In the Blog
bearded ladies
In my years as a community-radio DJ, I’ve received many a promotional CD for a female artist with that most backhanded of compliments in its promo material: “Not your usual female singer-songwriter”. Okay, I take most music journalism about as seriously as I take Stephen Colbert’s presidential campaign, but this is annoying for so many reasons. What is “your usual female singer-songwriter”, and what’s so bad about that? Did Joni Mitchell really traumatize so many children of baby-boomers that we can no longer conceive of the (extremely broad!) category of female singer-songwriters as anything but derivative and banal? Humph. (Not that I think Joni is derivate and banal. But admittedly she did spawn a legion of copycats who occasionally make me want to poke my ears out.)
Other contributors include Turkish protest singer Selda, Wendy & Bonnie, Speck Mountain, and the indescribable Brigitte Fontaine. In fact, I’m not even going to try to describe her. Just watch the video below the cut. Laurie Anderson, eat your heart out.