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.

So . . . nearly a year after getting the book in hardcover and like nine days after downloading the audiobook read by Mary Lucia, I’ve finished Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements by Bob Mehr.

I have, as the kids say, so many feels. All the feels. Oceans and galaxies of feels. Unmeasurable and unmentionable feels. I have feels as a writer & reader, a fan, and a cranky 45-year-old feminist killjoy. That’s a bunch of feels, don’t you agree?

First of all, the book is entirely too damn long. Just because Mehr learned it doesn’t mean the reader needs to know it. Did I need to know the ethnic background and year of birth of every single person who ever came into contact with The ‘Mats? Nope. If I had a dollar for each time Mehr used the phrase “Born in. . . ” I could buy every single person on the planet a copy of the ‘Mats’ greatest hits.

Because I’ve read a kajillion rock & roll memoirs/biographies, I always associate this trait with dudes. Like Keith Richards and Pete Townshend (and Bob Mould) had to tell you every single thing that ever happened to them ever regardless of its role in their music/success/fame/etc. The women, they get to the good parts. They edit out the boring. Dudes do not do that, because of course they think all the things in their lives are interesting and significant. They are not. Knock it off.

Second of all, the book broke my fucking heart. This surprised me, because it’s not like 80% of this story was news to me. Hell, as you might recall I got to share my own ‘Mats story in Jim Walsh’s The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History. You can see a braggery pic of my bio from that book over on my About page, you know Chilton, Christgau, Chromey. . . the usual suspects.

Because Bob Mehr is a good writer and storyteller, once he really got into the sad saga of The Replacements he had me, especially when it got to the real good stuff — the firing of Bob and Chris, the hiring of Slim, the end of the band, the death of Bob. And while I didn’t give a shit about who produced what or drove the van to Canada, when it came to the actual relationships the band had with each other, I was all in. It was Mary Lucia who got me through the boring parts. I love her voice. It’s not only been a sonic comfort to me for, damn, 20+ years now, it’s also a voice I pay attention to. Having her read the book to me was an absolute joy and I really cannot recommend the audiobook enough.

I always call myself a “bad fan” because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t care about when it comes to musicians. In fact, I often try to avoid reading about my favorites because I don’t want to know what total assholes they are and thus ruin my tender feelings towards their music. So while I knew, in a general kind of way, about what self-destructive jerks the ‘Mats were, reading about how relentless their jerkiness was made me angry. Yes, I was retroactively angry at a bunch of 20somethings from the mid-80s.

Maybe it’s because I am frequently broke or maybe because the book often mentioned how the ‘Mats had zero dollars and zero cents, but each time they destroyed a bus or dressing room or guitar or lit their actual per diem money on fire, I was actively annoyed. I had zero sympathy for any of them when they quit the band and had no money. Maybe if they weren’t such privileged white boy babies they’d have a few bucks to their name when it all came crashing down.

I was frustrated because this is the kind of behavior we accept from male artists. We accept their bad choices and antics as byproduct of their genius. This is bullshit. So much bullshit. And while I get that they were often chemically altered, self-medicating mental illnesses using drugs and alcohol, still. . . enough is enough. I didn’t see anything rock & roll or alternative or punk rock in all the senseless destruction, I just saw a bunch of grown men acting like petulant brats.

As I was reading I wondered if 22-year-old Jodi who had just discovered The Replacements would have found all that nonsense kind of romantic and rock & roll. Probably, 22-year-olds are stupid.

The post Some Thoughts on Trouble Boys, The Replacements’ Biography appeared first on I Will Dare.

One of the things I really, really liked about that Chrissie Hynde memoir that has me still trying to find words to write about is how much she loved the radio.

A lot of the memoir takes place in Hynde’s pre-Pretenders life in Ohio and she often talks about how great the radio of her youth was, specifically the radio stations in Cleveland. As a fellow avid radio fan, whose earliest musical experiences came from the radio I was all, “Chrissie, I love radio too!”

My love of radio is well-documented in the pixels of this here website, as is my affection for certain DJs. Remember how mad I was when Barb Abney was fired? Remember my outrage at Mary Lucia being silenced by some scumbag stalker?

Of course you don’t. But that is beside the point.

The point is that Mary Lucia came back to The Current today at 2 p.m. after seven long long so long months without her, and it has been fucking glorious on so many levels.

Not only is it nice to hear Lucia’s wonderfully sardonic, moving, and funny voice on the air. It’s so nice to have a chance to hear The “old” Current back on the air. Today Lucia’s set has been wildly eclectic and so empowering that I’ve spent most of the afternoon with tears in my eyes.

She kicked off her set thanking friends who wouldn’t let her slide into darkness alone though that is her tendency, then she played Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” You can listen to it yourself. The entire set has been littered with empowering songs about her ordeal, her strength, and, well, her power.

These kinds of themed sets are a Lucia trait. When same-sex marriage was legalized she went into a great wedding/love-themed set that included “Love is the Law,” “All You Need is Love,” “I’m Coming Out,” and “Chapel of Love.” Then there was that time she played The Rolling Stones for four hours.

All afternoon my Twitter has been lit up with the rejoicing in Lucia’s return. And that too is And when Bob Collins joined Mary at 4:20 like he always did, he talked about how reassuring it felt to have her back on the air.

It is reassuring. It feels as though something has been righted. I can’t quite put into words what it means to have her back on my radio. To hear her familiar voice, to know that she’s no longer being silenced.

I can’t put it into words, but I feel it in my heart and in my eyes and in my ears.

The post Soundtrack By Mary appeared first on I Will Dare.

It took me eight months of having this here website before I mentioned Mary Lucia, which may not seem significant. But you gotta remember that was back in 2001 and, well, I don’t know Mary Lucia outside of being a friendly, often sardonic voice on the radio.

When I was a young twenty-something working at a gas station, Mary Lucia & REV-105 got me through many, many shifts where I was filled with ennui and cigarette smoke.

When I was a later twenty-something Mary Lucia & DRIVE-105 got me through the first years of my career. She and Brian Oake did a morning show that I listened to every day on my way commute to work.

Then of course there was The Current, which I chronicled with giddy abandon.

So yeah, Mary Lucia has been someone I’ve been listening to for the most part of twenty years, and yesterday her voice was temporarily silenced by a stalker. It is heartbreaking and infuriating and scary and makes me want to pound obscenities out on my keyboard.

I hope Mary Lucia finds solace and justice during her leave of absence from the airwaves.

Her absence along with Barb Abney’s firing and Jacquie Fuller’s departure means that a station I once applauded for having so many women on air is going disappointingly dude-centric for awhile.

It’s disappointing because obviously The Current’s bench of female on-air talent is not as deep as the male one. It’s disappointing because if you really are committed to having women on the radio then you do it. It’s disappointing because it’s really very easy to find a dude talking about rock & roll anywhere on the planet, but it takes effort and diligence and perseverance to find the female voices and when you do find them to elevate them.

And really, I’m fucking pissed because I’m forty-two years old and it shouldn’t be this fucking hard to find women like me talking about, writing about, and being part of the discussion about something we’re passionate about. And it is. And damnit. I’m tired of it.

The post Losing Mary appeared first on I Will Dare.