Opinion
25 Jan 2012
Girl With A Guitar | The Female Impostor?
Since I wrote my last column, I played a gig! It was a birthday party at a local bar, and I decided to perform as I knew the birthday boy and expected that the night would be a supportive environment in which to try my hand at playing bass and singing. I enlisted my boyfriend as lead guitarist, but finding a drummer was a nightmare. It’s true – one is always within 3 feet of a guitarist, but you can barely find 3 good drummers within an entire city! Eventually I managed to snag the drummer from my brother’s band. We had one rehearsal, managed to gel pretty well, learned seven classic rock cover songs, and rocked up on the day hoping that we’d remember everything. (more...)26 Nov 2011
Gendered Language | Women in Music Videos
The music video got famous in the Eighties; bands embraced the new technology in a flash, using the opportunity to communicate a strong image and increase their selling power. Characters like Malcolm Maclaren used Vivienne Westwood’s creations to give acts like Bow Wow Wow an animated, colourful appeal, while at the other end of the spectrum Duran Duran began to produce almost mini-films, romantic snapshots of a fantasy high life, which of course included wish fulfilment for the male gaze - sun tanned, bikini clad women. Cable TV and MTV came next (as a music critic for a National music paper at the time, it pained me to see the apathy of the next generation; happy to lounge like Curt Kobain and Courtney Love, watching music videos ad infinitum.) Since, YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace have ensured the music video becomes an even more powerful and desirable medium, with both major labels and independent acts ensuring that there are music videos of released EP’s, singles and album tracks available at a click. (more...)15 Nov 2011
the girls are | Just Incredible
The music business has, for tens of years, been a place for individuality, creativity, passion, beliefs, romance, anger, and just about anything else that makes us human , to be explored, developed and displayed to our counterparts. I absolutely love being involved in such a colourful and diverse industry that’s not only welcoming, but extremely supportive of everything different and original. History has taught us that we girls have always been subject to oppression, to being controlled, our voice didn’t stand a chance, but over the years, this has changed. To be honest, at the moment being a girl is absolutely incredible - especially a British girl. (more...)13 Nov 2011
Ineffable She | Why Kim Gordon is my Feminist Hero
It is possible that none of us are ever going to see Sonic Youth play live again. The king and queen of the 'Alternative Nation', Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, are separating after 27 years of marriage. It is hard to imagine that even a band with the longevity of Sonic Youth could survive that level of upheaval. Sonic Youth are my favourite band and I've been lucky enough to see them live on several occasions. There are very few things I enjoy more than SY gigs, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to write about those things in a public arena. They've been a continuous influence on me since my early teens – I firmly believe I'd be a wildly different person if I hadn't seen the video for100% on MTV2 when I was 14. The song was (is) incredible, and the video was full of hot boys in plaid shirts (yes please), but it was their bass player who left the biggest impression on me. Who was that sassy blonde chick in the sunglasses? (more...)11 Nov 2011
Girl With A Guitar | #1
My name is Catherine Elms, I’m 22, I play the bass guitar, and I’m trying to join a band. This bi-weekly column will document my journey from bedroom bassist, to rock star. Or regular in The Kilkenny Cat. That works too. My musical path has been a disjointed one, so here’s a quick run-through: I’ve been playing the piano on and off since I was about ten years old. When I was fourteen, I started playing guitar, and soon after started up a girl band with my female friends. We were together for almost three years, during which time we all wrote music together and gigged regularly in our city. Sometimes I’d fill in for the bassist, and loved playing bass so much that I bought my own cheap bass. When the girl band fizzled out, I turned away from the guitar and moved to the piano. (more...)27 Oct 2011
Out with the new and in with the old?
It's difficult to avoid hearing about old bands, dusting off their microphones and dancing shoes, ringing up their pals and having another pop at this crazy little thing called music. Girls Aloud have been touted for a reunion for years, and over the past week we've heard of Steps being chums again and the Stone Roses giving it another shot. Sigh. Now, we all love strolling down memory lane once in a while, whacking on some music we adored from our younger years, or getting that joyous feeling when shuffle surprises you with a nostalgic treat. The power of these songs lets us escape, if only briefly, back to a certain time, a certain place - a particular moment which our brains associated with that particular song. Whether it be a happy occasion, a song you heard whilst going through a painful break up, or an album you had on repeat whilst learning how to drive - these songs tend to stay with us forever. No argument there. (more...)15 Apr 2011
Retrospective | Blondie
Thinking of Blondie today, what usually springs to mind is the enviable coolness of Debbie Harry, memories of screeching along to their top hits with friends, aunties and mothers alike, and the kind of epic and successful comeback usually reserved for aging, leather-decked rockers. The fact that scores of party-goers are still guilty of breaking into yelling-into-fake-phone dance moves at the chorus of 'Call Me', and that 'Heart of Glass' and 'The Tide is High' still echo out from any self-respecting club (whether it be a retro night or otherwise), impressively demonstrates how their legacy spans both time and genre. Besides being the poster children for the burgeoning New Wave in the 1970s, what set Blondie apart from other bands on the scene was the way they broke the man-centric mould of the time and pioneered the way to the charts for women-fronted rock bands. Without them we might not have had Gwen Stefani fronting the ska-punk of No Doubt, Shirley Manson's rebel-cool in Garbage, or Courtney Love leading Hole down the punk-pop road in a blaze of glory. (more...)
21 Aug 2010
Guilt Schmilt | The X Factor And The Barlow
I love The X Factor.
A statement regularly met with surprise, disdain and mildly withering stares. The kind of glance one doles out to over-confident teenagers waxing lyrical on the meaning of life. Should the listening party be so obtuse, a snort or condescending bark might also make an appearance. Perhaps it is simply that one would not expect someone like myself to regard this kind of programming as anything other than brainless tripe: on any given day I can be found vehemently expounding on the general vomitous nature of series' like Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity, Someone Do Us All A Favour and Drop an H Bomb. I am a bit of a music nerd (by no means possessing an encyclopedic knowledge, but nonetheless am endlessly enthusiastic and eager) with a penchant for the lo-fi/underground musical spectrum. On the whole, chart fare goes a long way to making me want to remove my own eyeballs with a rusty, blood-spattered spectrum simply as a means of distraction (there are exceptions to this rule, more of which will be covered at a later date). (more...)
30 Nov 2009
Penny Lane Has Got A Lot To Answer For…
My friends have already heard this mini-tale now turned into an article, mainly due to the fact I regale in telling it. It all starts with my big sister Olivia, who used to live in LA. She worked as a model and Laker Girl, enjoying a totally fabulous blonde hair, tanned skin life or so I thought. I am ten years her junior and was only a teenager then. Any lifestyle in the Santa Monica sunshine would have appeared glamorous and fabulous to me.
So, during a rather poignant West Coast visit, big sis give me a piece of advice that has stuck to my conscious ever since, "Steph, promise me you'll never date a musician. Musicians go on tour and fuck groupies." (more...)
29 Nov 2009
Girls in the Garage | The Case of Char Vinnedge and the Luv’d Ones
The Wikipedia entry for garage rock defines it as a ‘raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to about 1967’. Nevertheless, garage rock was not a recognised genre in the 1960s, and the term only came into being in the 1970s. The style had been evolving within regional US scenes since the late 1950s, but the triumphant appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and the consequent British Invasion marked a huge increase in the number of bands. The stereotypical garage band comprised of amateurish but enthusiastic youngsters who rehearsed in their parents’ garage (hence the name). (more...)
