SPEAKING OF WHICH

(Source: weheartit.com, via yeahgrrrlbrb)

“I think there were three singles on Celebrity Skin and five on Live Through This.” (I was right, but I couldn’t name “Softer, Softest.”) It’s nuts, right? That’s so many singles. And even besides those, nobody doesn’t know “Jennifer’s Body” or “Asking For It” or “Rock Star/Olympia” (or, you know, “Credit in the Straight World”).

I’ve never really spent much time talking about this album. Maybe I’ve offhandedly mentioned that I spent a season listening to “Violet” until my vision filled with grays and blacks and it was in one of those shaky moments that I learned that I wasn’t just, you know, a Courtney Love, but I was dealing with PTSD. And what PTSD feels like is shaking and blacking out listening to “Violet.”

Maybe this album isn’t even necessarily one of my favorite albums, but this album is crucial. It’s not about cultural moments, it’s not about representation, it’s not about narratives of strength or power. It is about something maybe more fundamental than that.

I have two reasons for saying this now:

1. reading this
2. just thinking that if you don’t identify/overidentify with “Violet” or “Miss World” or “Doll Parts” then we don’t live in the same universe and that gap will probably never be bridged and I will probably never be able to trust you. I don’t mean this as a joke, either? I mean this as a really, really important way of marking what my existence feels like from the inside, a way of showing it to the outside.

um, but hole are actually pretty great!

I love Hole more than Bikini Kill even, but it is ridiculous to call them Riot Grrrl.  Live Through This was practically almost called Let Me Show You The Ways In Which We Hate Kathleen Hanna.  And I can get behind that!  And we can love them both!

Reclaiming No-Shave November for the ladies.  Except, you know, it took me all month to get around to posting this.  You can imagine the initiative I have to shave, surely!  Anyway, I actually just wanted to repurpose the pubes layer of the stencil I made of L’Origine du Monde, so I threw together a few of these.

(via albumtacos)

This was very warm and meaningful, for which I thank Pitchfork.  I have some things around here I’ve put together about just that “and” phenom (featuring this song as well as others), but with a different thesis.  In time, friends, in time.

And the sky was all violet

I’ll be the madness that carries you away, I’ll be the sadness to light your darkest day.  I’ll be the desert island, where you can be free, I’ll be the vulture that you can catch and eat.  And the sky was made of amethyst, and all the stars looked just like little fish.  You should learn when to go.  You should learn how to say no.  And then some mumbly “M” words, and then They Get, what they want, and they never want it again.  Go on take everything, take everything I want you to.  In the morning, feeling half-right, it was more than just one day I’d feel alright.  Today is flat beneath the weight of next day next day next day next day.  Silence Kit, somethin’ somethin’ somethin’ in the tune of that Buddy Holly song, every time I sing this in my head it just becomes “Range Life” anyway.  That Sonic Youth album came out in 1994.  The first line is probably something like aRlekgjk, pfffffsdfaoigujotooom.  I really wouldn’t know.  My name is Jonas, I’m carrying the wheel, thanks for all you’ve shown us but this is how we feel.  Come sit next to me, pour yourself some tea, just like Gramma made when we couldn’t find sleep.  In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey—butane in my veins & I’m out to cut the junkie with the plastic eyeballs, you get the idea.  I declare I don’t care no more, I’m burning up and out and growing bored in my smoked out boring room.  My head is shaking in my eyes*, dragging my feet to hit the streets tonight, drive along these shittown lights.

*This is not what he is actually saying.  But to my 6-to-13-year-old-ears it was, so it counts.

This going to be my new performance art piece, I am going to have people throw a year from the 1990s at me and I’m going to try to continuously recite first lines from albums that came out that year.  I gotta work on my speed and flow.  If I practice, is that cheating?  Because I would say my entire life up to this point has been practicing for this anyway, so.  If I can’t handle it, I can probably just recite the entirety of like, hours’ worth of nineties alt hits from any given year.  Throw it at me, bitches.

That’s not very many, but really most of the albums you think came out in ‘94 were ‘93, like In Utero, and August and Everything After, and Everybody Else is Doing it, So Why Can’t We and I think Pablo Honey.  Basically, you know, those all had the singles of 1994, but technically they were ‘93 albums.  I mean, if I were talking about singles, you know.  “My Iron Lung” (whose first line, as far as I’m concerned will always be that Greenwood dun na naa with W’s though) and “Dreams” and “Round Here.”  You can check me on that, fuckers.  “Mr. Jones” was a single in ‘93, “Round Here” was a single in ‘94 along with “Rain King.”  I promise.  And maybeee, I don’t really wanna knowwww, how your garden growssss, ‘cause I just wanna FLLY.  That album came out in ‘94, but I have no clue what its first song is.  Fuck that.

I didn’t cheat, except to verify afterward that I had the right year and the right first track, and, obvs.  I actually don’t even know to which Sonic Youth album I referring though, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.  And I sat here fumbling with the tune  of “Desert Island” in my head for like fifteen minutes before I could come up with the first lines, and then I wasn’t even sure anymore if it came out in ‘94 or ‘95.

I can’t decide if my next work will feature 1993, 1995, 1997, or 1996.  These are my top five favorite years ever for albums, pretty much in that order.  I might do ‘95 just because I know the most albums from it, but then with ‘93 I can go HAVE YOU GOT A MINUTE, can you fit me into it? and STEP OUT THE FRONT DOOR LIKE A GHOST INTO THE FOG WHERE NO ONE NOTICES THE CONTRAST OF WHITE ON WHITE.  Both of them, MOTHERFUCKER. 

Speaking of 1994, did you know that Phil Ek produced There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and then spent the rest of his life working on albums like Chutes Too Narrow and with Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes and the Dodos and stuff?  I’m wondering if he had a seizure or something and lost part of his brain and now can only handle/is only moved by shitty 2000s complaint rock.  Sort of like that angsty beard kid that was on Work of Art, how he got in a car accident and suddenly his brain was really Metal.  Except, you know, the opposite.

Legit, the haircut in this video is perfect.

Of coursies.


Even though I am team Brownstein forever, Corrine is killin’ it here. 


What’s with all these Riot Grrrls doin’ the Miuy thing?  I always feel weird trying to be “inspired” by Kathleen Hanna’s “look”—but we’re in the middle of a cultish saturation of head-to-toe you-know-Miu, and as much as that collection is my everything, I’m looking to see more interpretations of that look beyond pre-set combinations on brunettes draped over chairs, you know?

Still, that collection forever.

And, some things I stole from Tavi:








I miss my cactus collection, I think I’m gonna start one again.

These shoes I have in my head.  You should see the shoes I need to make.
I have this quasi-Miuish top that’s absolutely impractical beyond belief, and yet I have been the most excited I’ve been over an article of clothing maybe in years.  It’s see-through, and I’m gonna wear it over my yellow Marimmekko, with the platforms that I’m imagining.  And handmade t-shirts. 



You know, millions of Courtney Loves.