There Is No Cat

Groovy '60s Sounds from the Land of Smile!

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Want to do my Ph.D on Sonic Youth, The "Sister" Period

Interesting and disturbing article from the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald, about how female rock bands don't get no respect, with articles about them focusing more on their looks than their chops. It sucks. I like a lot of female bands, and I don't give a damn what they look like. A great song is a great song and a great performance is a great performance, no matter what the band looks like. A lot of my favorite songwriters and musicians these days are female. Lora MacFarlane of Australian "band" Ninety-nine, for example, writes these incredibly pithy, wonderful, even funny songs and then playes them with some really oddball ear-tickling arrangements that sound just as influenced by Indonesian gamelan as by punk rock. Keri McTighe of my new favorites Nathan writes impressionistic portraits that take on a much darker tinge than the music once you start paying as much attention to what the words are saying as to the lovely voices singing them. Sleater-Kinney has some amazing songs, played with a real kick; Corin Tucker even wants to be your Joey Ramone, and I think she's got a real claim on it. I'm sorry to read an article like this one that says they aren't taken seriously by the press because they're women. It sucks that the writers or their editors can't open their ears wide enough to notice that some of the best music out there is being made by women, and who gives a damn about their shade of lip gloss. They're focusing on irrelevant crap rather than on the music. I don't get it. Is it that the reporters have no ears, or that their editors have no brains?

Posted at 11:39 PM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

thanks, ralph...i now dub you honorary girl for a day. but honestly, we all know that this isn't really "news"...it's been going on since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of rock).

on the same topic, maya price gives a fine rant about rolling stone's recent "women in rock" issue at www.steppinoutmagazine.com (they use frames so you'll have to work for it--choose the 11/27/02 issue, then "more music", and scroll down). since rolling stone ceased being relevant a couple of decades ago, i haven't seen the issue but after reading this response i feel as if i have. it makes my skin crawl, but it doesn't surprise me.

Posted by shirley at 9:57 PM, January 4, 2003 [Link]

Heh. Yeah, okay, sexism in music and music "journalism" isn't exactly news. But neither is racism in politics, yet expressing it openly can get you fired as Majority Leader. Maybe some day there will be a revolt against Jann Wenner for publishing such unacceptable crap and he'll have to step down as whatever the hell he is at Rolling Stone.

Or maybe not.

Nice rant in the magazine you point to, though. Yeah, I stopped reading RS some time in high school. Didn't have much to do with music then, appears to have even less to do with it now. It doesn't surprise me either, but it still disappoints me.

Posted by ralph at 12:49 AM, January 5, 2003 [Link]

hey! how does a guy from new jersey get a hankering for music in winnipeg? thanks for the good words, i'm curious tho, are you one of the 7 people that ordered our cd online? cheers, keri

Posted by keri mctighe at 4:25 PM, March 6, 2003 [Link]

hey! how does a guy from new jersey get a hankering for music in winnipeg? thanks for the good words, i'm curious tho, are you one of the 7 people that ordered our cd online? cheers, keri

Posted by keri mctighe at 4:26 PM, March 6, 2003 [Link]

Hi, Keri!

Good question. I wound up discovering you guys through CBC Radio 3. (I've listened to CBC since I was a kid growing up in Detroit, so I'm pretty aware of things Canadian.) They played "Measure Me" one of the first weeks they were up, and I just fell in love with the song. They linked to the Nathan page on New Music Canada's site, where I heard a couple other songs, like "Australia", which intrigued me even more. My fiancee picked up on something I posted in December (www.thereisnocat.com/showme320.html) about how your CD was available through CD Baby and bought it for me for Christmas, and it's been tough to pry it out of my CD player ever since. Seems every time I listen I have a different favorite tune; it's a strong record, and different things pop out at me. I definitely look forward to your next record.

Posted by ralph at 9:35 PM, March 9, 2003 [Link]

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

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[ photo of Sylvester, a black and white cat ]

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