{"id":2709,"date":"2010-04-26T22:33:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T02:33:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-12-28T17:52:04","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T21:52:04","slug":"atypical-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Atypical Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rB-DAyZ-3Nk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Years after the fact, years after I wrote off all of these bands (with the huge exception of <strong>X-Ray Spex<\/strong>, whose &#8220;Oh Bondage, Up Yours&#8221; is one of the most-invigorating songs ever) as undisciplined, often shrill, distaff entrants into the punk world, what am I to make of bands like <strong>Au Pairs<\/strong>, <strong>The Slits<\/strong>, <strong>Siouxsie and the Banshees<\/strong>, <strong>The Raincoats<\/strong>, and many more? I so quickly dismissed these bands in my first few years of hearing punk rock and early post-punk that I&#8217;ve got them all confused these days. This called for a <em>candid, from-the-gut reassessment<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday a couple of friends were talking about Au Pairs. One of them described them as a &#8220;female Gang of Four,&#8221; which is how I&#8217;d remembered them. Just now I found the clip that kicks off this post and confirmed both my memory of the band and my friend&#8217;s comparison. It&#8217;s pretty good, but as I felt back then, there was only room for one Gang of Four in my tastes. I still love hearing my Gang of Four albums a couple of times a year, but their style of music is a dead end. How many variations on the choppy funk chords and didactic, talk-shouted, 2-note vocals does a man need?<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ggBQC52SLis?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI went back and revisited <strong>Delta 5<\/strong>, another band I recalled being in this vein and having similar strengths and limitations, and my gut feelings held true. The music of this song is as good as the music in a Gang of Four song, but the lyrics sound like something a few creating kids would crank out for their 8th grade basement band. There&#8217;s a lot to be said for the off-the-cuff creativity of youth, but I felt a hundred years older than that when I was young. My loss, I&#8217;m sure. Although I truly understand the appeal of this style of music, I&#8217;m surprised young bands are still trying to ape that pose. <em>We get it already<\/em>, or at least I do.<\/p>\n<p><em>Next, The Slits&#8230;<\/em><!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LOJs9oycX5E?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Not knowing the chronology of The Slits and refusing to dig into backstory for fear of breaking the flow of this candid, from-the-gut reassessment, I can only assume that this song, &#8220;Typical Girls,&#8221; is from a relatively later period in their development. It&#8217;s on a major label and was broadcast on stations like MTV. On the other hand the video makes a reference to this album cover, which made a big splash on the young me and may have been one of the first times I ever heard of the band.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/the-slits-cut.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/the-slits-cut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"390\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I think I recall them having a Clash connection as well as a John Lydon connection. I believe I first saw them in one of those early punk rock documentaries, like <em>The Punk Rock Movie<\/em>, and as I felt back then, I do like the throbbing bass in this song. Unlike many of these distaff punk rock bands I initially dismissed, The Slits at least sounded like stoners with some interesting musical gestures. This song, however, goes nowhere. I would have thought that back then and I still feel it today. The parts of this song I liked were promising enough, however, to revisit another track.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TN-nJld8czw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Once again, I can dig the stoner, dub-informed vibe, but once more I find myself thinking, <em>Stop playing around, let&#8217;s get it on already!<\/em> I honestly try, Townspeople, but too often I hear these feminine post-punk bands and feel like I&#8217;m invading a sleepover, with girls in their cotton panties and ribbed tank tops, jumping on the bed and talking about stuff I can&#8217;t quite make out. I feel totally left out, if intrigued. TownsMEN, do you feel like this music is meant for your ears?<\/p>\n<p><em>Next, a little diversion to revisit a band I felt, in 1982, I could probably like if I ever stumbled across one of their albums&#8230;<\/em><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S0JCoMYpiA0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nSpeaking of The Clash, I recall <strong>The Mo-Dettes<\/strong> being a part of their scene &#8211; and possibly some band members being a part of more intimate environs with certain members of The Clash. I seem to recall these women also looking like they&#8217;d be fun to party with and their music being more &#8217;60s based than other bands I&#8217;ve lumped into this candid, from-the-gut reassessment. You know how much I love The Clash, so my memory is likely weighed in The Mo-Dettes&#8217; favor. This clip I&#8217;ve found confirms all that I remembered. The music&#8217;s pretty catchy and structured, in that Go-Go&#8217;s kinda way, and the women look like they could hold their own in a late-night party setting. I know I probably sound like some guy from the <strong>Rat Pack<\/strong> assessing the qualities of <strong>Shirley McLaine<\/strong>, but I&#8217;m not here to couch my words and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/artist-i-most-wish-i-could-like-if-only\" target=\"_blank\">broaden my social network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The close proximity of the ankles of the two axe-slinging women is troubling, but maybe that&#8217;s a function of the skirts they&#8217;re wearing or maybe it&#8217;s simply not &#8220;lady like.&#8221; You may recall my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/rock_stances_bassists\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Dee Dee&#8217;s theorem&#8221; on the required width of a bassist&#8217;s legs<\/a>. All in all, a still-relative thumb&#8217;s up to this band, although the more I hear this &#8220;White Mice&#8221; song the more I start hearing how, with a ton of digital delay and a quintet of guys replacing the women, this song could be <strong>Duran Duran<\/strong> or <strong>Flock of Seagulls<\/strong>. I am beginning to fear this candid, from-the-gut reassessment will lead me down a path of better understanding the commercially successful UK music from the first half of the 1980s that I truly hated. I&#8217;m not sure I am prepared for such empathy.<\/p>\n<p><em>Next, the first of this lot I immediately rejected&#8230;<\/em><!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HgE41B3JQF8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nSiouxsie and the Banshees was the first of these bands I immediately rejected. Siouxsie Sioux showed up in at least one of those formative punk rock movies I saw in high school, and she turned me off on all angles: I couldn&#8217;t stand her early music, I couldn&#8217;t stand her Look, I couldn&#8217;t stand her attitude, etc. She seemed to see into the near future of the post-1983 apocalypse <em>and embrace it<\/em> better than any artist of the punk rock era. I see now that on one hand she should be lauded for her visionary powers, but the moral implications of her &#8220;gift,&#8221; if that&#8217;s how you want to look at it, could have been, should have been stopped.<\/p>\n<p>Before watching this 1978 clip of &#8220;Hong Kong Garden&#8221; I was certain that I would stand by all my teenage beliefs, but refreshingly I&#8217;ve grown a bit. This song, at least, has some positive energy I can appreciate. The kids sincerely, refreshingly dig it, so why can&#8217;t I? As with The Mo-Dettes track, the addition of a shitload of digital delay and other bad effects would turn this kind of song into an atrocity befitting her make-up and asymmetric hairdo, but in 1978 she had the good taste to play this predecessor of &#8220;I Ran&#8221; in a straightforward manner. For all the crap I gave this band in my endless, teenage internal monologues, I&#8217;m sorry. I was too focused on the horrors of my own glimpse into the near future to give this band the credit it may have deserved before their music got swallowed by the tide of early &#8217;80s synth-pop.<\/p>\n<p>I will note that one thing over the past 20 years that may have helped me accept at least the initial aspirations of Siouxsie and the Banshees is a song she released in the early &#8217;90s, I believe, &#8220;Kiss Them for Me.&#8221;<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MQisV1Mi-OA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Do you remember this one? It&#8217;s got an Indian\/psych vibe, she&#8217;s got a much softer Look&#8230; As with that XTC-sounding single, &#8220;Sowing the Seeds of Love,&#8221; from the end of the worst decade in popular music, by some other &#8217;80s band that annoyed the crap out of me when they hit the scene, I felt like Siouxsie was apologizing directly to me, admitting that she had it all wrong. I&#8217;m telling you, this cheesy, little last-gasp hit meant a lot to me.<\/p>\n<p><em>Finally, the band that I remember disliking so much whenever I heard them and revisited them in later years that I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ve pissed off a couple of younger tastemakers for all time&#8230;<\/em><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>Before I revisit any of their songs, my memory of <strong>The Raincoats<\/strong> is that they sounded like utter shit! Not the tired, old shit of the worst of <strong>Bad Company<\/strong> or the great-bad shit of <strong>The Shaggs<\/strong> but pure <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?tag=bullshit+on\" target=\"_blank\">bullshit<\/a>. The fact that critics have raved about this band over the years makes me think I&#8217;ve been left out of some cosmic, rock joke. Let&#8217;s see if I still feel that way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H7y2j-h0x3E?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nMan, I&#8217;m about 20 seconds into this song and I can&#8217;t believe the effort that went into making it suck so bad. What could possibly be going through the minds of any musician in this band while playing her or his part? I mean, what contribution to life did these people feel they were making? <strong>Brian Jones<\/strong> at his most wasted and useless in The Rolling Stones would have laughed at the woman who occasionally picks up a percussion instrument and earnestly adds&#8230;<em>whatever<\/em> to this mess. For that matter, what&#8217;s the audience getting out of this, continuing education credits?<\/p>\n<p>When the band came up with the harmony vocal lines I get the feeling they thought they were breaking new harmonic ground. If ever there was a melody to which no human should attempt to harmonize it was this one. I don&#8217;t get it. Maybe this is only one song that&#8217;s bad. Maybe it&#8217;s the only song I&#8217;ve heard by them through the stitches of time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Well, whaddayouknow, this clip segues into a second exercise in deliberate musical deconstruction! Are secrets of the universe being conveyed through these songs? For those of you shaking your heads at me in disgust and thinking I&#8217;m some pop music pussy incapable of liking such &#8220;challenging&#8221; music, you&#8217;re wrong. I really like <strong>Art Bears<\/strong>, for instance, and a good deal of the uber-artistic stuff from that extended <strong>Henry Cow<\/strong> family. Why do you hipster types still celebrate The Raincoats when you could be digging something meatier involving more accomplished women musicians, such as this?<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jgs6EKgpG0w?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Surely I&#8217;m being unfair to The Raincoats. Here&#8217;s another song I found that&#8217;s at least interesting and energetic. Can anyone put this in some context relative to the two previous tracks?<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MZJt56z5Ywc?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another track I found with some interesting instrumentation. Quickly, however, they seem to deliberately take this to a place that seems meant to turn me off and run contrary to most notions of communicaton. <em>Why?<\/em><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9-p5OfsjxsQ?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Musically The Raincoats don&#8217;t strike me as that driven by the music itself to forge new territory. They seem capable of playing half-decent, nervy stuff I&#8217;ve been able to hear on almost any college radio station since 1988, but when they take their turn down the path of simply bad music, I&#8217;m lost. I can&#8217;t believe they could overreach so blindly. It&#8217;s not like they&#8217;re hunkering down, getting <em>lost in the music, man<\/em>, and then getting lost. It&#8217;s more like they come to a point in the song and nod at each other, as if to say, <em>Let&#8217;s play the worst possible combination of notes as possible to piss off stodgy, didactic types like Mr. Mod!<\/em> That&#8217;s the cosmic rock joke, right? OK, I&#8217;ve been had, Raincoats! Ha, ha. Now let&#8217;s get cranking on that long-overdue apology number, like Siouxsee Sioux and those &#8220;Sowing the Seeds of Love&#8221; guys got around to composing!<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/5\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">5<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years after the fact, years after I wrote off all of these bands (with the huge exception of X-Ray Spex, whose &#8220;Oh Bondage, Up Yours&#8221; is one of the most-invigorating songs ever) as undisciplined, often shrill, distaff entrants into the punk world, what am I to make of bands like Au Pairs, The Slits, Siouxsie <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/atypical-girls\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[256,255,127,253,254,252,251],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}