Well. I guess when you spend a lot of time with people who share the same assumptions, you forget the assumptions. Who knows who I would have been without dance music, but I'll still give credit: I don't really care if the singer of a song is female or male. I don't identify less one way or the other. Because the singer sings words. And the words and the delivery capture moods. And moods are human, for all humans.
Didn't really realize this was uncommon until I moved to Providence and started spending time with unreconstructed punks who still haven't arrived at the conclusion that many of the smarter musicians reached in 1978 (it is 2013!): that punk's conservative aesthetic was at odds with the purportedly progressive politics. And the biggest aspect of that conservatism is the idea that guitar-driven, aggressive and macho music is the only real "rebel" music. Bzzt. Nope.
(this is the first time I have felt insecure about loving Ten City since high school, for fuck's sake!)
Should it really matter who sings? Nah! A jam is a jam.
3 comments:
Well, since you bring it up in the context of punk, hat some might label 'conservatism' cuts across so many fronts & excludes so much that it almost becomes too hazy a topic to even bother with.
But as a female friend of mine once confessed to me, "I always really liked the idea of Patti Smith far more than I ever liked the actual Patti Smith." And then there's the matter that Brigitte Fontaine was Patti Smith some ten or so years before the fact.
damn, I only know of Providence because of the noise/comics weirdos like Forcefield or CF and now that I have found your blog it sounds awful. But don't forget that there are plenty of conservatives in every genre (I ONLY SPIN VINYL) and that even in, for example, New York there are people who take depressingly small détournees. If you gotta go, go, and if not just take a vacation... OF THE MIND. Best.
It's not as bad as I say it is. I promise.
I just don't think I've met enough people. All of my angry entries about living here are written half-drunk after a night out feeling like I haven't really been able to connect with anyone about anything.
And I miss being lost in big cities. I will get back to one, some day.
I'm going to Montreal for a week. That will be nice. See: Providence - I can afford a vacation!
I only spin vinyl!
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