Hello Darling Ones,

It should come as no surprise that it seems The Current, and probably MPR (Minnesota Public Radio, of which The Current is a part of) in general, has a woman problem. And this problem is they do not value art made by women, specifically the art or work the women in their organization do. I feel pretty comfortable making that statement.

I do not work for The Current. I also don’t know on a personal level outside of social media anybody who works for The Current. All my opinions are based on being a radio listener and knowing that men do not value art made by women.

To catch you up, Mary Lucia, much-loved DJ at The Current quit, pretty abruptly it seemed, last week after seventeen years at the station. She ended her last shift, Thursday, with “It’s Only Rock & Roll” by The Rolling Stones. Shortly after her sign-off news broke that The Current’s Program Director, Jim McGuinn was fired. According to the StarTribune:

“Two sources who have worked for the Current and did not want to be named for fear of reprisal said McGuinn was the main source of Lucia’s complaints. They said he too frequently gave female staffers lower raises and less-positive reviews than their male counterparts.”

Again with the lack of surprise. Even without knowing what Jim McGuinn was like as a boss or leader, I could have guessed he was shitty to female employees. Wanna know why? Because I listened to McGuinn on the radio.

I stopped listening to Teenage Kicks, the Saturday morning throwback show, when he took over after Jacquie Fuller left in 2015. He rarely played music made by women and thus rarely talked about it. He was the head of a station whose listeners and DJs continually put out all dude Top 10 lists. When they put together a list to choose from for one poll, it included 169 male musicians and 51 female musicians.

Anyone who listened to The Current could have guessed Jim McGuinn would under pay women and give them poor reviews. It was right there on the airwaves. And when it wasn’t on the airwaves it was in the news, it took Marianne Combs’ leaving MPR before The Current did anything about DJ Eric Malmberg who had several allegations against him for being a creepy dirtbag to women.

This is why I’m endlessly furious about men not valuing women’s art. And I mean hashtag all men. All of them. The ones I know and love, the ones I know and like, the ones I do not know. Dudes whenever you endlessly yammer on about art made by men be it books, music, movies, tv, visual art, etc. without spending you continuously devalue what women create. You are part of the problem. When you continue to lift up the thoughts and voices of male critics about these topics you are devaluing women’s art. Yes, criticism is an art.

When you continue to value art created by men over art created by anyone else, it has real world, actual consequences on lives. It effects pay and opportunities. Because men continue to value art made by men Chuck Klostermen gets to keep writing shitty books that erase women from pop cultural history.

It’s all so infuriating. I’d get into the othering of music made by people who are not men, but my fingers are starting to hurt from banging the keys hard in an attempt to get out my frustration. Instead, I’ll just leave it to Neko Case.

@PlayboyDotCom Am I? IM NOT A FUCKING "WOMAN IN MUSIC", IM A FUCKING MUSICIAN IN MUSIC!

— Neko Case (@NekoCase) May 21, 2014

Love,
Jodi

P.S.
It’s not easy diversifying the media you consume. It takes work, but if you love the art form it’s worth the effort. It’s also super rewarding. If you’re a pop culture junkie you know how great it feels to introduce someone to a new singer or writer. It’s even better when you’re introducing someone to a new voice outside the dominate white cishet world.

The post Men Do Not Value Art Made By Women: Mary Lucia Edition appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

I’m going to attempt to do my very best to adequately communicate how very much a person I do not know means to me and has meant to me throughout my life. I’m also going to try not to cry while doing this because Sister #2 is here from Portland and using my dining room to conduct academic affairs or some such thing and I don’t want to alarm her.

Yesterday 89.3 The Current announced that after 17 years Mary Lucia is leaving the station. Her last on-air shift is tomorrow from 2-6. I put it in my calendar so I don’t forget to tune in.

It’s no exaggeration to say that of people I don’t know Mary Lucia & Jim Walsh have had the most influence over my musical taste. Of people I do know that designation goes to Sister #2 & Wolfdogg.

Mary was there in the mid-90s when I was just starting to develop musical taste. I spent probably hundreds of hours listening to her on REV-105 while I was working at the gas station. She was an excellent teacher not only introducing me to new music but also providing context to that music, making connections to bands and songs that I had no clue about. In a time before the internet put all the knowledge at your fingertips, this was huge.

I’ve written extensively about Mary Lucia throughout I Will Dare’s 22-year history (and 89.3 The Current too). Music means a lot to me, as do the people who bring it to me.

Because I’ve only lived here, I don’t know what radio DJs are like in other parts of the world. Maybe every city has a Mary Lucia, but I doubt it. She’s created so many radio memories, not just for me, but for a lot of listeners.

I still remember when she had people choking back sobs when she talked about the death of her dog. Or how gloriously defiant she was when she came back after a leave of absence due to a persistent stalker. Then there was the day she played nothing but The Rolling Stones. And I’ll never forget the chemistry she had with curmudgeonly newsman Bob Collins.

The memory that sticks out the most of course, was the day Prince died. While I might get the actual factual details wrong, in my memory Mary was in the studio and Andrea Swensson was at Paisley Park. Or maybe she had just returned to the studio from Paisley Park. The first thing Mary said was, “Oh, Kitten, how are you doing?” In a day filled with so many tears, they poured down extra hard as the two women talked about the events of the day. Listening to them console each other, the listeners, and mourn the loss of a man who loomed large not only on the Minnesota musical landscape, but the entire world’s, was the very definition of heart-warming.

I don’t know Mary Lucia as a person, but for the better part of 28 years she’s been my rock & roll fairy godmother. I’m so sad she’s leaving The Current and I won’t be able to tune into her when I need some sort of sonic comfort. I’m sad for all the listeners. I’m happy for her though. Seventeen years is a long damn time and according to a Facebook post she said she has two books in her, so I got that to look forward to.

Oh Mary, thank you so much for all you’ve given to me and the fistful of weirdos that are the Twin Cities music community. You’re gonna be missed.

No longer finding her left of the dial,
Jodi

P.S. I didn’t technically cry. My eyes did get super watery and I had to blink a lot. I’m saving my tears for tomorrow’s final show.

The post So Long, Mary Lucia, My Rock & Roll Fairy Godmother appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hello Darling Ones,

I’ve worked myself into a barely coherent paroxysm of rage over 89.3 The Current’s Essential Debut Albums poll. I love/hate when they do these kinds of lists.

Love: I am a musicgeek/pop culture nerd and talking about music is one of my very favorite things on earth to do. You’d probably be appalled to learn how much time I spend every day thinking about or listening to music. I think the only thing I do more of each day is sleep.

Hate: These kinds of polls bring out the worst in not just The Current, a radio station I have professed love for repeatedly and written about a lot, but also their listeners. These listeners love the shit out of music made by white dudes.

I can already tell you who is gonna be on the Top 10 of these essential album: Bowie, Prince, U2, Springsteen, Dylan, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, and probably The Rolling Stones. I’ll let you know in May how close I am to being 100% correct.

Today’s paroxysm or rage comes because I decided to investigate what “essential” debut albums The Current was auto-populating on this poll. That was a mistake. Of the 220 acts on the list approximately 51 of them include women. That’s less than a quarter. To say I am incandescent with anger is an understatement.

The list the radio station included has Haircut 100’s debut album, but not Phoebe Bridgers’. And of course the debuts by everyone from The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and The Stones, but no oh. . . Carole King, Joni Mitchell, or Janis Joplin. I’ll admit these ladies debuts are not their finest records, but neither is fucking Surfin’ Safari.

What makes me the angriest is that lists like this and so much music journalism keep perpetuating the greatness of this music by white men. I love it too. I really do. But it’s not hard to be the greatest of anything when you’re only ever competing against white men. If all things were ever equal where would The Beatles be? We’ll never know.

Might I also add that the Twin Cities music scene is dealing with another round of sexual assault allegations by a dude in a popular band? Two weeks ago it was Har Mar Superstar. This time it’s Gabriel Douglas of the band Four on the Floor. They are not the the first two dirtbags in the Twin Cities music scene and they will not be the last.

What kills me, what absolutely slays me, is that so many men have either said “I knew that guy sucked” or “I had no idea that guy sucked” and AT THE VERY SAME TIME will fill out a poll like The Current’s 893 Essentials list and only include records by men, and somehow are incapable of seeing that these are all parts of the same complex problem. And that problem? Men do not respect women. Not their autonomy. Not their bodies. And most definitely not their art.

Fuck ’em all,
Jodi

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For the Spring Member Drive, The Current has been counting down the Top 893 songs of the 2000s (as voted on by Current listeners). It is, of course, brilliant. I love when they do this kind of special programming. For me this particular countdown is equal parts a reminder of how much I love The Current and how it’s introduced me to so much music I love + ugh, this is why I have fallen out of sync with The Current (which I blame more on my falling out of sync with a lot of indie rock).

Just a few songs ago they played “Save it for a Rainy Day” by The Jayhawks.

As soon as I heard the opening chords I was picked up off the couch and instantly transplanted into my shitty apartment in Prior Lake, with the desk that housed my computer in the dining room filled with papers, pens, and cigarette butts. I was lonely, sad, and sad about another shitty, unworthy man who had toyed with my heart and filled me with lies. I can almost smell that apartment, and feel my fingers on the keyboard to that desktop computer.

A cursory search shows that I’ve used lyrics from this song for at least five posts in 2003 alone. The album, and this song in particular were huge for me.

Dang! I was expecting to time travel today, but it’s kinda nice to see how far I’ve come from that lonely woman (I was gonna call myself a lonely girl, but I was already 30 in 2003 and now I feel so old, so very, very old).

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The Current is urging its listeners to help them compile a list of the of the 893 Essential Albums. They are asking people to submit their personal Top 10 lists and share them on social media using the #893albums hashtag.

It’s pretty fun to the see lists come rolling in. I like to see what music people consider vital to their lives. It’s also a frustrating reminder of just how sexist these lists are and how we still revere music made by men over music made by women. All the lists that I have seen have been dominated by men, and by that I mean all they include is albums made by men. From what I’ve seen women were more likely to have multiple women on their lists, men if they included any women (which is rare) would include one.

Which brings me to my premise: PJ Harvey is the Flannery O’Connor of Rock & Roll.

If you’re a literary-minded woman you know what Flannery O’Connor means in this context. Flannery O’Connor is the token woman dude list makers throw on their lists to prove they read books by women, to prove that they’re well-rounded and care about women’s stories and what they have to say. It is always Flannery. Always. Though, I could probably make a case for how Donna Tartt might be taking her place amongst GenX and Millenial dudes. But the point still stands.

So on these sausage-pa-looza album lists the one woman who seems to make the cut (again, that’s IF a woman even makes the cut, which isn’t often) it is PJ Harvey. She is the chosen one. The one that dudes will hold up and point to and say, “See, I appreciate music made by women. I love PJ Harvey!”

And women everywhere will roll their eyes and shake their heads and be all “yeah, okay, yes, you listen to music made by women, here’s your cookie.”

Of course, the sexism of these lists comes as no surprise to me. Many men in my social media feeds still use the term “Dad Rock” even though it’s a flaming pile of sexist bullshit. They use it without irony or any idea that it’s sexist. Many of the men only talk about and listen to (or talk about listening to) music made by men. There are a rare few who talk about music made by women with the same exuberance and excitement they use to talk about music by men, and those guys are my favorite.

I think many men made these lists in a haze of male privilege. If you were to ask them, these men, if they value women’s voices and women’s stories they would say “of course,” because they don’t think of themselves as sexist, even casually sexist.

But when it comes right down to it what they value the most are men’s stories sung by male voices. I bet it never even occurred to many of the listmakers to think about including albums made by women.

They will defend it by saying “I just put down the albums I loved the most,” which is all fine and good, but at least admit you love records made by men more. Some will say, “I just like the music. I didn’t think if it was made by men or women.” Of course not, because you are a dude and you live in a world that puts you at the center of it you don’t have to spend any time seeking out stories that reflect your experience.

If you could only muster up one woman to put on your list IF you included a woman at all, it’s time to face the fact that you’re casually sexist and kind of blind to it. You cannot tell me you listen to music by women with the same passion and intensity that you listen to men and were unable to include more than PJ Harvey on your list. And if you’re going to make that claim, that you do love and appreciate music by women, then your list reflects the fact that you think men are better at rock & roll than women.

And we know that’s a load of horseshit, right?

I am not perfect. My own list is shamefully white, which says a lot about the kind of music I like (it too is shamefully white) and the fact that I refused to put greatest hits albums on the list (Sorry, Sam Cooke. Sorry, The Supremes). I did wrestle with putting “Thriller” in the place of “Like a Virgin,” but gave the nod to Madonna.

Yes, yes I know judging art is stupid and ranking it on lists is even dumber, but it’s often the way we talk about music and as is so often the case, women don’t even get to be talked about.

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