The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (2 page)

Girls in emo songs today do not have names. We are not identified beyond our absence, our shape drawn by the pain we’ve caused. Our lives, our day-to-day-to-day does not exist, we do not get colored in. Our actions are portrayed solely through the detailing of neurotic self-entanglement of the boy singer—our region of personal power, simply, is our impact on his romantic life. We’re vessels redeemed in the light of boy-love. On a pedestal, on our backs. Muses at best. Cum rags or invisible at worst. Check out our pictures on the covers of records—we are sad-eyed and winsome and comely (thank you Hot Rod Circuit, The Crush, Cursive, Something Corporate, et al.)—the fantasy girl you could take home and comfort.

It’s evident from these bands’ lyrics and shared aesthetic that their knowledge of actual living, breathing women is notional at best. Emo’s characteristic vulnerabile front is limited to self-sensitivity, every song a high-stakes game of control that involves “winning” or “losing” possession of the girl (see Dashboard Confessional, Brand New, New Found Glory and Glassjaw albums for prime examples). Yet, in the vulnerability there is no empathy, no peerage or parallelism. Emo’s yearning doesn’t connect it with women—it omits them.

As Andy Greenwald notes in his book about emo culture,
Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo
,
lyrically, emo singers “revel in their misery and suffering to an almost ecstatic degree, but with a limited use of subtlety and language. It tends to come off like Rimbaud relocated to the Food Court.” Women in emo songs are denied the dignity of humanization through both the language and narratives, we are omnipresent yet chimerical, only of consequence in romantic settings.

***

On a dance floor in Seattle, a boy I know decides to plumb the topic:

“I heard you’re writing a column about how emo is sexist.”

“I am.”

“What do you mean ‘
emo is sexist
’? Emo songs are no different than all of rock history, than Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.”

“I know—I’d rather not get into right now.”

“How are songs about breaking up sexist though? Everyone breaks up. If you have a problem with emo, you have a problem with all of rock history!”

“I know. I do.”

To paraphrase Nixon sidekick H.R. Haldeman, ”History is wack.”

There must be some discussion, at least for context, about the well-worn narrative of the boy rebel’s broken heart, as exemplified by the last fifty-plus years of blues-based music, that there are songs about loving and losing women; that
men writing songs about women
is practically the definition of rock ‘n’ roll. And as a woman, as a music critic, as someone who lives and dies for music, there is a rift within, a struggle of how much deference you can afford, and how much you are willing to ignore what happens in these songs simply because you like the music.

Can you ignore the lyrical content of the Stones’ “Under my Thumb” because you like the song? Are you willing to? Or the heaping pile of dead or brutalized women that amasses in Big Black’s discography? Is emo exceptional in the scope of the rock canon either in terms of treatment of women or in its continual rubbing salute to its own trouble-boy cliché image? Is there anything that separates Dashboard Confessional’s condemnation of his bed-hopping betrayer and makes it any more egregious than any woman/mother/whore/ex-girlfriend showing up in songs of Jane’s Addiction, Nick Cave, The Animals or Justin Timberlake? Can you forgo judgment woe to women in the recorded catalog of Zeppelin because the first eight bars of “Communication Breakdown” is total fucking godhead? Where do you split? Do you even bother to care, because if you’re going to try and kick against it, you, as my dancing friend says, “have a problem with all of rock history,” and because who, other than a petty, too-serious bitch dismisses Zeppelin?! Do you accept the sexism and phallocentricity of the last few decades of popular music and in your punk rock community as just how it is?

Who do you excuse and why? Do you check your politics at the door and just dance or just rock or just let side A spin out? Can you ignore the marginalization of women’s lives on the records that line your record shelves in hopes that feigned ignorance will bridge the gulf, because it’s either that or purge your collection of everything but free jazz, micro house 12”s and the Mr. Lady Records catalog?

It’s almost too big of a question to ask. I start to ask this of myself, to really start investigating, and stop, realizing full well that if I get an answer I might just have to retire to an adobe hut in the Italian countryside and not take any visitors for a long time. Or turn into the rock critical Andrea Dworkin, and report with resignation that all music made by men propagates the continual oppression and domination of women. Sometimes I feel like every rock song I hear is a sucker punch towards us. And I feel like no one takes that impact seriously, let alone notices it. It is “just” music.

My deepest concerns about the lingering effects of emo is not so much for myself or for my friends—we have refuge in our personal-political platforms and deep-crated record collections—but rather for the teenage girls I see crowding front and center at emo shows. The ones who for whom this is their inaugural introduction to the underground, whose gateway may have been through Weezer or the Vagrant America tour or maybe Dashboard Confessional’s
Unplugged
. The ones who are seeking music out, who are wanting to stake some claim to punk rock, or an underground avenue, for a way out, a way under, to sate the seemingly unquenchable, nameless need—the same need I know I came to punk rock with. Emo is the province of the young, their foundation is fresh-laid, my concern is for people who have no other previous acquaintance with the underground, save for these bands and their songs.

When I was that age, I too had a hunger for a music that spoke a language I was just starting to decipher, music that affirmed my ninth grade fuck-you values—music that encouraged me to not allow my budding feminist ways to be bludgeoned by the weight of mainstream, patriarchal culture—I was lucky I was met at the door with things like the Bikini Kill demo, Fugazi and the first Kill Rock Stars comp. I was met with polemics and respectful address; I heard my life and concerns in those songs. I was met with girl heroes deep in guitar squall, kicking out the jams under the stage lights. I was being hurtled towards deeper rewards. Records and bands were triggering ideas and inspiration. I acknowledge the importance of all of that because I know I would not be who I am now, doing what I do, 12 years down the line, if I had not had gotten those fundamentals, been presented with those big ideas about what music and, moreover, what life, can be about.

So now I watch these girls at emo shows more than I ever do the band. I watch them sing along, to see what parts they freak out over. I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage, resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, since there are no girls, there is no
them
up there. I wonder if they see themselves as participants, or only as consumers or—if we reference the songs directly—the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this. If being denied keys to the clubhouse is enough to spur them into action.

I know that, for me, even as a teenage autodidact who thought her every idea was worthy of expression and an audience, it did not occur to me to start a band until I saw other women in one. It took seeing Babes in Toyland and Bikini Kill to truly throw on the lights, to show me that there was more than one place, one role, for women to occupy, and that our participation was important and vital—it was YOU MATTER writ large.

I don’t want these front row girls to miss that. I don’t want girls leaving clubs denied of encouragement and potential. As lame as punk rock can be, as hollow as all of our self-serving claims ring—that the culture of punk is truly different somehow than that of median society—at its gnarled foundations still exists the possibilities for connection. There is still the possibility for exposure to radical notions, for punk rock to match up to what many kids dream, or hope for punk DIY to mean. But much of that hinges on the continual presence of radicalized women within the leagues, and those women being encouraged—given reasons to stay, to want to belong—rather than diminished by the music which glues the community together.

Us girls deserve more than one song. We deserve more than one pledge of solidarity. We deserve better songs than any boy will ever write about us.

CHANCE THE RAPPER

A truncated version ran in
Chicago Magazine
,
June 2013

Chance the Rapper doesn’t want to go home. He just came from there, he says. The 20-year old rapper is in the passenger seat of my car. We were slated to drive around his South Side neighborhood, Chatham, where he grew up and now lives with his girlfriend. There are a flurry of excuses: It’s hot out. It will take too long and he has to be at the studio in an hour. The ‘hood where he lives is just where he lives, he says. His story, of how he went from half-dropped-out burner kid to Chicago’s next big thing, he insists, “happened here.” He motions to indicate that
here
means exactly where we are—this few-block stretch of downtown surrounding the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library.

Despite his casual air and congenial charm, Chance is very aware of his image, his origin story and how much it constitutes his appeal. Beneath his earnest demeanor lies a kid who has mapped every inch of his hustle. Chance is a favorite with high school kids, in part, because his story could be theirs. He paints himself as the one kid amid the overachievers at Jones Prep who did not care about his future. Likable but a loner, he got busted smoking weed while ditching class at Millennium Park and spent his subsequent 10-day suspension recording a mixtape of songs that birthed his rap career. His is a ground-level stardom, someone kids can touch and talk to when they see him on the train or in the street—he is someone they could ostensibly become. The young MC is very clear on the importance of his apocryphal tale and that is the only one he is inclined to tell. And so we will not begin our story of Chance the Rapper in Chatham, we will begin where he says it began: downtown.

We park and step out of the car outside of the Columbia College dorms. There is the waft of marijuana and someone yells “Whattup, man!” A former classmate from Jones appears and pulls Chance in for a half-hug, and explains, “He was the craziest motherfucker in school!” The old friend passes Chance his joint. Chance plugs his upcoming mixtape by name and street date. They exchange numbers after the kid offers his in case Chance needs a hookup for weed.

It is difficult to ascertain whether Chance is famous citywide, but in this six-block proximity of where we walk, he is the Mayor of the Underage. He is greeted constantly, by name, with handshakes, pounds, dap. He gamely poses for pictures, is offered lights for his ever-present cigarettes, and kids prod his memory to see if he remembers the last time they met—at the library, in the parking lot of their school when he was selling tickets to one of his shows, that one time their cousin introduced them.

We head down the street to Juggrnaut, the hip-hop clothing store that has hosted all of Chance’s mixtape release parties, drawing hundreds more kids than they can accommodate in the tiny space. Owner Roger Rodriguez brags that they’ve known him since back when he was “Just Chance. Before he was Chance
Thee
.” In the store, the half dozen dudes shopping look up but play it like they are not noticing Chance, who refers to the store as “home.” He would sometimes spend six hours a day there, writing rhymes or just hanging out. That doesn’t really happen anymore. Two middle school-age boys in uniforms pass by and pause to gawk when they catch sight of Chance through the open door. Chance gives them an acknowledging wave. They wave back before running away.

After Juggrnaut, we head east on Washington and make a left on State and head into the YouMedia center on the ground floor of the library. “The first time I came here was to rap,” he explains. Kanye-obsessed Chance was in a duo with a friend (“We were terrible”) and had heard that the library had free recording studios. The center also offers free workshops; “Production, software, piano lessons, music theory—I took all of them.” He quickly became the star of the popular Wednesday-night open mics. “This place made me what I am today.” He swings open the door to the recording studio and pops his head in. Five teenage boys are inside, one is behind the mic, the rest behind the computer. “Y’all recording?” he asks. “I used to be recording in here—I don’t mean to hold up your session.” Chance acts oblivious but the boys are stunned silent. This is a little like Derrick Rose suddenly sidling up while you’re free-throwing in the driveway.

By the time he ducks back out a minute later, nearly a dozen boys have amassed in a semicircle. “All y’all rap?” he asks them. They all giddily introduce themselves by names they rap under. Dre Valentine, E-Man, Vic-Ivy, Psycho Ten Times. The iPhones come out and there is a group shot. They are all 15, 16, 17—the same age as Chance when he started camping out at YouMedia—and all of them are from the Chicago’s South Side, too. A kid who raps as Esh explains, “Everyone knows this is where Chance made
10 Day
.” We decide to leave, as it becomes apparent that every kid in the library has realized
Chance is here
.