnerable groups such as single parents, immigrants, at-risk communities, the disabled, the unemployed, and the homeless are being targeted and victimized. Unacceptable.
Its a major distraction, perfect for encouraging sentimentality and drawing us away from the spirit of protest when faced with terrible ideological government policy/cuts/economy woes etc.
It doesn't speak for me, or reflect the cultures/communities I align myself with.
Kate will wear a designer dress, William will wear a designer suit. Old-school bourgeoisie gender binary costume ick.
Kate seems (as much as I can tell from the obviously biased press) to be a fairly innocuous figure, but celebrating her 'sorta-but-not-really common-girl turned princess' fairytale just enforces the insidious socialization that girlz have been fed for years - wait for your dashing true-love prince to transform and validate you! Real womanhood can be defined through the pinnacle icons of white dress, church marriage, sparkly ring! Its Disneyesque propaganda, British style.
It enforces class divides and the worship of the rich. Let the peasants forget their woes by basking in the glorious and patriotic celebrations of the aristocracy! Never mind your disappearing pensions, NHS service or human rights - toast and cheer and hang bunting for your beloved royal family! Enjoy the spectacle of wealth and privilege vicariously! Hip hip hurrah!

Here's a song about an almost-wedding:

Identity is the crisis you can't see - RIP Poly Styrene

2011-04-26T03:20:00.000-07:00

Punk legend Poly Styrene has died. We all knew about the cancer, but somehow, it seemed to me that someone so vital just couldn't die. She was one of the first female voices I found when I REALLY got in to punk, and later, when I'd left behind my safe hetero id for those early thrilling days of bisexuality, her "up yours!" punk yodel was the siren sound I pogo'd too, wasted on Red Stripe. Poly had this shuddering call, equal parts shrill and raspy, that would crack into a higher note juuuust at the tail, like an angry kid whose voice is still breaking. On all of her most famous slogans, it twists up at the end into a little girl falsetto that is both endearingly cute and also the flick of a fingers-up fuck you sign. She had a small puffy afro, train track teeth braces and looked/sounded FIERCE.

"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard. I say, oh bondage! Up yours!"

For me, X-Ray Spexs were a band I initially savored alone, in the electric privacy of my bedroom, wondering at the weird, spacey reverb and anti-deodorant message of 'Germ Free Adolescents' (I decided to file it next to The Slit's Typical Girls; worrying about "spots, fat and natural smells" was b.o.r.i.n.g). Later, Poly's songs became life anthems I howled along too, drunk and grinning, in a small, dark, sweaty basement club off Tottenham Court Road, surrounded by girls I'd kissed and boys I shared eyeliner with. I remember these perfect, stillness-in-the-chaos moments where the first, steady "Iiiiiiii" of 'Identity' would start up and all the Spexs fans would snap into action, taking up the wild yell like a tribe. I think it meant something different and awesome for each of us - all the beautiful freaks and queers dancing together in a space where we were (mostly) safe to just BE.

The club is no longer there - it was bulldozed recently to make way for the expanding tube station - and the Woolworths Poly worked in as a teenager and sung about in 'Warrior In Woolworths' has also disappeared, a red font emblem of staple UK consumer culture now sunk in nostalgia. For me, Poly represents the best of rebellious British women, a Brixton gyal done good. Her voice was just as potent to me in the late 90's/early 00's as it must have been to people in the the 70's, a voice that centered those gleefully inebriated moments saturated with jazzy punk saxaphone noise and freedom and the joy of finding a community of kindred weirdos. She gave my emerging queer self a rally cry.

RIP Poly Styrene.

Bilal interview

2011-04-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

"I wanted to create something similar to what Marvin Gaye did with 'What's Going On'. It's about life, everyday people, everyday struggles.”

The only interview where my Dictaphone has failed me. Despite fresh batteries and a test run, my trusty lil Olympus crashed just 2 minutes in to our transatlantic phone call (hour and half Tune Yards convo from New York had eaten up all but the last memory capacity). I had to type out Bilal's answers in real time! Really fast! He was a real cool cat. We talked about moving on from Interscope and a botched 2nd album, how church choirs and Philly's jazz veterans shaped his aesthetic, and why he's more of a blues man then the neo-soul kinda fella everyone thinks he is.

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-072/2011/04/15/2572-bilal-not-middle-of-the-road

Conversations at rock shows

2011-04-20T03:06:00.000-07:00

I got chatting to a girl in the ladies toilets at the Trail Of The Dead/Rival Schools/Japanese Voyeurs gig last night (lets call her J). She was a photographer, and I'd offered to use some of her pictures for a review I was thinking of writing on the show. She gave me her business card and I walked away happy, thinking I'd made a handy girl-girl business/work connect.

I was up at the front for most of the show, and noticed an influx of photographers when Rival Schools came on. Out of the 8 or so snappers clicking away, at least 7 were women. J was one of them. I remember thinking it was good to see so many laydeez up at the front working a rock show (though the sound engineer was, rather predictably, a dude), and then immediately followed this up with "but it would be even more rad to see more women headlining stages at rock shows". I told J this when I bumped into her later at the merch desk. Below is roughly how the exchange went:

J: "Oh. (Screws up her face). I don't really dig women in rock"
Me: "Umm. Huh?"
J: "Yeah, its not a gender thing. Its just about pitch"
Me: "Pitch?"
J: "Yeah. They always sing way too high; I don't like it. Its just my preference"
Me: "Really? So what about people like Tairie B?"
J: "Who?"
Me: "Or Angela Gossow? Patti Smith? Mia Zapata?"
J: "Oh, I don't really know those people"
Me: "The all have pretty low growls, not high pitched at all"
J: "Yeah, I don't really know them"
Me: "OH"

Maybe it was all the Tuborg (or just the sheer shock of hearing such unexpectedly ignorant bullshit, from a woman) but I wilted. How do you even begin to reeducate people who think like this? I tried to recommend some of the rad and fierce female bands and artists and singers who have shaped, subverted, challenged and innovated rock - in all its various forms, communities and spheres - but by that point she'd sensed the major flaw in her attitude and had decided blank, stubborn retreat was the safest option. I felt a real, crushing dismay. Major love though to the woman who stopped me as I was walking back from the bar to tell me how rad it was to see someone wearing an L7 t shirt. Yeeaah.

"Don't be so ridiculous R2. Underoos are for earthlings"

2011-04-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

Chipmunk - Transition

2011-04-15T02:42:00.000-07:00

Grime's teenybopper wants us all to know he's a big boy now, with his sights set on international fame. There's a whole lot of cloying, imported US gloss on this LP, and personally, I would have liked something more authentic and London centric. UK emcees have spent a long time overcoming dominating US influences (which is why So Solid were, in their own volatile way, so pivotal) so it kinda sux for grime that one it's most promising young'un has tried to blend North London swagger with slick, urban US shine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/14/chipmunk-transition-review

Record Store Day 2011 and unashamed vinyl sniffing

2011-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Record Store Day and John Doran's elegant defense of good old fashioned rekkids: a choice selection from my own crates. Some of these were inherited (albums I was weaned on), some were paid for (as in a physical cash transaction - no clicking/shipping involved), and some were presents. I remember the story of each one and all of them are dear to me, for different reasons.

Descriptions where the picture/font/words ain't doin' it.

The Breeders - Safari EP

Babes In Toyland Fontanelle LP (cherry pink vinyl)

Bessie Smith - The Worlds Greatest Blues Singer (double disc)

Signed L7 single a- Andres/Stuck In Here b- Bomb/Shirley

White Lung - Its The Evil

The Holez (Hole)/The Monkeywrench split single Germs tribute a-Circle 1 b- Shutdown

Cocorosie - God Has A Voice And She Speaks Through Me

YYYs - Cheated Hearts

Calamity Jane/Rockin Rod split single c-Strychnine

Signed Daisy Chainsaw single a-Love Your Money b-Get Real Pleasure

Tune Yards (ltd edition) a-Gangsta b-Bizzness

Babes In Toyland single (purple vinyl) a- Bruise Violet b-Magic Flute/Gone

London Elektricity - Round The World In A Day

2011-04-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

Tune Yards interview

2011-04-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

My first ever full page Rock & Pop feature for The Guardian - an interview with the super rad Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards - is out today!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/07/tune-yards-merrill-garbus-whokill

I flew out to meet Merrill back in February. It was the first time I visited NYC/the US, (the first time I'd ever gone abroad to interview an artist too) and I got to meet her ma and pa, who had come down with a gaggle of cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles to watch Merrill perform for Roomful Of Teeth at the Kaufman Center. They were crazy lovely, just full of pride for Merrill, and rightly so. She's a vibrant creative force, an incomparable artist/composer, and an unbelievably grounded and friendly soul. We bonded over feminism and (working) class politics and I felt only the smallest flicker of shyfangrrrlness at the end of the interview when I asked to have a picture taken with her.

I wish I'd been able to include everything we talked about (word counts suck). I left out a lot of body image/male gaze dialogue and choose instead to delve into a discussion/analysis of w h o k i l l , her second album. My life has been saturated with w h o k i l l 's songs since late January (I was one of the first to get the LP and having to hold myself back from screaming all over Twitter about how A W E S O M E it was was mad frustrating); I poured over the lyrics, memorized the breaks, had the melodies looping in my head each night before sleep, hummed the hooks on the plane to NYC, and beatboxed Gangsta incessantly with my girlfriend, who has become equally enamored/obsessed with the album. We sung the softer parts of Powa over our first plate of buttermilk pancakes in one of those 50's style, perspex and pastel-coloured diners I've always wanted to visit, and shouted the chorus to Bizness over and over like some wild, joyful mantra as we explored the streets and sights of the Big Apple.

I'm glad Merrill's no longer starving for her art. I want plenty more good things for her. She's one of the good ones.

"We're not any less determined/to lay down poison for the vermin"

2011-04-06T05:25:00.000-07:00

Possibly my favourte video of 2011 so far, from one of my favourite lyricists ever.

Andrew Lansley is a dickhead

2011-04-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Far too angrrry to successfully articulate how I feel about Andrew Lansley and his NHS 'reforms' i.e privatization. This dude is close though.

DELS interview

2011-03-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

"The political rhetoric on his track 'Capsize' (“Kick down the doors of Parliament for the truth”) is also, albeit in a different context, concerned with youth culture. “I left the end of the lyrics in 'Capsize' open because politics is something I'm interested in but don't really understand. I think that's a problem for a lot of young people. The media don't make it easy for them to understand what's going on.”"

My Tour Dates interview with Big Dada artist DELS, on the power of hip hop's story narratives, challenging the (problematic/bastardized) tradition of "keeping it real" with something more authentic and personal via "out-there" fantasy, addressing the exclusionary nature of politics and where this leaves youth culture, and his plans to create new mediums by merging music and graphic design. BIG.

The great NHS swindle - a breakdown

2011-03-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

For those big, unwanted beats

2011-03-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

Beardyman - I Done A Album

2011-03-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

Debut LP from Beardyman, reviewed for The Guardian:

I DONE A ALBUM

Smiley Culture press conference

2011-03-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

An incredibly tragic death under some incredibly suspect circumstances.

Marilyn, the last sessions

2011-03-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

As a major Monroe fan, I totally get the ongoing fascination, but riffling through transcripts from her therapy sessions for prime time TV entertainment seems totally unethical; like some kind of gross psychic autopsy. I detest the idea that the death of a face/body who has become a complex part of cultural history/iconography give us any kind of ownership rights or free-pass into their heads.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/marilyn-the-last-sessions/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

"You make it look so good/the way you put it like that"

2011-03-11T03:18:00.000-08:00

My first First Sight feature for The Guardian Film&Music is out today, featuring Emika. She's a Berlin-based producer, originally from the UK. She makes creepy, seductive, bass-heavy songs. Get to know:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/10/first-sight-emika

"Fuck tha upper class"

2011-03-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

Is that the same bed she tied up Diplo on?

Ghostpoet interview

2011-03-10T03:52:00.000-08:00

I chatted to Ghostpoet a lickle while back. We talked about comfort food, abstract rhymes, anxiety of the existential kind, and his debut album Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam (which is really rather good). Click click below for full reading pleasure.

http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-070/2011/02/18/2548-ghostpoet-blue-notes

Libary porn

2011-02-27T05:56:00.000-08:00

"There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" Marina Tsvetaeva.

Spent a happy 35 minutes browsing this site and then realized that its charm is also a harbinger of nostalgia to come, being on the cusp of this ConDem sanctioned library cull. SUX.

Odd Future - "I am a fucking unicorn and you're not gonna tell me that I'm fucking not"

2011-02-26T04:16:00.000-08:00

I think comparing Odd Future to Insane Clown Posse is both fitting and reductive. This article by Mehan Jayasuriya makes solid points on how difficult it is to place Tyler et al in a context of lineage (gross out punk? horrorxcore hip hop? not-yet formed self-perpetuated future genre?) and how doing so can be disruptive, and have the potential to reveal strains of cultural bias in music criticism. I think Caroline Ryder of LA Weekly got close to it when she said the crew are operating under "influences they don't even know they have yet", which I think is true for a number of artists/bands/genres these days.

The ICP mention reminded me of Jon Ronson's interview with the evangelist juggalos from last year, which is well worth checking out if you haven't already.

Expressos in shot glasses, NYC 2011

2011-02-22T05:15:00.000-08:00

Jamie xx & Gil Scott Heron - We're New Here

2011-02-22T02:59:00.000-08:00

Big, simmering vibes pon this one. Reviewed, for The Guardian Film&Music.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/feb/17/gil-scott-heron-xx-review

New York, New York

2011-02-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

Sourcing food/music recommendations for first ever trip to the Big Apple this week and discovered this: Gza, recommending the best veggie hot spots in NYC and discussing the merits of smoking over edibles.

"Ya see? It's too strong, it's a different high. I mean when I used to do the edibles I couldn't even drive a car! Now, I smoked for a lot of years and used to drive on long trips with 3 or 4 blunts and I was cool with it. But with those edibles, uh uh, I couldn't eat two red velvets and drive a car!"

Lady Gaga and teh gayz

2011-02-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

Deciphering Gaga's hollow, fame-hungry marketing strategy v.s authentic feminist/queer icon has become something of a hobby of late. Pats on the back to Palmer for calling her out on what we were all thinking (for the record, I like my Amanda salt-free), and to add, here is a pertinent piece on Gaga's shady gay advocacy by the ever-ready Mr Everett True.

Shad - 'Keep Shining'

2011-02-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

Because I blogged about how good the track was when the LP dropped and now there's an equally dope video to accompany it.

"We can't divorce misogyny in hip-hop from the institution of misogyny in the larger world" - Akala interview

2011-02-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

My December interview with Akala has finally found its way online. We talked about MTV hegemony, the student protests, class divides, the power of (mis)education, and how he taught Konnie Huq to MC. Read all about it here.

RIP David Kato

2011-01-28T06:13:00.000-08:00

Moments like these shatter me. Sometimes, I forget that being gay/queer/trans is still such an burning-torch-and-waving-pitchfork issue for the right wing nut jobs of this world. Because I live on a patch of the world where my sexuality isn't illegal, I cannot make peace with the truth that people still bleed to defend their right to love and be loved. Maybe its a Western privilege, maybe its a survival instinct; because mostly we all just want to get on with living, and to exist in a space where your queerness is a constant source of fear/shame/danger sux.

Kato's death has me thinking about the question of OPTION, and how much of this we have when we chose to celebrate/fight for our queerness, openly. Moments like these file down my bright, queer universe to a sharp, acute point and I lay flat, thinking about how the English language will never be big enough to verbalise the seas of love and respect I have for people like David Kato. RIP.

2011-01-24T03:27:00.000-08:00

Almost posted this photo last week but decided not to, on the basis that even the hotness of Rose and Ms Rose locking lips could not distract from Amber's migraine-inducing shirt.

Changed my mind.

Tea with the Queen - Minaj in London and hip hop's future.

2011-01-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

Can't help but marvel this week as the UK press slather to get a glimpse of Nicki Minaj's weave-on-weave majesty. Semtex talked about being "in the presence of greatness" when she guested on his show, the UK urban Twittersphere has had her trending, and her legions of boob-baring fans are so frenzied she's been kicked out of The Dorchester. It's rad that a female MC can generate this much hype and respect, especially when our homegrown rap talents are so woefully discouraged, and I've been thinking a lot about whether Nicki's shock waves will have a lasting, game-changing impact on the hip hop community worldwide.

It would be a travesty to have Minaj co-opted as a token - that mighty female rapper of the Noughties, the proof that the gal dem have broken the glass ceiling. I don't think female rappers are that rare, endangered breed that music historians, patronizing rap fans and even well-meaning hip hop heads have consistently cast them as. Lack of permission and encouragement are certainly determining factors in the number of women that are bold enough to step up to the plate, but it's more about that closed drawbridge that the round table of white, hetero male record execs have set up, filtering the talent and maintaining a one-in-one-out revolving door policy for the sistren.

Notice also how the very few female rappers that do get shine with the majors are ultimately denied the commitment to brand longevity that is afforded to their male peers. Labels, as a rule, are uninterested in building solid, lasting careers for their leading ladies - DESPITE the fact, as Minaj continues to prove, that there is A/ a crazy wide demographic who are desperate to see/hear talented female MCs, and B/ that it would profit them financially. They refuse to let their female MCs be anything more then disposable, ancillary investments, and it stinks.

The UK hip hop community has often taken cues from the US, frequently to its detriment, and I know I'm not alone in hoping that Minaj will offer a more productive and radical import value, a catalyst for positive industry disruption. Her feminist and queer values were initially clumsy, frequently buffeted by media politics and systematic class/race/gender restrictions, but radical and exciting all the same, and clearly striving to voice a pro-woman, pro-queer rhetoric. I like to think her neon pink power will be a laser beam, Batman-style symbol in the sky for female hip hop talent everywhere.