My brain is officially Swiss cheese now, and I can’t remember where I heard about this book the first time, but once it was on my radar, it was a defiMy brain is officially Swiss cheese now, and I can’t remember where I heard about this book the first time, but once it was on my radar, it was a definite case of ‘give it to me now!’. I’ve been consuming books about 90s music and musicians like an absolute glutton lately, and this book’s topic falls exactly within the scope of my research.
I confess I was especially excited to read it because Brence believes that Paul Westerberg’s influence on the genre was crucial, and that without his direct influence, grunge would never have taken the shape and direction it did, something I agree with 100% and never see discussed anywhere. It doesn’t seem obvious to most, probably because the Replacements were more an 80s band (the band broke up in 1991), but they laid down a blueprint for a lot of things that would become inextricably associated with grunge and 90s counterculture in general. Westerberg always balked at the ‘godfather of grunge’ label, but seriously Paul, it’s OK to have a legacy. It’s frustrating that few people realize he got the ball rolling on a lot of things that became grunge, and I am quite pleased to have seen it written about so intelligently.
She also discusses the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a piece of legislation the Clinton administration passed discreetly, which had devastating long-term effects on the music industry. Brence interprets this legislation as a passive-aggressive form of state censorship, which tried to make sure young people were not exposed to music that might influence them to align with the leftist politics of punk and grunge, and she makes a solid argument for that interpretation. Practically speaking, it consolidated the recording industry to a handful of major labels and broadcasters (which eventually destroyed the indie label landscape by poaching their artists and acquiring the labels as subsidiaries) who established new rules to determine what they would broadcast and promote, forcing artists to conform to a certain set of rules and standards in order to get the exposure they needed to make money. As a result, a lot of underground music was pushed even further underground, a lot of female artists were silenced and now most music is filtered through Spotify algorithms, further limiting what gets out there and what remains underground - which doesn't bode well for the future of music and art.
However, the book has some serious flaws. Brence essentially published her thesis without editing it for clarity, so you need to be OK with the very academic format. As such, it is not written to be super accessible the way most non-fiction books about pop culture are, but a lot the subject matter is sufficiently mainstream that it should not be too obscure for anyone curious about the topic. A pre-existing knowledge and interest in punk, indie rock and grunge music helps, obviously.
I have to say that I am also completely confused and baffled by Brence’s affirmation that Mike Judge, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are conservative Republicans. With all due respect… what? These guys’ shows are satire! They made fun of Democrats and liberals, but simply because they decided early on that there would be no sacred cows on their respective shows, and that they could make fun of whoever they want. They were never exactly gentle with conservatives and Republicans, especially not lately. And their favorite punching bags are the anti-intellectual types and apathetic idiots who got us in the mess we are currently dealing with in the first place. So I really don’t get where she came up with that, but I assure you, the two dudes who attended the 2000 Oscars in full drag and tripping on mushrooms and acid are not conservatives.
There were also some editing and redaction mistakes that should have been caught by the publishers before the book went to press. This would have helped making the text clearer for the average reader.
That said, my love of her topic and my enthusiasm at the perspectives she brought to it made it easier to overlook these issues. You might want to stick to official bios of Nirvana and the Replacements in terms of readability, though....more
Major caveat to take into account while reading this book: Kat Bjelland has been quoted a few years ago saying that Neal Karlen lost a lot of his noteMajor caveat to take into account while reading this book: Kat Bjelland has been quoted a few years ago saying that Neal Karlen lost a lot of his notes halfway through writing the book and made some stuff up. Her words were: ‘Part of it’s true. But a lot of it’s not. He’s apologized’.
I still wanted to read it because I love Babes in Toyland passionately, and I didn’t know much about them besides their music and vague stories of Kat’s feud with Courtney Love. I wanted to know what it had been like to be part of the band I once heard described as the ‘Minneapolis ragecore queens’…
So even knowing Karlen padded and embellished his tale, I will give him this: he knows how to weave a compelling yarn, because I was immediately hooked. Maybe he extrapolated some things and wrote about the band members as if they were characters in a novel instead of sticking to a traditional and more journalistic rock bio approach, but annoyingly, it works! Don’t we all want to think of our favorite rock stars as larger-than-life characters anyway?
This book is also the story of a specific moment in the life of Babes in Toyland: the recording of their major label debut ‘Fontanelle’, after releasing one record on a local indie label and a few years spent playing the underground music circuit. I was quite curious to read more about the band’s experience, as this transition from small indie labels to big corporate setup can be jarring and difficult, especially when a band wants to make sure they aren’t selling out and making compromises with suits who don’t understand their music. Add to that the additional struggle of being an all-female band in a very male-dominated industry: things can get sticky fast!
Karlen does a great job at capturing this strange flux period and the tensions, both personal and professional, that came along with it. The book addresses the so-called rivalry between Kat and Courtney Love a bit, and while I can see how juicy that must have sounded to the music press at the time, it is not the big deal that some people have made it out to be. The root of it seems to stem from Courtney imitating Kat’s aesthetic and fashion sense, but I know from personal experience that when female friends become very close (Kat has referred to Courtney as her ‘soul sister’; ladies, you know this is serious!), this sort of stylistic twining often ends up happening spontaneously, and I think people just read a lot into it. And if you listen to ‘Spanking Machine’ and ‘Pretty on the Inside’, there are also obvious similarities, but after those records, Babes in Toyland and Hole evolved more distinct sounds. It’s easy to read too much into that kind of thing, especially at a time when pitting female musicians against each other (instead of paying attention to their art, ahem!) seemed to be a national sport; the actual story of those bands is way more interesting than the rumor-mill garbage.
The coming and going of men who wanted to tell the band what to do constantly was so obnoxious. It’s pretty clear that Lee Ranaldo was not the right person to produce for the Babes, despite his indie rocker cred. There’s also a lot of emphasis on Tim Carr, the A&R guy who signed the band on a major label and worked to get the record done. Too much, really; I think that’s the book’s biggest flaw, because fans of Babes in Toyland don’t want to hear about the suits, we want to hear about the girls, the songs, the gigs! I appreciate that he fought to keep them on the label and figure out how to get the album recorded and give it as much exposure as possible, but he took a lot of page space. His chapters give the readers an interesting glimpse into how major labels work, and that’s both fascinating and slightly horrifying.
It needs to be said: Lori Barbero is an amazing human being: kind, supportive, loyal, positive, generous, determined. Holy shit, I want to be her bestie (or one of her many besties, I’m not jealous)! It was hard to read how much Maureen struggled, being the new girl in the band and having to live up to the standards Michelle had set for the bass, and Lori’s constant encouragement must have made a world of difference. That said, the internal drama in that band was quite intense, and while it’s a bummer we only got three albums from them, this was not a sustainable combo. I am very glad that we have the records we do, they are very important to me personally and had a massive influence on countless musicians, but the truth is that being in a band is really hard, and the story in this book is a prime example of how big business and genuine art will never really work together, even with the best of intentions.
Fans of the band will enjoy this, though I do wish it focused more on music and less on the drama. Still fun, and a little 90s music nostalgia treat that I can't resist....more
I had been meaning to read this book for a long time, and you know how it goes: other books show up, you get busy, you forget, whatever. But I’m workiI had been meaning to read this book for a long time, and you know how it goes: other books show up, you get busy, you forget, whatever. But I’m working on a project about alt rock in the 90s and I have always loved Nirvana and Kurt; then I found out a updated/annotated version of this book was out, and it seemed like the perfect time to finally sink my teeth into it (quick tip: if you write stories about your special interest, it’s a legit excuse to buy more books about your special interests because you are doing research! Tell your friends!).
First off, Michael Azerrad is an excellent music writer, I absolutely loved his book about the 80s indie rock scene (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), because he has a gift for writing about something he clearly loves to death yet remains critical in his admiration. It makes for a very engaging reading experience especially if you share his love for the subject. This new edition of “Come As You Are” is quite remarkable because the original print was published just months before Cobain’s death, and Azerrad revisited it with the benefit of a 30-year rearview mirror, commenting on his old observations and conclusions, so you get both the ‘old’ book, and the new one. That’s about 600 pages of Nirvana stories, and even for fans, that can be a lot to take in.
I personally loved the format: a few paragraphs (in bold) of the original text, followed by Azerrad’s notes, unpacking the text, clarifying certain references or simply adding a bit of insight, a new perspective on statements Kurt and the band made to a music journalist who was still quite green and excited about his assignment. I think this must have been a humbling process for Azerrad, who had not been able to remain entirely objective with his subject, and who had an inkling that the narrative he was building was being used for a specific reason – namely for Kurt and Courtney to keep custody of Frances after the Vanity Fair exposé debacle. He attempts here to tease the reality away from the myth his book helped promote, and it makes for a rich biographical experience, giving him an opportunity to comment and emphasize certain elements that may have gotten lost in all the information, or simply build on his old text with new elements that came to light after publishing.
This has often been described as the definitive Nirvana bio, and I would tend to agree, especially this edition. Most of the original information was in the band’s own words, and it is quite thorough. Azerrad does a fantastic job of not only documenting the history of the band and its members but also exploring the context in which it all came to be, and why they were as impactful as they were. Paradigm-shifting bands like Nirvana are not common, and it must have been thrilling to write about them right as they had turned the world of popular music on its head: he is quite correct that there is a ‘before Nirvana’ and an ‘after Nirvana’ the same what that there is a ‘before the Beatles’ and an ‘after the Beatles’.
One of the interesting points Azerrad makes is that fame and fortune unexpectedly hit someone who had suffered from low self-esteem his entire life. This would make the whirlwind he was caught in difficult to cope with at the best of times, and clearly, the conditions were far from ideal. It is also chilling how many people who met Kurt had the distinct feeling that he would die young. There’s something eerie and haunting about how common that impression was.
And I am sorry, but I low-key hate his parents: I know they had no resources and understanding of how to manage a sensitive child like Kurt, but holy shit… Stories about his upbringing always break my heart. Empathy was such an important thing to him, and it’s clearly because he felt no one around him had any when he was young.
Kurt and the band being such strong allies of socially progressive ideas like feminism, anti-homophobia and anti-racism is often highlighted, and it always warms my heart to read. I was raised in a very progressive household, and all this seemed normal to me, but it’s important to remember how unusual this level of allyship was, especially coming from a straight white guy in the late 80s and early 90s. Azerrad points out that a lot of those ideas came to Kurt via his connection with the Riot Grrrl movement, and I found it really moving to think of the fact the Kurt simply listened to what those girls had to say and empathized with them enough to use his platform to help. For all his flaws, he truly had a good heart.
Azerrad also points out that a lot of stories about rock stars really are a kind of a mythology, and that Kurt was quite aware of that fact, as he discreetly revised his own history when he gave interviews and talked to Azerrad. Part of the goal of this revised edition was to present a more accurate version of events, but I think it’s also a great opportunity to try and understand why Kurt felt the need to be an unreliable narrator in his own story. Musicians often come under very intense scrutiny, and when people with sensitive natures find themselves under the magnifying lens, the urge to rewrite history to protect themselves can be hard to resist. Kurt suffered enough embarrassment and humiliation in his pre-fame life, and clearly wanted to make sure the public had no ammunition to hurt him any more than he had already been hurt.
This book is an important one in terms of documenting how rock bands and artist work and deal with fame and public attention. Things have changed a lot since Kurt's death, but public scrutiny is still very much a thing, and I wonder how he would have dealt with how the internet and social media handles celebrities. I'm going to take a guess that he would have hated it with every fiber of his being.
If you have read the original, non-annotated edition, it is well-worth revisiting with the additional material. For Nirvana fans, obviously, but for anyone interested in modern music and the bizarre industry that surrounds it....more
I was a few years too young and living in a place that was too isolated to have any knowledge of the Riot Grrrl movement as it was happening. Such is I was a few years too young and living in a place that was too isolated to have any knowledge of the Riot Grrrl movement as it was happening. Such is the tragedy of the pre-Internet world: if that didn’t happen somewhere you could reach it through word of mouth or publications you could get your hands on, you missed it. I always felt kind of sad that this was something that had passed me by, because as soon as I learned about it, it felt like was something that I would have loved to be a part of. My budding feminism (inspired by my mom’s) fell on deaf ears in high school (where I was made to feel like an absolute freak because I came from a queer-friendly household where conversations about periods, safe sex and consent were normalized), and the message the mainstream pushed at girls in the late 90s and early aughts was that we didn’t need it anymore: we had been liberated, we were fine. But it didn’t really feel like we were fine at all, and when I learned that there were girls out there making music that called out what the mainstream refused to talk about, it was like a veil had been lifted. I wasn’t crazy, there were still huge systemic problems that some people were not only willing but eager to talk about, people who wanted to create spaces that were by girls, for girls. And due to an accident in geography, I didn’t have access to it.
So obviously, I wanted to read this book when I found out about it, I wanted more information about how the movement had started and who the key players had been, and what they had done and said. This is an important chapter of feminist history, but it often gets about as much attention as a footnote – for a variety of reasons.
One of the things that struck me reading this book is that so many of the issues discussed by the original Riot Grrls and so much of the language they use is now part of the more mainstream conversations about feminism. They lacked visibility, but they were well ahead of their time – or society at large really has a lot of catching up to do – or both! The irony of this book opening with a take down of Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment scandal and the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned in 92 made me cringe. JFC, how I loathe our collective inability to learn anything at all from our painfully documented history.
Marcus has a clear case of hero-worship here, and she paints Katheleen Hanna as a saint who can do no wrong, which is a big disingenuous. I think I would have appreciated a more even-toned narrative here, because I cherish my Bikini Kill records and I admire many things Kathleen has said and done, but I think making her into this flawless leader figure is incoherent, as the main problem with the Riot Grrrls was the lack of leadership and direction (which in fairness, would have been an extremely challenging thing to accomplish given that there were a handful of chapters scattered across the USA and Vancouver, with no other real means of communication but the zines they mailed to each other and the occasional long-distance phone call), and the ease with which they let their community get fragmented.
That leads me to another small issue I had with the book: Marcus has a hard time concealing the glee with which she spills tea. That can often overshadow her main point, which is that these girls didn’t just want to hang out with other girls: they had a real political agenda for societal change, which was undermined by what almost always happens, which is that self-promotion and constantly shifting hierarchy (which are often reproduced in the process of trying to dismantle them) made it unsustainable. She does point out some of the flaws in the movement, like the lack of intersectionality and their attempts at addressing them and fixing them, but this still gets overshadowed by stories of how everyone reacted to these events.
I don’t mean to be down on the book at all: I obviously enjoyed it, and I highlighted a lot of stuff. It’s an incomplete history of fragmented movement, so obviously, it won’t be perfect, and the amount of work necessary to produce it commands respect. It is also both inspiring and very moving to read about those girls forming such strong bonds over their desire to make the world a better and safer place and finding community in each other. It’s frustrating to read about a handful of egos taking over the narrative, but this is such a frequent issue grassroot efforts struggle with that I was not especially surprised.
To quote Tobi Vail: “Riot Grrl belongs to whoever needs it and believes it has the power to give their lives meaning and change things. That is the reason for all of this. Change the world. Don't accept things "the way they are now". Create your own meanings. Make your own definitions. Use culture as a tool. Just know you will have to be quick and constantly on your toes and maybe it's harder than ever to create something ephemeral, to live in the moment, but maybe it's even more than necessary now. The now of now.”...more
Gabrielle (Reading Rampage)
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