Hi Darling Ones,

When I saw that my favorite podcast, 60 Songs that Explain the 90s, which happens to be the only one I listen to, was discussing Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run” in the latest episode I was elated.

When I saw the guest was author Sam Lipsyte I deflated a bit. Not because I dislike Lipsyte, I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few of his books, but I was a little worried about how two men would discuss this ground-breaking, generation-defining work of art by a woman.

As we have discussed many times before, men do not value art made by women. This episode is a prime example of how even when discussing art made by a woman, men can actively not value art made by women.

Sounds tricky and impossible, and yet. . . it is not.

It starts out so well with host Rob Harvilla talking about the police station scene from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and the way it illustrates how boys can get away with everything and girls can get away with nothing. Plus, he talks some about Material Issue.

RIGHT? Liz Phair + Ferris Bueller + Material Issue, this episode was me in podcast form.

This did not end well, though. Instead of learning new insights or seeing a new perspective on this 30-year-old song, this episode left me angry and frustrated.

I’m of two minds when it comes to men discussing seminal art by women.

Part of me, believes yes, yes men should talk to each other about art made by women (and nonbinary people).

The other part of me is all, “can’t they find one goddamn woman to talk about this?”

I wish they had found one goddamn woman to talk about this record.

The problem here, which is a problem with a lot of men discussing most anything, is they cannot see outside their own narrow, male perspective to even think someone who is not a man might see things a little differently. And that the difference in perspective is important and valid.

For example, at one point Harvilla is talking about the song “Canary” and how it has taken hindsight to appreciate it.

He says, “The resignation in her voice there, the exasperation. If I played this one on air at my college radio station as a 19-year-old yutz, I don’t know if I would have grasped all the nuances there, but who did, really?”

Who did, really? WHO DID, REALLY?

Well, to begin with me, a 21-year-old yutz when this song came out, and all the other young female yutzs I knew. Maybe, an entire generation of young women got the nuances there because Liz Phair was singing about situations we could relate to on a visceral level. Phair was singing our lives back to us (that line stolen from Neko Case’s “Guided By Wire”).

The sort of male-gaze-iness of the discourse only got worse once Lipsyte joined the discussion.

What is so frustrating is they came so close to getting it. Harvilla mentions all the “Guyvilles” that pop up around “Exile in Guyville.”

They even mentioned how sexist the reaction to Phair’s later work was and how misogyny may have played a role in how she was viewed. However, they continually conflated (male) rock critic reaction with fan reaction. It never occurred to them, or if it did they never said it, that there is an entire world of reception outside what the Dude Rock Establishment thinks.

And the worst part, and what underlines my point about men not valuing art made by women, is only one other female artist is mentioned in the entire episode. Phair is described as getting close to having a Courtney Love growl.

They did, however, mention: The Rolling Stones (obviously), Material Issue, Dave Berman, Urge Overkill, Nirvana, David Bowie, Jesus Lizard, and Fugazi.

They did not mention: Riot Grrrl, Alanis Morissette, or Lilith Fair, which might be asking a lot considering it’s a podcast about music in the 90s.

In my ideal world they’d have discussed Phair in league with the Stones and Morissette. They would have compared her to Bowie and Madonna.

It shouldn’t ever be all one or the other. This is how we get pink ghettos, bullshit “women in music” lists, and gender-nonconforming people being wholly ignored.

While you might be thinking, Oh, Jodi’s just going on about this nonsense again, it’s not nonsense. Pop culture is culture. As long as we continue to let men control the narrative without calling them out on their myopic bullshit, women (and nonbinary folks) will continue to be erased.

Never getting off this soapbox,
Jodi

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Well, Well, Well, Darling Ones,

Look whose back from her anxiety vacation. It’s me!

I spent the three days alternately sleeping or plunging into an ever more catastrophic anxiety spiral that was so annoying even to me I couldn’t type words. Or think thoughts. Mostly I snarled and stomped around this place imagining it as a pile or rubble at my feet.

Also, I learned a new phrase, “catastrophic thinking.” This is what I do when things go wrong and I cannot fix them myself as soon as possible. I’m convinced every car or home repair will be more than I can afford and will be the catalyst for a chain of events that leaves me penniless, homeless, and frequently dead.

Blame this quirk on growing up in poverty where any minor breakdown became a major calamity, and repairs were put off for as long as possible making things even worse and more expensive to fix. There were years we lived with a leaky kitchen sink. We were supposed to empty the bucket after doing dishes, but Sister #2 and I, the main dishwashers frequently forgot. The damage got so bad that when you looked into the cupboard under the sink you could see into the basement.

Today, much to my relief, a petite, young, handsome plumber fixed my wet spot.

you’ll have to insert your own jokes here. I’m exhausted despite sleeping roughly ten hours a night since Saturday. Anxiety sleeping is not as restful as one would think.

Turns out this was a minor inconvenience and not a bankruptcy-inducing catastrophe that ended with my murder like my brain was sure it was gonna be. Weird.

When the petite plumber gave me my grand total for the work ($225) I laughed and said, “That’s wonderful!”
“You thought it was going to be way more?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“Thought the whole ceiling was gonna have to come down?” he asked, laughing.
“That was just the start of it.”

After he left I had to text my friends, family, and most of twitter that I was not murdered or bankrupt. My friend EM had the best response.

ME: I wasn’t murdered and I won’t be going bankrupt (at least not today).
EM: Well, thank god.
ME: All my catastrophic thinking paid off! Thanks, Anxiety.
EM: And your superstitions were reinforced, yay!
ME: It all worked out perfectly.

I was so happy about not going bankrupt I ran right out and pre-ordered the 30th Anniversary Vinyl Edition of Material Issue’s “International Pop Overthrow.”

The moral of this story: catastrophic thinking totally disrupts your life but it keeps the bad stuff at bay. Right?

Superstitiously yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

The first thing I saw this morning when I popped open Gladys as I was settling with my coffee was Annie Zaleski’s tweet alerting the internet that Material Issue’s “International Pop Overthrow” was thirty years old today.

My first thought was, oh my god I love that record. My second thought was, once again math hurts my feelings. To be fair it’s not just math that hurts my feelings. It’s the passage of time too. Most number-related things, I guess.

Since this was a momentous occasion, I cleared my schedule* to spend the day listening to Material Issue’s three nearly perfect records and pondering what their music has meant to me. To be fair, I did not need an anniversary as an excuse to do this. I frequently spend the day listening to Material Issue because I love them. They make me feel energized and productive.

Where to begin? Probably with the song “Valerie Loves Me.“** It makes me happy right to my marrow. I hear this song and the blood in my veins gets fizzy like soda pop. It’s a song that makes me hazy with nostalgia and reminds me of drunkenly dancing and singing this song with a beautiful boy named LaFrenz on the shores of Half Moon Lake back in 1994 or 1995. Everything was a long time ago now.

What I love so much about Material Issue’s music is that sonically it is pure joy. It’s best kind of poppy goodness. I believe their songs are what the youth would call a bop. Or at least they should be. I’m not entirely sure what a bop is or a banger. Or the different between a bop and a banger. And if a song slaps that is lost on me too.

The thing with Material Issue is that I love them for the same kinds of reasons I love The Replacements. See, Paul Westerberg has this ability to write what I like to call hip shakers and heart breakers, but they are usually different songs. Hip Shakers: Left of the Dial, I Will Dare, Alex Chilton. Heart Breakers: Here Comes a Regular, If Only You Were Lonely, Skyway. Can’t Hardly Wait might be one that combines both.

But Material Issue? Like 95% of their songs are hip shakers and heart breakers all at the same fucking time and that is genius and appeals to all my dual-natured gemini sensibilities. I don’t know about you, Darling Ones, but I love things with layers. I really am a Shrek-like motherfucker.

Material Issue issue sounds like the best, brightest pink Hubba Bubba bubblegum but if you listen to the words for even thirty seconds you’ll see it’s not that happy. Some of the songs are dark and even border on the problematic (Goin’ Through Your Purse, Kim the Waitress). Even my beloved Valerie that makes my heart giddy isn’t a happy song.

I like things that are contradictory, two things at once and that’s what Material Issue is. I like love songs that are kinda sad. I like pop songs that are dark.

On a personal level what I love the most about Material Issue is they’re one of very few bands that don’t have to carry the weight of my emotional baggage. Somehow they’ve managed to slip past all that nonsense and continue to be the sound of pure joy, which I know is ironic because of the band’s sad ending. I try not to think of that part. Instead, I love these three albums with my entire heart.

I really would like to wake up with you early in the morning or stay up late just playing records on your phonograph,
Jodi
 
*Today’s schedule was to include being vaguely annoyed about work while also procrastinating on doing that work and being lonely.
 
**Beware the comments on this video. I read the second one and it made me cry. Damn.

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So it’s Thursday morning. I’m intermittently making comments on Carrie’s Facebook about Gunnar’s SexVest from last night’s episode of “Nashville” (my new favorite thing), doing the occasional bits of work mentally preparing myself for the big bits of work to come, and trying to decide the soundtrack of the day.

I quickly flitted from Belinda Carlisle to Ryan Adams to Sugar and finally landed on Material Issue and of course because Material Issue is brilliant and I have all kinds of memories regarding their music I started tweeting Material Issue Memories. My second memory involved having a very stoned argument with a feminist (not me) who was trying to explain why “Kim the Waitress” was so misogynistic. I was having none of it.

Then it got me to thinking about all the times I got stoned, which isn’t all that many in the grand scheme of things. I think it was my the year I was twenty-two when I really experimented with pot and decided it wasn’t my thing. Also there was the whole “brain on drugs” goodie-goodie aspect of doing illegal drugs that didn’t sit well with me. And Regina Morrow’s death.

But now when I reflect back on all those stoned memories I can’t think of a single time I got stoned that I didn’t have very passionate arguments about inconsequential things, most of them musical. I remember sitting in my friend Nate’s apartment arguing about baby boomers being the very definition of evil and using the song “Bastards of Young” to build my case. I also remember sitting in a bar, stoned & drunk, and building a case as to why Pearl Jam was better than Nirvana, and this was after Kurt had died.

All this is to say that I think pot made me argumentative, because apparently I needed help being contrary and divisive. It’s a good thing I never got attached to it.

The post The Stoned Diaries appeared first on I Will Dare.

so i don’t know what in the hell has happened. perhaps there’s been a cosmic shift in the universe. maybe some planet is in the proper house in my chart. maybe it’s the Ides of March and that means that we’re a few short weeks away to spring and the long winter will be over.

i don’t know what it is, but i feel so damn good today it’s unbelieveable. i feel like i’m back in my skin for the first time since october, and it fits and feels right and for reasons that i cannot explain i can’t seem to stop smiling, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with listening to Material Issue (though they are a sure bet to make me smile because the song Valerie Loves me always reminds me of one the happiest small moments in my life).

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