OMG This rules
Dec. 6th, 2002 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarksiren2as seen in my new *friend* ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
johnhughes (what a great name, btw!~;) journal:
"this is a letter from Joan Jett to the editors of Rolling Stone, which appeared on a website, but which Rolling Stone never published. Please forward this to everyone you know, or post it in your LJ... and while you're at it, pick up 'Fit To Be Tied' by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts because it's one of the best albums ever."
I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.
*sidenote: this is the ONLY time you will EVER see this word used in such a manner in my LJ; they're not my words anyway, so beh.
By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!
Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.
Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.
Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown.
So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.
Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons... Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.
Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.
Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.
What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these-- instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.
In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold."
The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.
If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.
-Joan Jett
***
right on!
johnhughes (what a great name, btw!~;) journal:"this is a letter from Joan Jett to the editors of Rolling Stone, which appeared on a website, but which Rolling Stone never published. Please forward this to everyone you know, or post it in your LJ... and while you're at it, pick up 'Fit To Be Tied' by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts because it's one of the best albums ever."
I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.
*sidenote: this is the ONLY time you will EVER see this word used in such a manner in my LJ; they're not my words anyway, so beh.
By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!
Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.
Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.
Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown.
So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.
Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons... Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.
Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.
Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.
What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these-- instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.
In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold."
The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.
If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.
-Joan Jett
***
right on!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-12-05 10:52 pm (UTC)It was written by a woman from NYC named Maya Price.
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=psychommunity&itemid=38757#cutid1
no subject
Date: 2002-12-06 11:35 am (UTC)Still, it shows that the words themselves strike enough of a cord in people for them to spread it so.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-07 01:16 pm (UTC)~;)
regardless of who wrote it, it's fantastic!
Thanx for setting the record straight though. I appreciate knowing the real source.
no subject
Very cool.
no subject
no subject
Date: 2002-12-06 05:12 pm (UTC)Rolling Stone has been nothing more than a journal of pop culture as long as I have been alive, giving the real rock only snippets of coverage in the Random Notes section, with the exception of the alt-rock heyday of the early-to-mid 90s.
This shouldn't be news to anyone. It's still outrageous, though.
Does anyone know of a music magazine that is available in major stores that actually covers news about authentic counterculture? I've glanced through issues of some techno magazines and British magazines like Bizarre that cover weirdness, but nothing devoted to real trailblazing new music.
The big, "respectable" brand names in the media will continue to cater to the teen-pop sector of society for some time to come. Teenagers are the only ones with enough disposable income and naivete to buy into the whole fantasy they peddle. Get used to it.
I remember Shakira. She was really big in Mexico about five years ago. I remember going down there in '97 and hearing her album "Pies Descalzos" with my friend Alejandra. It sounded kind of like the Cranberries or something folkrocky with a commercial/pop-style sheen sprayed on. I was very surprised to hear the name mentioned by teenyboppers in the States five years later.
Anyway, I think it's a waste of decent outrage to get miffed about stuff like this. Pop culture is poison. No other argument I've heard can even try to dent this one. Art is dead as far as the young'uns are concerned. Only real artists care about art anymore, and they don't get heard because real current art doesn't sell millions of copies.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-07 01:27 pm (UTC)What should one be decently outraged about?
No, no art isn't dead to everyone but the artist. Real art never has sold millions of copies. You're confusing art with pop culture with that statement.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-07 05:46 pm (UTC)But seriously, how many people who really care about real art don't have some artistic tendencies or aspirations themselves? Very few, I'd wager. Those who understand art but are not artists by some definition are very few in number, and I suppose it was rude of me to ignore them in this comment (I sometimes type faster than I can think).
As far as the outrage goes: How much time can you spend being outraged? After a while, you will either cool your jets or have a heart attack or stroke. The things that one could read in a magazine like Rolling Stone are certainly not worth any sustained outrage because you would have to have been outraged nonstop for longer than I have been alive. Things have been that bad in pop culture for that long.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-07 01:29 pm (UTC)However, I do remember when it was more than that, and I actually have seen some newer music in there over the years. It is not readily visible though, like you said. Then again, what good music is readily available anywhere?
I have found more interesting music online and through strange labels found in the back pages of music mags than I ever have through mainstream radio or RS or MTV, etc. Except for maybe when 120 minutes first started...damn I miss that.
As for the art, well, my roommate would be more the person to discuss that realm with. People view it with different eyes and their own tastes/ perspectives affect the success of any artist, be they musicians, writers, or painters. But art isn't dead, in my opinion. It's just blurred by either pop-culture whores or people who have lost hope and faith in beauty, regardless of it's manifestation. People forget that trees swaying in the wind are beautiful, or that silence in a song can have more impact than an full-fledged orchestra.
It's all a matter of perspective.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-07 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-12-10 08:50 am (UTC)Kind of like the noise music
As for the "arse" comment, I was also made fun of for that for a long while - my family is Irish though, so it was something we learned growing up. I never knew until you wrote it above that RS deemed it "cool" or whatever. Go America with the originality! Wuddah-wuddha-hoo!!!~;)
no subject
Date: 2002-12-06 07:14 pm (UTC)