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Sites, 'Zines, Books, and Guides for [fierce] Women in General
Reviewed by Lisa Okey
We Rock So You Don t Have To, edited by Scott Becker, Incommunicado Press$15
If you want to know more about the bands that made up the tsunami wave of
alternative rock in the '90s, here is a collection of insightful interviews from Option music magazine with Patti Smith, Nirvana, Hole, Pavement, Afghan Whigs, Beck, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, etc. In the first essay I read, Liz Phair interviewed Lou Barlow from Sebadoh and they talked about creating "lo-fi" music intentionally or out of necessity, and Liz repeatedly states that she is always disappointed that nobody asks her about her guitar playing or her songs. The interviewers always want to know why the cute upper-middle class child of smart professionals started writing dirty songs about guys. "No one's ever fuckin' asked me about HOW I write songs. I have all these things to say about that, but no one cares, 'cause it really doesn't matter what I play on guitar... I know why they like me. I know what they want. And that's depressing 'cause then it's a job. It's not a quest for change."
In an interview with Hole, Courtney Love talks about going to high school in Eugene, Oregon, where she couldn't listen to Led Zeppelin: "It scared me. It
sounded so far away and sexual and evil. I liked pretty things. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is still one of my favorite albums." She says she thinks she's ugly even though she lost more than 50 pounds and spent $2,000 on a nose job. Love says the most baffling things and I wonder if it is on purpose. Some choice quotes: "I stopped being sarcastic because it looks terrible in print if you're a woman . . . .I already changed my face so I would take better photographs and sell records and not be considered the way Frightwig was considered-oh, they're fat, ugly, no wonder they're screaming-I want my anger to be valid and the only way to do that is to be fairly attractive."
On the opposite end of the need-for-attention-meter is Beck Hansen who
thinks it's completely ridiculous when people put him on magazine covers. He tries to avoid media attention cause he really thinks of himself as a humble folk musician. Patti Smith is not overwhelmed by attention but enjoys it. She has survived the death of many loved ones (her best friend Robert Mapplethorpe, her husband, and younger brother) and relishes life: "I think the key to everything is to just wake up each morning and think, I'm alive, I can feel the blood in my body, and just take it from there." Sigh. Words of wisdom from a rock star. Read these interviews and see the influence of a band from backwater Aberdeen, Washington; in almost everyone of them, there is either a mention of Kurt Cobain or a mention of Nirvana.
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