A Decade Under the Influence.

The year is almost over and it seems like every music blog, website, and magazine I look at is sizing up the last ten years' worth of music. It's to the point where I've been wondering if I should be writing a daily post on the best songs and artists of the decade.

But I'm not inclined to look back, or to look at these best of lists being compiled by the informative and provocative NPR, the obnoxious Pitchfork, and dinosaur bones like Rolling Stone and Spin. There are three main reasons for this.

1. None of the bands I really care about at this particular moment will be mentioned.

2. The journalism itself will be disappointingly masculinist.

3. The lack of attention to women artists will be infuriating.

The second issue is probably the hardest one for me to deal with, and also the one that requires a bit of explanation. The masculine/male-oriented standard for most writing is objectivity. The men who run our society pretend to not have agendas -- i.e., not be 'subjective' -- in order to obscure their privilege and discredit varying view points from marginalized groups.

I feel like I see this constantly in literature on music. So much of music criticism seems focused on comparisons, name-dropping, and the general reification of the rock hierarchy. The goal is to declare whether something is 'good' or bad, rather than to look at what music means or says about our time and place.

Which doesn't make sense to me, because people don't need music critics to tell them what music is 'good' or bad or worth listening to. What we need is well-read and well-listened individuals to help us understand the context of the music we listen to, i.e., how and where it was produced, what earlier work influenced, what the artist hoped to accomplish, and the work's place in culture.

Oddly enough, I've been trying to approach writing about music in this way for about the last ten years. Towards the end of my time in high school, my favorite teacher and conductor, Mr. Mora, asked me if I knew what I wanted to do when I finished college. I told him, "I was thinking about being a music critic. But the thing is, I don't want to have to put musicians down or write about music I don't like, I don't want to be some snob, I just like writing about music. I like describing it, and I like explaining it."

Mr. Mora was my conductor and teacher, but he was also my equivalent of the Helpful Record Store Guy. He loved popular and classical music, and could discuss both with ease and patience. He was never arrogant or condescending. He was a Christian in the true sense of the word; no hatespeech or words of intolerance ever came out of his mouth. He was a former hippie who didn't trust newspapers and wanted to write an orchestral suite for Lee Harvey Oswald, because the man "didn't get a fair shake, or a trial, even!" This probably makes him sound like a nut, but Mr. Mora was kind of perfect.

He's why I try to keep negativity out of my writing, why I'm able to appreciate music, why I'm able to write about it at all. A fellow music writer once wrote to me that maybe there are less women in music journalism because women don't learn to write technically and 'critically' about music. Thanks to Mr. Mora, I learned to think and speak critically -- as in, socially or culturally critically -- in a safe space. I learned my music history, but from a person who genuinely loved music. I didn't learn from jerky, entitled young hipsters who sublimate their insecurities through hostile record and show reviews.

Is the hostility, the insecurity, the mudslinging, and the generally sloppy writing what discourages women from going into music journalism, or the music industry in general? Or is it what keeps women from advancing in the industry? If so, then forget the last ten years; in the next ten years, what I want to see is change. I want us to demand better, more inclusive music journalism.

In the meantime, all I can do with these sexist wanks and berks at places like pitchfork and brooklynvegan is tell them what Mr. Mora said to me a decade ago: no one ever erected a statue of a critic, kid.

"It's going to take a lot of things", or: A response to some random naysayery

I'm lucky enough to have a few really cool friends who read and support my blog. A few weeks ago my dear friend Jackie went so far as to post a link to my post on Rock Camp songs on her facebook wall. I was so grateful and flattered, but the warm fuzzies I was feeling were tarnished by the following comment from one of her facebook friends:

"I think this is great, but we're not going to dismantle this dumb system with rock songs. We will by forming DIY community banks."

It was the classic 'progressive guy' condescension. Just in case you don't speak Sexism, I'll translate for you: First, you have the pat on the head ('I think this is great...'). Then you have the brush off ('we're not going to dismantle this dumb system with rock songs'). Finally, you get the solution ('DIY community banks'?) In other words, this is cute and all sweetie, but music and art don't really 'count' -- only male-identified arenas like socioeconomic and political institutions count.

I was upset by this comment, at first because of its sexist undertone, and then later because I was forced to consider what it said. What if that guy is right? I've spent the last few weeds wondering, what if rock songs won't dismantle the system? What if what I'm talking about is totally stupid, and totally irrelevant, and he's right to be condescending?

Here's the thing though: this guy is NOT right. To start with, he's wrong to argue that rock songs won't bring down The System because I never said they would. I'm idealistic about music and art, but I'm not delusional. I know that songs don't have the power to stop armies in their tracks, or pass legislation, or regulate financial institutions.

But music is a powerful and unique means of uniting people. Music is a unique medium for the transmission of new ideas to a large audience. And a good, pithy pop song breaks those ideas down into manageable, memorable pieces, using straightforward and familiar language that sticks in your mind, and that becomes part of your consciousness.


I listened to the Beatles a lot as a kid, I like to think that their pro-peace, pro-love ideas became a part of my consciousness early on.

When music opens up your mind like that, and gets you thinking about bigger ideas, and maybe even gets you talking with your friends about these ideas and how they make you feel -- that's when music has the power to change things. Music does have the ability to stimulate critical thought, and critical thought can lead to resistance.


This is one of my new favorites -- Swedish punk upstarts Refused knew how to bring the classic punk resistance to shitty/mindless popular music!

(If you don't believe me, just ask all the Latin American dictators of the '70s who banned pop music, assassinated outspoken musicians, and sent their military police to rock concerts with tear gas and grenades. They seemed pretty worried that music about human rights would get the young people to resist the military government.)


This guy, Victor Jara, was tortured, beaten, and killed by the Chilean military because he sang about political activism and human rights.

More to the point of this blog, popular music has become bigger than just songs and albums. Song itself can transmit positive ideas, and it can also transmit negative ideas. And since music is not just the music itself, but also the performers, their politics, their style of dress, and the way they present themselves, popular music also transmits ideas about men, women, sex and gender -- whether it means to or not. I've seen this for myself. I've experienced it for myself, I've seen it with my friends, I've seen it with the campers at Rock Camp.


An all time favorite: my beloved Sleater-Kinney singing in feminist protest of the corporate war machine

I've always assumed that most of us are sort of familiar with this phenomenon, and that most of us can appreciate what a positive influence music can have on your day-to-day life. (Don't a lot of us go through a phase during our teenage years where we just want to shut ourselves up in our rooms with our favorite records, and where we only want to talk to friends who are doing the same thing? Or maybe that was just me....)

I guess maybe my critic didn't go through this phase, and if that's the case, I probably can't say anything that will convince him of the power of music. All I can say to a person like him is, man, you must be listening to the wrong stuff.

This post is dedicated to Jackie, for her support, and to all of my friends who keep encouraging me to write, and to keep speaking up.