I should respond to that post in comments, but I’ve found there to be no way to do so constructively in those settings. So instead I’ll say it here: I agree with K that that is not a good post. It’s filled with straw men and provably false assertions, eg:

My personal favorite is “I just don’t like women’s voices.” Have you ever heard, in the history of time, anyone declare that they just don’t like men’s voices?

I have heard this, in fact! I’ve heard two different good (male) friends say they don’t like men’s and women’s voices, respectively. I don’t really see the value in establishing a norm that would prevent them from saying that.

Of course I’m glad Silvana has a passionate reaction to the music she likes, and that such music — explicitly feminist music that appeals to her sensibilities — can exist. Everyone deserves that. I’m also sorry she feels others have intentionally pushed feelings of inferiority and resentment on her in a musical context, though I kind of suspect that has little to do with musical genres. And I agree that considering the privilege and assumptions enjoyed by a performer or songwriter is a potentially rewarding avenue for critical thought.

But really, this “dude music” framing doesn’t strike me as useful in any way — it’s just hopelessly reductive, subjective and retrograde. It’s applying some sort of taxonomic sparkle to the same process whereby I’m a total snob toward Nickelback fans. Which is fun, and I’m going to keep doing it and believing in the case I can mount against their music. But that case really has very little to do with our relative levels of political and social enlightenment. Not to be a dick, but I would think someone with your affection for punk music would intuitively understand that linking aesthetic and political sensibilities together requires a hell of a lot more care and discretion than Silvana’s post. Frankly, I’d advise against trying it in any case where Wagner isn’t being discussed.

Finally, an mostly unrelatedly: any project that tries to build Nancy Spungen into a feminist hero is off to a rocky start.

Haven’t read the essay yet, but this strikes me as simplistic:

Dude music is post-rock, and prog-rock, and rock that exists not to say anything, but to showcase how awesome the men in the band are at playing guitar.

Now, I’m a dude who frankly likes what I guess is narrowly defined here as dude music. Is the argument that dudes who play guitar better than most are status quo? What does status quo mean in this context? Pelican? Red Sparrowes? Russian Circles? Does being a “dude” mean they have nothing to say? Why is that? Who decides that they have nothing to say?

I certainly wasn’t trying to build Nancy Spungen into a feminist hero. I was making the point about women being regarded by men who make music as Standing In The Way of Musical Greatness.

As for the rest of your post, I don’t know what to tell you. Is it reductive? Sure. Like I said over there, it’s basically impossible to talk about something like this without making generalizations. I could put a caveat in every time I made an assertion about anything, but that would be really boring and makes for bad writing.

Just because you’ve heard people profess that they don’t like men’s voices doesn’t mean the “women aren’t good at singing rock music” meme isn’t out there. If you don’t think it’s out there, I can’t prove it to you beyond rounding up examples from my personal life. But I suspect you’re not going to find that very persuasive.

Not to sound like a dick myself, but I’d suggest you read her essay with more empathy. The ineffability of Dude Music is something that I gather she’s not trying to bound into a strict set of individually-necessary-jointly-sufficient conditions — it’s an impulse, an ethic, a guttural feeling, a cauldron of unhealthy gendered motivations or effects. It’s, in other words, something to be opposed in the various guises it takes. Any and every punk rocker recognizes that feeling of obligatory-opposition in his and her reptilian brain. “Linking aesthetic and political sensibilities” is not something that any punk rocker takes much care to do, because when diagnosing something unhealthy, better to err on the side of overkill.

Or I’m not punk and you’re telling everyone, etc.

Lastly, this is what she wrote about Nancy Spungeon:

Women have three roles: 1) to serve as inspirations for songs; 2) to be sex objects who, hopefully, also make music men feel good about Their Art; 3) to be someone who is dangerously standing in the way of men acheiving greatness (see, e.g., Yoko Ono and Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious’ girlfriend)

That ain’t turning Nancy into a feminist hero. It’s an attack on the anti-feminist burn-the-witch impulse that excuses Sid’s self-inflicted failures by projecting them onto the dirty junkie groupie.

And, like I said on Twitter, I’d encourage everyone who thinks they disagree with me to read Jessica Hopper on the same topic. She gives a lot more examples and her piece is better-researched, but she’s making essentially the same argument.

People seem to be pissed off that I invented this term called “Dude Music.” Look. It’s not a real category. It has no arbiter. I made it up, not to put things in categories of “good” and “bad”, but as a shorthand to describe the way that–as Spencer put it well–”male indie rock hegemony” makes me feel, as a musician and consumer of music.

Alright, I apologize for being hyperbolic about Nancy Spungen. I think bringing her up was a strange thing to do, but you didn’t make the case I said you did. And given that I’m about to be a pain in the ass about hyperbolic language, I definitely need to apologize for that.

Just because you’ve heard people profess that they don’t like men’s voices doesn’t mean the “women aren’t good at singing rock music” meme isn’t out there. If you don’t think it’s out there, I can’t prove it to you beyond rounding up examples from my personal life. But I suspect you’re not going to find that very persuasive.

I agree with you that that perspective exists and is worth addressing. Overstating the situation isn’t that helpful, though. Is there something wrong with me for not liking Joanna Newsom’s voice? What about if I follow it up by saying how awesome PJ Harvey is? Rock is a boy’s club, no doubt, but it would take stronger arguments to convince me that this effect is anything more than an Nth-order echo of the fact that rock attracts lots of male fans and that people tend to identify with people like themselves.

As for the rest of your post, I don’t know what to tell you. Is it reductive? Sure. Like I said over there, it’s basically impossible to talk about something like this without making generalizations. I could put a caveat in every time I made an assertion about anything, but that would be really boring and makes for bad writing.

I see where you’re coming from when you say you don’t want to qualify everything. To me — speaking as a potential target of the critique — this stuff is too important to treat sloppily. This is my perspective, and it is inevitably privileged and blinkered and probably will also sound intolerably sanctimonious, but here it is:

Critiques of masculine privilege are deadly fucking serious. When I read one, it implicitly carries this message: “There may be things about the way you perceive and move through the world that are really, really wrong. They’re cruel to me and to the women you care about. You may not be able to appreciate the seriousness of the matter because your perspective is fundamentally different. But I’m going to ask you to take my word for it and do endeavor to change these things about yourself, even though they may be pretty fundamental to your self-conception or personality or aesthetic tastes (or whatever).”

This can be a lot to ask, but I think it’s also a totally fair and necessary thing to ask. I’d like to think I’m game for it. But asking it necessarily carries a ton of responsibility, because my privilege means I am necessarily not in a position to judge the merits of your case from an objective perspective.

So when you talk about how your former bandmates acted like assholes and diminished you, I want to listen and figure out how to avoid behaving similarly. But the fact that, say, the Hold Steady’s occasional noodling* might bore you silly? Not only do I not really care (except insofar as I might compose a playlist for a party we’re both at) — different strokes and all — but I get kind of pissed off that it’s being mixed up with something that I’m obligated to take seriously.

Now maybe this is all on me and I just shouldn’t be reading these kinds of blog posts with an eye toward this sort of thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the case. But that’s where I’m coming from.

* Also: Marnie Stern. C’mon.

Spencer:

Or I’m not punk and you’re telling everyone, etc.

Clearly, I wouldn’t be qualified to even begin to engage in that age-old pissing match, nor would I ever want to with a friend. My point was just a general observation that projecting politics onto art is asking for trouble.

Sorry: I was unclear. “this effect” should be taken to mean “the effect whereby people say they don’t enjoy female vocalists”, not to mean “that relatively few women are successful rock musicians”. The latter strikes me as a problem very much worth addressing, while the former just seems like an aesthetic judgment and/or artifact of the larger structure of the industry.

Good article, post, and interesting discussion. I love that Spencer can actually write a sentence like this:

The guitar sound is the most subversive Tony Iommi reference ever recorded.

Because I’m sure that’s exactly what Carrie was thinking as she dialed it in.

Critiques of masculine privilege are deadly fucking serious. When I read one, it implicitly carries this message: “There may be things about the way you perceive and move through the world that are really, really wrong. They’re cruel to me and to the women you care about. You may not be able to appreciate the seriousness of the matter because your perspective is fundamentally different. But I’m going to ask you to take my word for it and do endeavor to change these things about yourself, even though they may be pretty fundamental to your self-conception or personality or aesthetic tastes (or whatever).”

I agree. I guess the difference here is, unlike the kind music that I’m critiquing, which is made by men for men, what I wrote was for women. It was meant to be a “fuck yeah, that happened to me AND IT SUCKS” post, not a “here’s how you need to change your behavior” post.

If I was writing to a male audience, I would have written it a lot differently. But I wasn’t. Not to say that men can’t read it. I hope they do! I’m glad they are! But convincing people to examine their privilege wasn’t my aim, pointing out that privilege to the other people who have also experienced it was, giving a voice to it, and describing it in a way that made other women think “hey, maybe that wasn’t just me.”

Also, I love the Hold Steady.

Yup. Okay, comity! I guess I sort of figured that might be the case, and is part of why I commented here. I appreciate you responding to me so thoughtfully, and for not taking my knee-jerkery personally.

And I’m glad you like the Hold Steady; I’m a big fan, too (though at the last show I went to the crowd kinda turned me off of the live experience).

Marnie Stern! Yes! Who noodles or math-rocks harder?

Tom, no offense taken, I wanted to make the point — this may sound pretentious — that yes, conflating aesthetic and political sensibilities is asking for trouble, as you say; but punk rock has always and will always ask for precisely this kind of trouble. Our mutual pseudonymous friend M. LeBlanc is following in a rich tradition.

So… now we hug?

Actually, only leaving this comment to note that her name’s on the linked post, which is the only reason why I ignored the pseudonymity.

*hug*

Yeah, I didn’t really know what to do with the pseudonymity owing to the essay’s attribution (even without last name). I figured I’d err on the side of maximum pseudonymity. Guidance?

The only thing that I am hiding is my RealLastName. So you can refer however you like, apart from that.

This was a feminist song about music, about de-prioritizing men’s voices in music, about rejecting the music that men make as being kind of fucking boring.

this was interesting because i’ve found myself coming to this same conclusion, by (i assume) a very different path, and it always felt a little odd, like maybe it was just some personal weirdness. which it still might be anyway, but now at least i have an alternate theory.

A great post, a great essay by LeBlanc, and a great excuse to listen to The Woods again (as if I needed one).

But since you asked in earnest, a High on Fire song that rocks harder than Entertain is: Blood From Zion from The Art of Self-Defense. NB, though: this may only be because Blood From Zion rocks harder than everything else ever, forever and ever, amen.

Here, look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnkSb86Tt6s