How do you listen to Canadian music?
With your ears, eh? Silly…
Sorry, must have been the feminist jokes post from earlier today that inspired that one.
Anyways, we are indeed heading to the Far North for today’s B-sides as we rock out with Nova Scotian and lady tune-weaver Leslie Feist.
Performing as Feist, the woman who made counting fun again ("1,2,3,4"…) has been on hiatus since her last album, "The Reminder" came out in May 2007. Come back!? Please?!
Oh, yay! It's time to demonize Courtney Love! Again! The ever-convenient target for would-be-rock dude misogyny has come under fire, yet again, for Activision's use of an unlockable Kurt Cobain avatar in Guitar Hero 5.
The autumnal equinox is still a few days away (and today is unseasonably warm), but I’m ready to break out the sweaters and hear the leaves crunch under my step. My last mix said hello to summer, so now I’ll usher in the next season with these songs that speak to my autumn mood – either through lyrical reference or tone.
You know what's fun about this New York Times article about how the Twilight soundtrack might save the money-hemorrhaging record industry? That it has only one mention of who is most likely to buy tie-in Twilight products.
My internship at Bitch ended this week and just recently I got a grown-up job. In a perfect world, those two things would not be mutually exclusive, however I am super happy with the full-time gig, feel fortunate that during a recession I was able to land something with benefits and good pay and I'm still contributing to Bitch (like, right not for example) so it works out pretty well. In honor of work and time clocks and general employment, I am bringing you this week's edition of BitchTapes: The Lady Business Edition. I tried really hard to keep it to just songs by the ladies, for the ladies, but the two I included that aren't, I think, are fitting nonetheless.
For one thing, you can tell just by looking at her that she’s an odd duck. She is prone, for instance, to wearing poof-y shouldered ’80s jackets and things with polka dots. She claims to have intentionally gained weight because, as she put it in a recent Guardian article, "I don't want to be 'pretty'. I don't aspire to be like the Pussycat Dolls…I want to be an artist who people can believe in."
But it’s Blay’s songs that really do it. The twentysomething British songwriter goes by the name thecocknbullkid, and she has created her own musical world, one filled with equal parts quirky soul-pop (Macy Gray-ish), zingy synth-pop (Yaz-ish), and lo-fi computer zings (Midnight-Star-ish).
Let's face it. Male musicians (and some female ones) have been writing songs about their female muses ever since the first teenybopper swooned for some nerd holding a guitar. The girl's-name-for-a-title song is an important part of the pop music aesthetic, and one that I personally love. A song that is a straight-up ode to a woman I'll never meet has always held a certain mystique for me, as it lets me speculate about who she is and what her relationship with the musician is really like. So today I bring you nine songs written about nine ladies: The I Call Your Name BitchTapes.
Last month, a 26-year-old woman known only on her site as Eva began posting video blogs about the way people treat her. Her reactions are displayed in the writing that accompanies the videos, there is barely any dialogue to the videos and rarely is Eva herself shown in them. Eva has Cerebral Palsy, she cannot speak and she gets around in a power wheelchair. Mounted to her wheelchair is a video camera, which says is always recording, that captures some rather disappointing interactions that she has with people who either ignore her entirely or patronize her to the point of frustration. While her reactions are not always evident in the videos themselves, the paragraphs she writes get her point across loud and clear.
I can't add much to Annalee's farewell
to Brill Building great Ellie Greenwich, who died this week at age 68.
(Ann Powers of the L.A. Times also has an excellent appreciation of
Greenwich's life and legacy here.)
But as a devotee of the girl-group sound and the history of the
songwriting women behind it (seriously, rent Allison Anders's film Grace of My Heart,
whose fictional central songwriter, Denise Waverly—neé Edna Buxton—was
based on Brill Building women like Greenwich, Carole King, and Cynthia
Weill), I've spent the past few days revisiting her classics. Here are
a handful.
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