Ah, my first post from my brand new MacBook! It looks and feels exactly the same as my previous machine, albeit with twice the storage and twice the memory. A weird part of me wishes the jump in unfamilarity was bigger, but I’m more than satisfied that I’ll be experiencing much less of the dreaded rainbow swirl of death in the future.
The summer is coming to a close, but with a bang instead of a whimper. The weather is finally cooling down in my neck of the woods, but all of last week was scorching beyond belief. I spent the weekend in DC a good two hours closer to the equator than I usually am, so I really got to feel it.
The (first) main attraction: Jawbox, round II, at the Black Cat. It was an extremely fun time—so fun, in fact, that I didn’t take that many photos because I was just too into it! They opened with my favorite song of theirs—“FF=66”—and ended with their cover of a Tori Amos song that I’d actually been hoping they would play the first time I saw them. It’s just really entertaining hearing the badass angsty dude that is J. Robbins declaring he “never was a cornflake girrrrrl!” And it just rocks in general when they do it. Scientifically proven, I would assume. It was great.
We visited the Smithsonian the next day, braving the oppressive heat to do so. I wish the Air and Space Museum had been open—it’s undergoing renovations. But the Museum of American History did not disappoint. Every part we walked through was immersive and gorgeously, intelligently curated. The place really speaks for itself.
Take the sprawling tree of presidential campaign ads, arranged in chronological order and swerving over the clusters of museumgoers. Immaculate.
There’s a temporary exhibit going on there right now entitled Girlhood, which explores the evolution of the titular age frame in America. It was interesting, but I guess being on the edge of proper adulthood made it the slightest bit uncanny to me. I also cannot get over how much it bugged me having to hear “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill twice as I milled about the exhibition space. Do I understand the song’s historical significance? Yes. Are there more “underground” female musicians that matter from back then than solely Kathleen Hanna? Yes! (Ugh, I’m such a nerd.) Later I even saw Le Tigre tickets (ironically from the venue we’d just been at the previous night) on display in another part of the museum alongside some old zines as an example of WOMEN being DEFIANT with MUSIC in the NINETIES. At least they had some Sleater-Kinney stubs there, too.
I guess I’m just frustrated with modern day hero worship. Cults of personality are fascinating to me. And strangely enough nowadays it seems more and more people are obsessed with being the master of their own niche domains as opposed to seeking widespread acclaim. Forget being the next Kim Kardashian—feeling like you’re the next Kathleen Hanna alongside similarly dressed peers with similar music taste is more relatable (and attainable). Doing the exact same things her circle did, especially in a time where her previously scorned actions are gaining more acceptance, is more comfortable than trying something new, something more culturally dangerous. What’s ironic is that the idols that we’ve collectively built out of these countercultural gamechangers would rather their worshippers try to pave some new ground instead of retreading what has now become safety net cliche.
Didn’t you know that being a cookie cutter punk is more rebellious and meaningful than ever when Machine Gun Kelly is allowed to strut around with pink hair on his head and dumb Sid ‘n’ Nancy fantasies in his brain? What perfect role models for a generation of increasingly volatile youth struggling with mental illness and 21st century stress. And when being a starving artist is in (no “sellouts” here), doesn’t that mean affording self care and security is the peak of uncool?
As the world continues to implode, self stagnation has never been so hip. I wonder how Kurt Cobain would feel.
Know your history. Avoid trends. Hop on them. Stop caring what others think of you. Get famous. Fight the power.
Riot Grrrl Shizz?
Monday, July 24th, 2023Saw Le Tigre last week and have been procrastinating on posting about it. T’was fun, though I was at my peak of liking their music and Kathleen Hanna in general in high school, so I guess I was going in with more jaded eyes. Case in point: in between songs at one point she was talking about making “spaces” “safer” for non-”straight, white, cis” people. Which…kind of bummed me out for a few songs. Just a few weeks prior I’d been to a show in my town where one of the openers was a bunch of local kids, the oldest of which had just graduated high school. 3/5 of the members were girls, one of them sporting a super sick afro. The pit was all female at one point (and much more existent than crowd action at the Le Tigre show, where everyone danced tamely in place until they ended the night with “Deceptacon” and spontaneously everyone started mauling each other). But the main takeaway that I got from those kids’ show wasn’t some message of “inclusion”. My takeaway was that they kicked ass. Their music wasn’t sanitized; in fact, it was actually pretty vicious. And they didn’t ask permission from anyone to do what they did. They didn’t read some book that told them how to do it, either. They were playing because it was something they loved to do, and it was their passion towards kicking ass that defined them. It would be a disgrace to that passion to try and apply tokenism to them or that night. I thought it was cool seeing a lot of fellow young women in the crowd, but I also thought it was cool that, finally, my little town has a cool little ~space~ where all kinds of people can indulge in some Maximum Volume Kick Ass Rock-N-Roll. I wasn’t consciously scanning the crowd to see how many people looked like me or didn’t. I didn’t give a shit, because I was living in the moment. Concerts are events where all different kinds of people can become one with great music. And in that moment, when you’re losing yourself in guitar feedback and physical interaction, “female representation” and “visible queerness” don’t really matter. What the hell constitutes being “visibly queer”, anyways? Certain patches or pins? Certain styles of hair? Certain facial structures? Why can’t people just be people?
Maybe I would’ve been a little more impressed if I had less life experience and more of a grudge against the concept of men. And this is coming from a physically small female from the suburbs. If anyone should have a grudge against men, shouldn’t it be me? Too bad I try not to judge people based on features they can’t really change. I just judge them on whether their taste in music is good or not. Because the superficial construct doesn’t matter much. It’s the gray matter that matters.
Kathleen ended her spiel by saying we should consider solution-based approaches to the problems in our world. Which is totally correct. But she seemed unaware that the solution is already unfolding in gritty little scenes across the country. Hence why I was…a little bummed.
Tags:concerts, FEMINISM, Le Tigre
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