I want a blog, that will blog for no one else

God I even hate the word. Blog. It is word vomit in it's most extreme form. In fact, a girl down the hall was definitely blogging down the porcelain telephone for most of last night after partying a little too heartily. Anyway, here are three things:

1) There seems to be a bizarre phenomenon in the world of indie rock I would like to explore. Some would say that rock n' roll in general is not the most female-friendly species of animal. I am not one to disagree with that statement. That being said, I've noticed an odd trend with female musicians, particularly in indie bands: if you're gonna have a chick in your band, she's going to play the bass, or no instrument at all. Proof:

Smashing Pumpkins (D'arcy Wretzky, pre-crack)


stellastarr* (Amanda Tannen)


Auf Der Maur (but I'm pretty sure she's a witch anyway)


Rainer Maria (She's in the back! can you see her? No you cannot.)


The Raveonettes (Sharin Foo)


Zwan (Paz Lenchantin, formerly of a Perfect Circle)

Exceptions:
Metric (she plays the piano/synth)
Asobi Seksu (she plays the piano/synth)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (she doesn't play anything)

Now, I've tried formulating theories as to why this might be true, and I've only come up with a couple that hold any sort of logical basis in reality.

1) When a band featuring a woman is forming, the male members, assuming she is an inferior musician, give her a pretty easy role while simultaneously trying to not insult her intelligence.
Now this one seems a little too harsh to be real, but my inner raving feminist won't let me put it down.

2) Billy Corgan hatez the ladiez.
This one I'm willing to get behind if only because I think Billy Corgan is one of the most self-obsessed egomaniacs still producing music. And he wields enough psychic power that he could totally be the cause of all these other bands fucking shit up (why else would he stay bald, if not to amplify his psychic powers?)


3) Ladiez have tiny baby fingers and guitars are just too complicated for such tiny little fingers to play properly.

This one I just thought up because I have tiny baby fingers, but guitars really aren't that complicated and most ladiez don't have tiny baby fingers. Besides, James Dean Bradfield, arguably one of my favorite guitarists of all times has infamously stubby fingers and he doesn't let it get him down. And then there's Tommy Iommi who lost parts of two of his fingers in an industrial sheet metal-cutting accident type dealie. His fingers were literally stubs, and he's still considered one of the best guitarists of heavy metal. So this theory is about as sound as Converse in a rain storm.

2) Despite some of the more recent news about who's-the-bigger-ass-level-beef between Win Butler and Wayne Coyne, I still like both bands (Arcade Fire and Flaming Lips for the uninitiated), probably with a slightly higher level of affection going toward Arcade Fire. And despite that being the one Maurice Sendak book I didn't memorize as a child (which I kind of feel like is like eating pie crust your entire life without having ever eaten the filling) Where the Wild Things Are still looks pretty effing beautiful.

3) We watched Twilight last night, and we all knew it was going to be terrible, and it was, but I was the only one who actually spoke up about it, spending long periods of the movie criticizing the acting, the dialogue, even the basic tenants of the film (the weird sort of daddy-loves-daughter vibe the whole movie emits, for example*). People hated me. I am not ok with this but the movie was SO BAD AND THEY DIDN'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND WHY.

Finally, the MP3 of the week. In perhaps the most awesome case of cultural syncretism/cyclical referencing, The Very Best (aka Malawi's own Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) sample none other than Vampire Weekend's Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa on a song aptly titled Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. Vampire Weekend reference African guitar music, an African rapper references Vampire Weekend. Amazing.

So here it is, enjoy.

The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

-WF
Suck it, Koenig

*He's literally a century older than her, she dances on his feet at prom like daughters do with their fathers when they're little, she in no way can defend herself and turns to him to do so, he carries her ass around the whole time.