Moonlit Metallica
Combustible balls
of chugging riffs & epic energy.
Madness explodes loudly.
Then sadness seeps out
to strains of melancholy guitar
Moonlit Metallica.
Metallica, Knebworth, July ’11
Category Archives: I heart rock
Moonlit Metallica
Fuck(ed) feminism
Fuck(ed) feminism
Reading this made me feel *old*.
The hope. The optimism. The ne’er-may-care punk rock naivety. Certainty.
Me was she, now I’m…
Somewhere along the line
my feminism
got
Fucked.
~
Lou Reed & Metallica – The View
I want to see your suicide
I want to see you give it up
Your life of reason
I want you on the floor
And in a coffin your soul shaking
I want to have you doubting
Every meaning you’ve amassed
Like a fortuneOh throw it away
For worship of someone
Who actively despises you
A good Friday
A good Friday
Three weeks on, & still strong. You’ve been bounding around, outside in the sun; all those jobs to get done; shocks in conversation.
Now you’ve landed – safely – into blissful solitude.
Time to re-group, re-charge. Buffered by cloudy calm. You’ve scattered, now be still; you’ve scattered, now be still. You’ve accomplished, now pull back; you’ve attended, now pull back. All that you worried about has come to pass. (Know this: you survived, core intact; she the soul nugget, still glows gold. *You* did that, you you you; you made it through, like you knew you would, like you always do.)
‘I’m still Alive.’
Worry & empty still whirl down below, gnawing gently, lying in wait. No doubt they’ll rise again, do their best to drown you. But for now, the view up ahead has changed, from one of doom & dead-ends, to one infused with hope; can you see it, shimmering? that life for you, worth living?
*Believe* – though it’s tough out there. Split selves, head hurts, compromise, unhappiness – still the same ruts in the road ahead. But fuck it – try your hardest anyways, carve a way up & over & around & about them, to get there, to that life, *your* life, shimmering…
… this is where it could get exciting… ‘cause you are accountable to no-one, you weird solitary woman; with no marriage or motherhood on the horizon, you. are. free. All these years stretching out in front of you – live them, *own* them.
You may not go marching down streets waving placards anymore, or have any clear-cut strident politics (life gets complicated) – but choose to *live* your resistance, your protest. No marriagemortgagepermjobpension; not the way of parentals/politicians/senior managerials (see. how. they. fall); but your own way, living for today, ‘cause you can’t count on tomorrows no more (see. how. they. fall).
And *today* – is all about the rhapsodies & reveries; thoughts floating in, swirling, chiming, consolidating; the pleasure mind, precious me time, mine mine mine. *Heart* this solitude, embrace it, get all caught up in it, let. yourself. go.
Enjoy things in & for themselves. Indulge in life’s little pleasures, the intangibles; to prop up the whole. Relish the succulence, the luxuriance, of the musicality of the English language; play with fragments of it; the rhythms & sounds of words, just to see how they work; no matter if it doesn’t amount to anything, leap off the page & sing, *become* something – cast off that demon who demands completeness, perfection.
And crank up the rock ‘n’ roll! Gutteral riffage poundings, bass fuzzing, the sexy roar/raw, fuckin’, drum rolls tumbling. That’s *it* there, coming, at you on the crest of that electric guitar wave – ummm- grab it, hold onto it, & exist *there*; up above it. Know it: your deepest darkest truest heartmindsoul.
The world’s a mess girl, & you’re in it. But you’ll keep wading through. You’ll have to (what else you gonna do – killyourself?). Just remember to take. your. time. And keep going, on & on & on. You weird solitary woman, punk rock, strong.
~
Van Halen – Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love
01/01/2012 – 00:02
01/o1/2012 – 00:02
Heart quickens
Eyes glisten
in recognition
of the perfect song
striking up
at the perfect moment.
Pearl Jam – Unthought Known
Rock’s ‘secret feminism’
I really liked this article by Amanda Marcotte, Nirvana’s Secret Feminism. Not only because it focuses on Nirvana’s, and more specifically, Cobain’s, pro-feminist ethos (something too often overlooked in those umpteen ‘the REAL story of Nirvana!’ features malestream rock journalists like to trot out over and over again); but also because she highlights the profound impact a male rock band can have on the lives of their female fans and the pleasure and validation we can get from listening to their music (something too often overlooked in those umpteen ‘Riot Grrrl RULES! Dude music does nothing for us grrrls!’ features feminists like to trot out over and over again).
But why only focus on Nirvana? Pearl Jam also, “broke with the sexist norms of the era, choosing instead a pro-feminist public stance and song lyrics”. (And like Nirvana have also reached a 20-year anniversary- though not just that marking the release of their seminal album, but the successful 20-year career that followed too. Don’t burn out before your time. Steel yourself & bust through the bad. Know the joy of survival, of being Alive.)
Songs such as Why Go, Daughter and Betterman are as feminist as anything Bikini Kill ever put to tape. Eddie Vedder has made pro-choice and anti-rape statements on stage. He scrawled Pro-Choice on his arm during the band’s MTV Unplugged performance in 1992. They’ve Rocked for Choice. They’ve hung out with Gloria Steinem. Toured with and heart Sleater-Kinney (I’d never heard of Sleater-Kinney until I got into PJ. Now I heart them too). And you can find ripostes to this generally fucked-up capitalist war-mongering patriarchal world in which we live in a fair few of the band’s song lyrics and from other stuff they’ve said over the years.
In fact, that whole ‘grunge’/early ‘90s ‘alt rock’/whatever-you- want-to-call-it ‘scene’ was largely pro-feminist. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden too, all consciously set out to do rock ‘n’ roll in a different way to the hair metal bands that dominated rock before them. Out went the shit lite riffs and unoriginal lyrics, and in came guitars that soared and sludged and rattled raw and heavy in a myriad interesting and beautiful ways; songs that struck the whole heart/mind/soul. Here was a bunch of male rock musicians who were openly sensitive and intelligent, who weren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Yet Cobain/Vedder/Cornell were also still quite masculine. But it’s this “man-womanly/woman-manly” (to quote Virginia Woolf) combination, which for me, made ‘grunge’ music, and the men who made it, so different, sexy, inspiring… and feminist.
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore, do they? However, I don’t quite share Marcotte’s view that the more ‘macho’ bands that have entered the rock mainstream following grunge’s demise make no room for the female/feminist rocker. According to Marcotte, the likes of Slipknot, Metallica and Limp Bizkit, unlike Nirvana (& co.), are ““no girls allowed”-style bands”. Whilst I agree that the sound of these bands and the masculinities they perform are more macho (and Limp Bizkit’s attitudes towards women far from progressive), I don’t think they send the message: “no girls allowed.”
Go to any Slipknot/Metallica/Limp Bizkit/other all-male heavy rock band show and you’ll find girls in the mosh pit: screaming, dancing, singing, head banging, moshing, crying, smiling; feeling fuckin’ strong and empowered and excited and Alive because up there on that stage is a band making the fastest/hardest/loudest/cacophonous noise, the only noise that seems to sum up and spit out what she’s feeling inside, that encapsulates all that’s fucked-up about everyone and everything in this world. In this music, this ‘macho-manliness’, she finds release, because it sounds like the inside of her head, it speaks to her, and gives her a voice, a sense of her own identity. It sets her free. Therefore, go to any Slipknot/Metallica/Limp Bizkit/other all male-heavy rock band show and you’ll see feminism in action.
When feminists say that certain rock bands are ‘no-girls allowed’ they’re not just warning women of the sexism they may encounter should they listen to them. They are also, in a more subtle way, warning women off those bands full stop. We’re effectively saying, ‘don’t listen to [insert all-male band here], they’ve got nothing to say to us, you should listen to [insert all-female band here] instead.’ In other words, we end up sounding like feminist police. And in the process we ignore and silence those female fans and musicians who do take part in the more heavy/metal/’macho’ sub-genres of rock, who may have gravitated to those genres precisely because there was something in the heaviness/macho-ness of the music that they liked and could identify with.
After all, ‘macho’ bears no intrinsic relation to ‘male’. Women can be macho. And macho doesn’t have to be oppressive or domineering or sexist. When ‘macho’ is performed in rock, it’s often just a sound, a roar, that’s used to capture and give vent to some of those strong and uncomfortable feelings and frustrations all us human beings experience, which may have nothing at all to do with hating on women. It’s just another form of self-expression and one which women can also experience and enjoy.
And besides, there are some male rock bands around today – Muse, Mastodon, and fuck it, I’ll include Metallica here too (and that’s just the bands beginning with ‘M’) – who do manage, invoking that grunge spirit, to fuse their masculinity, intelligence, and ear for a wistful melody, to create meaningful, interesting music that rocks bloody hard and bloody good.
But of course these bands don’t come together under one ‘scene’ a la grunge. I think it’s unlikely we’ll enjoy another era of pro-feminist rock like that we experienced in the early ‘90s. Music scenes come about differently these days; they’re so much more fragmented and transient. And as Marcotte’s article points out, rock music doesn’t have such a hold on the cultural mainstream anymore. The rock music that is the most popular seems to be the sort that has the least to say, is the least challenging. Mainstream pop culture also has less time than it did in previous decades for anything potent or political, particularly when it comes to music. Media has got more commercial, and consequently more conservative. We could see that as a shame; there’s so much that needs to be said and protested given the state of the world right now and yet there’s little opportunity for someone to be able to come forward and sing something. Although it’s hard to break through into the mainstream, with meaningful music, a meaningful message, without it eventually getting twisted, diluted, and all the meaning snuffed out of it. That’s what happened to ‘grunge’/early ‘90s ‘alt rock’/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Despite this though, there is still good, heartfelt rock music out there to discover and enjoy; that which came before, that which is around now, and that which is to come; rock music that does, and always will, harbour a secret feminism.
~
Pearl Jam – Daughter
“She holds the hand that holds her down/She will rise above…. oooooh!!”
Sonisphere Festival 2011
Knebworth, 8th & 10th July 2011
1.
Kick start my heavy metal heart,
XY guitar.
(Remember who you are.)
Thundering blood back through my veins.
Macho-testosterone can be sexy. Necessary.
Soundtrack & antidote to anxiety.
Insanity screwed up into combustible balls of chugging riffs & epic energy,
which explode, loudly; but then, more quietly,
sadness slides out along licks of melancholic guitar.
Moonlit Metallica.
Metallica – One
2.
Through it all, rock ‘n’ roll is the thing that remains.
The thing that speaks to you; sets you free; keeps you warm.
17 again. (And because sometimes, ‘fuck you bitch!’, is the only thing that will do.)
Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff
3.
The roar & the riot;
the rebuke, the fuck you, to the too-bright, sunny days;
to the conformity, false niceties, & corruption in the newspapers & on the telly.
Blast it all away.
Go on,
Fuck . It.
Turn the lights out & get turned on.
Embroil yourself.
Gutteral escapism.
Heap some depth & darkness onto these sickening, shallow, summery days.
Hell, yeah! *This* is the sound of reality.
Expressing what words fail to; the noise inside my head.
Encapsulated.
Right here, right now.
This. Is. It.
Mastodon – Where Strides the Behemoth & Mother Puncher
4.
Need to keep the darkness in.
I heart you rock ‘n roll. I heart you. 4 eva.
Time to turn this one up I think…
Chris Cornell – Seasons
Summer nights and long warm days
Are stolen as the old moon falls
My mirror shows another face
Another place to hide it all
Another place to hide it all
And I’m lost, behind
The words I’ll never find
And I’m left behind
As seasons roll on bySleeping with a full moon blanket
Sand and feathers for my head
Dreams have never been the answer
And dreams have never made my bed
Dreams have never made my bedAnd I’m lost, behind
The words I’ll never find
And I’m left behind
As seasons roll on byNow I wanna fly above the storm
But you can’t grow feathers in the rain
And the naked floor is cold as hell
This naked floor reminds me
Oh the naked floor reminds meAnd I’m lost, behind
Words I’ll never find
And I’m left behind
As seasons roll on byIf I should be short on words
And long on things to say
Could you crawl into my world
And take me worlds away
Should I be beside myself
And not even stayAnd I’m lost, behind
Words I’ll never find
And I’m left behind
As seasons roll on by
Montage of Mus(e)-ings
1.
Contract expiry dates. Finances in a sorry state.
A return to 9 – 5 office work beckons. Just in time for summer.
You timed that well, didn’t you?
To have my:
burdens return to magnetize the bone
(May Sarton, These Were Her Nightly Journeys)
The dreaded vision: Long bright vacant days, tied to a desk, doused in thick sludgy sickening stiffening boredom. Brain drain. Tired aches and pains. Painted over with a fresh coat of red itchy sweaty spotty ugly skin. Less time, little energy, to realise the dreams and ideas kept within.
I’ve got all this room/And no money to decorate it
(Temple of the Dog, Reach Down)
2.
I want to realise my potential, make my life more meaningful.
BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW. Dead-ends.
Sense of impossibility.
I need the money. So it’s: “copy & paste these (pointless) policies, lay out the letters properly, and remember to check those RSVP’s carefully.”
A voice itches: “‘this is not me. I am more than just a secretary.”
File me under W
because I wonce
was
a woman
(Marge Piercy, The Secretary Chant)
3.
“Sorry about the cuts, love” he says, handing me a flyer. 5 Reasons To Walk Like The Egyptians. Gathered outside the Town Hall to protest the local budget cuts. Scrapping meals on wheels. Arms deals. The rich and corrupt prop each other up. We can shout, we can march; yet hard to shake the feeling the system’s all sewn up. But a hopeful defiance still hangs in the air: it has to, you can’t just turn round and say: “I no longer care.”
4.
Writing. Reading. Rock ‘n’ Roll-ing. To feel Alive.
To counteract the tendency of this life to dull the mind.
5.
A right-wing US broadcaster on Muse (pictured above): “You have basically a call for revolution with this group.” Too right – ‘tis the function of rock ‘n’ roll!
But what tone shall it take?
Optimistic?
Or apocalyptic?
6.
Electrelane are reforming!
And I also feel like saying: Eastenders’ Whitney is the best girl on the telly.
Before I go back to reading:
Crack Capitalism by John Holloway
Subjection of Women/Enfranchisement of Women by John Stuart Mill/Harriet Taylor Mill
Selected Poems of May Sarton
And Sylvia Plath…
I’ve got to have something. I want to stop it all, the whole grotesque joke, before it’s too late. But writing poems and letters doesn’t seem to do much good. The big men are all deaf; they don’t want to hear the little squeaking as they walk across the street in cleated boots.
…
Ah, yes I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me. […] God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small, cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfilment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
…
I do not know who I am, where I am going – and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.
Stoking my feminist fury: rape @ music festivals
Edited to add: I’ve since decided to write to the White Ribbon Campaign asking them to consider working with music festivals as a way of targeting male festival goers with anti-rape messages and challenging sexist attitudes… would be more effective than personal safety campaigns aimed at women.
If you want to add your name in support of the letter, please leave a comment or e-mail me: mlwrightuk[AT]yahoo[DOT]co[DOT]uk & I’ll send you a copy of the letter to take a look at. I’ve had an encouraging show of support so far from posting notices about this amongst the UK feminist community.
Feels good to be taking action again. I decided if I really believe in the transformative potential of rock ‘n’ roll I should perhaps sweep aside some of my negative over-analysing tendencies, be positive, and take an idea off a blog post into the ‘real’ world. I just feel like doing SOMETHING.
‘Tis been a good week.
And to think a couple of weeks ago I mentioned how I wasn’t so interested in taking on single feminist ‘issues’ at this point in my life.
I do confuse myself sometimes. Well, most of the time actually, but that’s another blog post…
———
Following the rape of two women at this year’s Latitude music festival, the organisers now intend to raise awareness amongst female festival goers of the dangers they face if they dare go rockin’ out alone after dark.
This is the kind of thing that re-ignites my feminist fury. Whilst I welcome moves to ensure women’s safety at these events, by directing campaigns at women, the same old sexist message gets sent: women are the ones who should take action to prevent sexual violence. Really though, it’s men who need talking to because men are the ones who rape.
What also riles me up about this is seeing women’s freedom taken from them in an arena in which they should be most free: that of rock ‘n’ roll.
When it comes to rock music, I make no apologies for being quite idealistic about its potential to inspire, unravel and transform. Rock, like feminism, screams freedom. You let go to it, abandon yourself to it as an escape from the everyday, have it take the noise from inside of your head and release it. It’s something which tosses you up into the air, so when you come back down it’s all a little easier to deal with. It’s a soundtrack to which you can just fucking be.
So it bothers me to think we’re going to be giving out scare-mongering messages and rape alarms to women at festivals, whilst men can continue to rock out undisturbed by the realities of rape they are ultimately responsible for.
Female festival goers should be free to suck on that blissful atmosphere: when the sky’s gone black, the riffs are rising, and reality has fallen away; and not have the worry of being raped rear its head when the music’s stopped and she makes her way back to her tent. Instead can’t we have men heeding rock’s rebel yells and extending the freedom they get from those to women?
I was glad to see this article by Ellie Cumbo on the Guardian website, in which she not only addresses the need for awareness-raising amongst male festival goers, but also sees music festivals as ideal sites for challenging misogyny, such as they are founded on an “egalitarian and peace-loving ethos”.
I think this is something worth pursuing. I always thought the White Ribbon campaign, which has had a presence at sports events, could do some work with music festivals.
But there’s also plenty that could be done within rock music spheres. How about pointing out the contradiction in those rocker boys who like to make a thing of being ‘different’ from the ‘in crowd’ but whose own attitudes towards women are decidedly mainstream? A lot of young male rock fans herald Kurt Cobain and Rage against the Machine, but these musicians’ politically progressive and pro-feminist inclinations seem to go over their heads. We should be getting another Kurt Cobain slogan T-shirt printed up to sell in Top Shop and everything!….
… I’m joking. But seriously, these are the sorts of discrepancies alive and well in the festival arena which could do with some taping up.
Another reason for encouraging the spread of anti-misogynist messages at music festivals is due to the link that exists between sex and rock ‘n’ roll.
This link can be a healthy one. Rock is sexy music. Sexual charges fly from the rock concert stage and they’re snatched up hungrily by the crowd. I’m not talking about feeling sexually attracted to the rock star on the stage (although that can be part of it). I’m talking about it as a form infused with sexual energy, all those riffs and rolls and roars cranked right up, brooding, raw and loud, inspiring abandonment and making you feel Alive. Many a female rock fan knows this, being able to take even the heaviest meatiest slab of misogynist metal and twist and turn it for her enjoyment.
Unfortunately, the link between sex and rock can also be an oppressive one, particularly for women. This applies more to some male-dominated music subcultures than others, but at rock festivals, the sense that women are the ones to be looked at and get fucked still prevails. Sexually objectifying images of women are displayed to sell stuff, cameras invite women in the pit to flash their breasts for show on the screens by the stage, and some male musicians let the powerful force of their music run through into their dominating attitudes towards women. At some festivals, women get raped (in addition to Latitude, a sexual assault at this year’s T in the Park festival is also being investigated and a woman was raped at the 2006 Leeds festival. And as is common with rape, you can bet more have taken place and gone unreported).
All of this makes challenging misogyny a more obvious protest point for festivals than environmentalism which Cumbo points to as a cause which successfully rallies festival crowds. Get the guys to start thinking about the sexism that still abounds in rock, how it contradicts many of the genre’s basic tenets, and establishing the sort of healthy and respectful links that can exist between sex and rock ‘n’ roll.
In the meantime, us grrrls can be found in the pit, abandoning ourselves to those heavy meaty slabs of metal that keep us free.
