Read Online The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jessica Hopper
Tags: Music Criticism
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as I was artfully lingering outside his AP English class, I said “I figured I would have seen you at the show last night,” he told me he was no longer into Fluid . I was crushed. I had spent dozens of hours listening to their records—which I found to be unbearable—fantasizing and prepping for conversations about Fluid minutiae that we would one day have.
All soul soon left my pose. My obsession with detail slipped. I was coming to the agonizing conclusion that all of this, my teen-girl masking, was in vain. I’d dedicated several months and several hundred dollars on trying to cultivate a connection that was never going to be. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to give up the masquerade.
At the end of the school year, I managed to get invited to a party where all three of the school’s grunge cover bands were playing. I would soon have the chance to see my crush-object one last time before the span of summer. I went to the party wearing a Soundgarden Louder Than Love T-shirt, which I had purchased for the occasion. I slouched up against a wall, peacocking my ennui, sipping a Miller Lite and pretending to be way into that, too. I was standing next to Andrew’s best friend, Mike, who was setting up a bass rig. I ventured to ask him what was this awesome record we were listening to? He gawked at me, appalled, “Uh? Louder Than Love ?” I scrambled, mortified, and insisted I was too wasted to recognize Soundgarden, the most distinctive band of the grunge genre.
I then had the torturous experience of then watching Mike walk over to Andrew and relay this anecdote and then Andrew look towards me and snicker. I left the party, walked home and cried myself to sleep.
Less than a month later, I picked up a compilation called Kill Rock Stars . While my purchase was initially fueled by the inclusion of Nirvana and Melvins tracks, both potential conversation topics with Andrew, but something entirely different happened when I heard a band on side A, Bikini Kill. Kathleen Hanna’s rebel yell posted the bail from my teen grunge prison; I had found music that meant everything to me . The band’s Bikini Kill fanzine and the cassette demo meant I no longer had a reason to be obsessing over music that meant nothing . I was liberated from my days spent walking past some boy’s locker, loudly humming Nirvana songs. Bikini Kill songs taught me something that neither Mudhoney, nor Andrew Beccone ever could—that my teen-girl soul mattered. That who I was mattered, what I thought and felt mattered, even when they were invisible to everyone else.
PART THREE: NOSTALGIA
WHEN THE BOSS WENT MORAL:
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S LOST ALBUM
The American Prospect , November 2010
What is pop music for if not escape? It lifts us out of our everyday, our workday, to stoke and coalesce our fantasies about romance or an alternate life, away from where we’ve detoured. In 1977, Bruce Springsteen began recording the album that would become the landmark Darkness on the Edge of Town , and it was that escapist idea of pop that he was working with. Informed by Elvis, Orbison and Brill Building songwriters, he was penning from that tradition: grand, lovelorn tunes of cars and girls and memories that were easy to relate to. Springsteen was eager to prove himself more than a one-hit wonder off the popularity of Born To Run and feeling the schism between where his new success placed him and the blue-collar caste from which he rose. This schism is very much the place that pop is meant to offer escape from—and it’s what began to drive and shape Darkness . Springsteen wanted to speak from that unresolvable place, to confine the listener in that underclass discomfort.
Those tracks that didn’t fit that vision now make up The Promise —a lost album of sorts. These 22 tracks are immaculate—a glut of fine work from The Boss at the dawn of his prime. Some of the
All soul soon left my pose. My obsession with detail slipped. I was coming to the agonizing conclusion that all of this, my teen-girl masking, was in vain. I’d dedicated several months and several hundred dollars on trying to cultivate a connection that was never going to be. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to give up the masquerade.
At the end of the school year, I managed to get invited to a party where all three of the school’s grunge cover bands were playing. I would soon have the chance to see my crush-object one last time before the span of summer. I went to the party wearing a Soundgarden Louder Than Love T-shirt, which I had purchased for the occasion. I slouched up against a wall, peacocking my ennui, sipping a Miller Lite and pretending to be way into that, too. I was standing next to Andrew’s best friend, Mike, who was setting up a bass rig. I ventured to ask him what was this awesome record we were listening to? He gawked at me, appalled, “Uh? Louder Than Love ?” I scrambled, mortified, and insisted I was too wasted to recognize Soundgarden, the most distinctive band of the grunge genre.
I then had the torturous experience of then watching Mike walk over to Andrew and relay this anecdote and then Andrew look towards me and snicker. I left the party, walked home and cried myself to sleep.
Less than a month later, I picked up a compilation called Kill Rock Stars . While my purchase was initially fueled by the inclusion of Nirvana and Melvins tracks, both potential conversation topics with Andrew, but something entirely different happened when I heard a band on side A, Bikini Kill. Kathleen Hanna’s rebel yell posted the bail from my teen grunge prison; I had found music that meant everything to me . The band’s Bikini Kill fanzine and the cassette demo meant I no longer had a reason to be obsessing over music that meant nothing . I was liberated from my days spent walking past some boy’s locker, loudly humming Nirvana songs. Bikini Kill songs taught me something that neither Mudhoney, nor Andrew Beccone ever could—that my teen-girl soul mattered. That who I was mattered, what I thought and felt mattered, even when they were invisible to everyone else.
PART THREE: NOSTALGIA
WHEN THE BOSS WENT MORAL:
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S LOST ALBUM
The American Prospect , November 2010
What is pop music for if not escape? It lifts us out of our everyday, our workday, to stoke and coalesce our fantasies about romance or an alternate life, away from where we’ve detoured. In 1977, Bruce Springsteen began recording the album that would become the landmark Darkness on the Edge of Town , and it was that escapist idea of pop that he was working with. Informed by Elvis, Orbison and Brill Building songwriters, he was penning from that tradition: grand, lovelorn tunes of cars and girls and memories that were easy to relate to. Springsteen was eager to prove himself more than a one-hit wonder off the popularity of Born To Run and feeling the schism between where his new success placed him and the blue-collar caste from which he rose. This schism is very much the place that pop is meant to offer escape from—and it’s what began to drive and shape Darkness . Springsteen wanted to speak from that unresolvable place, to confine the listener in that underclass discomfort.
Those tracks that didn’t fit that vision now make up The Promise —a lost album of sorts. These 22 tracks are immaculate—a glut of fine work from The Boss at the dawn of his prime. Some of the
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