Been doing a lot of hanging out downtown these past few days. Thursday was about barhopping from Hotel Fig (mmm overpriced Stoli Vanil black russians) to Bar 107 (mmm $5 PBR tallboys and Van Halen on the jukebox) to La Cita (mmm sweaty, unattitudinal dance club with no cover). Friday was about the second evening of Arthur Magazine's Arthur Nights, at the dazzlingly beautiful Palace Theatre on Broadway.
The venue was as much the star of the show as any of the performers -- the main stage was in the theater proper, while attendees were encouraged to travel (stairs or elevator) to the upper levels, where there were restrooms (including a 2nd-floor "Women's Lounge" with windows overlooking the theater entrance; 1911-era ladies who had arrived unescorted could wait for their suitors here), vendors/merch tables, and a second stage in a very nice 5th floor loft space that had probably served as a storage attic for the theater in its younger years.
I enjoyed last night, the highlights being the Howling Hex and Fortune's Flesh. But bands like the Heartless Bastards and Be Your Own Pet left me worried about the state of "women in rock circa 2006" -- and I don't entirely blame the artists for this, since it's more a case of hating the game than the players. I felt very uncomfortable with the way the males in the audience were "dealing" with the female performers (more on this in a second) and how it seems necessary for females in rock to have to resort to a minstrelsy-like "spectacle" to get noticed at all, where you'll only get polite applause unless you put yourself out there as A Woman Who Rawks Liek A Man!!! or A Woman Who Acts Like A Temperamental 7-Year-Old Girl Who's Just Learned The Word "Shit" or A Woman Who Maybe Sort of Rocks and Is Dressed Like A Vegas Cocktail Waitress (see: Tav Falco's drummer), or just some kind of freakshow where you can't just get up on stage and be a normal, talented adult female playing music in normal clothes. I appreciate spectacle, and I appreciate mass pop culture, but I'd always hoped the indie rock world could be a little enlightened about these things (not completely humorless though; I like a little glamour with my granola).
But it was pretty sick the way the guys were giving their male heroes all this respect and reverence, and when the women came on it took a very different tone -- alternating between a vaguely condescending "fuck yeah, girls that aren't girly" and "whooo omg you rock, hi I'm a submissive mama's boy and when you spit on me and called me an asshole, it touched all kinds of perverse 'self-flagellation' nerves and I love how you hate me" and "I secretly watch kiddie pr0n and a girl singer with a Punky Brewster/teenage-Penelope Houston vibe is a no-brainer." I wasn't sensing much reaction at all to Christina Carter's low-key set on the 5th floor -- which I only caught the tail end of, but she was just making shoegazey guitar noises and random vocal sounds, and people seemed to be half-watching, half-absorbed-in-their-conversations.
End rant... for now.
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