Happy Happy Friday!!! Why the exuberance? Well, today marks the wedding weekend of ButtercupPunch’s very own BiscuitDoughJones, and I must apologize for this post being late as we are all getting ready for the Panda festivities. But delay no more – on with the Sugar! This week the resident lezbabes of BCP take us on a tour through some of their audatory pleasures.
BAngieB: I guess I am just too old and cranky, but I don’t get all the obsession with lesbian music. Why do I have to love it just because I’m a lesbian? I mean, I’m Southern but I don’t love Lynard Skynard. Now, sure, I loved Melissa Etheridge back in the day, and her concert at Mud Island in 1995 was unbelievable, but after “Yes I Am” her music got lame, lame, lame. There are two Indigo Girls songs I like…and neither one is “Closer to Fine.” I like k.d. lang just fine, but not anymore than a lot of other artists. Oh, and who is Ani DiFranco?
But, seriously, you guys? Here is my favorite lesbian artist.:
AYL: k.d. lang! Okay, this obsession started when I was younger and my older sister purchased the Friends soundtrack. Within a week she was done with it and passed it on to me. Loving older-sister-hand-me-downs, I scooped that shit up, threw it in my boombox, and listened track by track. When I got to track number five, a slow, deliberate, and incredilbly sensual voice dripped out of the speakers and I started to feel it all over me. Who was it? I flipped the CD case over and dragged my finger down the line-up. Artist, k.d. lang. Song, Sexuality. The lyrics, “Release yourself upon me and free the hounds of chastity unleash your sexuality, on me,” got me all hot and bothered and I didn’t know why. And the video…k.d. lang straddling a chair, close up shots of her mouth while ingesting a spoonful of red, jiggly jello, bowls of cracked and uncracked nuts…a sensual feast! I enjoy k.d. lang‘s music a lot. She has an amazing voice, her lyrics are open, daring, and extremely sexy. They make you want to take your clothes off and dribble milk down your legs while eating cherries. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (and there’s probably a really good chance that you DON’T), watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmMNUiBCyRk
BCW: Unfortunately, a lot of the music out there that falls into the category many would deem “lesbian” also falls into the category that I deem “total shit.” Dozens would disagree with me, mind you: Tegan and Sara, I hear, have a respectable following. But this isn’t about me and who I don’t like; this is about you.
I’m gonna talk about Ani (DiFranco) for a quick minute here. I’m gonna say this right now and I’m only gonna say it once, and I say it as someone who admittedly has not put on an Ani record in who-knows-how-long : I am SO OVER lesbians saying that they’re SO OVER Ani DiFranco. I get it, I do – many of us have gone through an Ani-discovery phase wherein we listened to her music ad nauseum and identified with every perfectly-chosen metaphor that she employed. Most of us have probably at some point felt at least somewhat stripped bare by her uncanny ability to put into words exactly what it is we’re feeling, better than we could, and maybe now we’re not so “there” anymore. We can’t be tormented fifteen-year-old baby dykes forever, after all, nor can we be sensitive young gay boys or tragically-behind-the-times aging hippie parents forever, either. But dammit, she’s Ani-fucking-DiFranco. Show some respect. She started her own record company and has churned out an album a year for the last nineteen years, plus side projects. She told Letterman she’d only do his show on the condition that she could play “Grey” and refused the invite when they told her no. She INVENTED THE PIANO KEY NECKTIE, for god’s sake. Okay, not that last one. But she was there – her weirdly-long right-hand fingernails slapping and snapping, her shorn/coloured/dreaded/wavy/shorn/wavy hair, her too-many double live albums, her impossibly titled Up Up Up Up Up Up, her ill-chosen saxophonist-cum-rapper Maceo Parker, her enough-already jazzy jam band phase post-To The Teeth, and her HUGE ASS BALLS – right when you needed her. And she’s still doing it, goddammit – maybe not for you anymore, but for people out there who are just like who you used to be, and dammit, that’s a good thing.
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You know when you really love a band and you feel them and their songs make you happier or more alive, somehow? There’s another lovely facet to that when you know a band is lezzie. M and I went to this lesbian hip-hop / dancehall / r&b party here in Oakland called Butta earlier this summer, and there were these girls in amazing outfits seriously fucking tearing shit up on the dance floor. I insisted on telling them so, and tried to boss them into dancing some more. Lo, they were performing, they said! They got on stage and dropped some bombass rhymes on the crowd and while M is the savvier hip-hop half, we were both instantly in love with these girls. Their stage presence is like, whoa. Times like that I feel really lucky to be where I am with unfettered access to a thriving lesbian music scene. As a sometimes-lesbian-DJ, it’s a high priority to give my peeps as much play as I can get away with.
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That said, you don’t get a free pass just because you’re a dyke. I’m looking at you, The Cliks! Good God, there is some really terrible lesbian music out there. It’s alarming, but then I remember that there’s some really terrible ALL kinds of music out there. As we say, not everyone is a special little snowflake. But if you make me want to fight, sweat, dance, fuck or cry, I will love you. Queer or not. But queer is good. Really, really good.
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Feel free to ask me for recs based on your current likes/dislikes, and to gaze upon the sweet, sweet face of JD Samson, my longtime Le Tigre crush.
October 17, 2008 at 6:22 pm
YES to the ani rant. i may not be the tortured, yearning youth i once was, but she meant a lot to me in high school. and college. and, fuck, even now she sometimes hits the spot. and while there are albums of hers i’ve never even heard (the newish jazz band ones), there are SO MANY OF THEM to choose from!
also, i like the indigo girls. i know, i know. bowling and angie are not fans. they’re no ani, but they’re good for a summer day. and Ghost still gives me little chills.
skinny, i second that evaluation of the Cliks. not. a. fan. do like The Butchies, though.
well done ladies!
October 17, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Y’all? My Ani DeFranco question was real. I have never heard any of her music and I didn’t know anyone who listens to her…until now. I guess I need to up my game.
October 17, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Wait, why would Letterman not let Ani sing “Grey”? Am I forgetting some of the lyrics?
October 17, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Whilst I luv me some Leisha, I do not get the Murmurs love. And everyone knows Mugatu invented the piano key tie..
October 17, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Also, whilst not strictly sapphic, Sarah McLaughlin and Suzie Quatro were my girl crushes growing up.
October 18, 2008 at 2:06 am
I had “friends” who used to ask me if I was a lesbian because I listened to female singers and bands (e.g. Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, even the flippin’ Dixie Chicks). If they’d been aware of the existence of gay music they probably would’ve dropped dead.
Meanwhile, I hope y’all have a lovely time at BDJ and her man and that the wedding is beauuuutiful and that everyone cries and that they will stay together forever and ever and ever.
October 19, 2008 at 11:46 pm
My favorite Indigo Girls song is a live version of “The Midnight Train to Georgia” damn what a fine piece of music.
October 19, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Yay Boyskout!
October 20, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Alara – YES.
All – TheGuvnah and I pretty much only listened to Tori, Sarah, and Ani in high school. When Sarah got married (I think I was a junior or senior), our favorite teacher found out and was all, “but I thought she was gay?” and then was even more perturbed over the next few years when Tori and Ani both went on to get married (to men).
Anyway. I still love the Indigo Girls with all my heart, but yes (sorry BCW) I’ve been over Ani for a looooong time now. BUT – she’s amazing. I just couldn’t keep up with her musically.
October 20, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I like the Indigo Girls’ cover of “Tangled Up in Blue.” But their “Romeo and Juliet” cover is nowhere near the Dire Straits original.
I listen to a shit ton of folk-rock girls with guitars (and keyboards), and I will always love Ani because she’s always herself, dammit, and fuck you if you don’t like it. Also, of all the girls with guitars out there, she’s probably the best musician.
October 20, 2008 at 4:27 pm
AYL: I love k.d. lang, especially her early country records.
October 20, 2008 at 5:19 pm
@phDORK: i’ve always assumed it was because of the whole “white people are so scared of black people” opening line.
October 20, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Yeah, I don’t get the grey thing either. I just reread those lyrics, and I don’t really see what’s so racy/inappropriate about them. Help?
October 21, 2008 at 12:51 pm
@LL: how could you not?! look at that picture. she is beckoning you over to release your sexuality on her! beckoning! look at those fingers, i mean cufflinks!