April 29 2011

The Bowie's interview that we watched in the class is the most amazing interview that i every seen. I can't immagine how a public star which rely on journalists and reporters could just do Bowie's type of answer and may just make journalists angry. I mean in the present, that may causes some serious problem afterwards.

In some point, Bowie's performance of Ziggy's bisexuality was a good deal for his success. The bisexuality it self great whole bunch of different topics that allow people to talk about, both positive and negative. just as the book says that a teenaged female fan reported on the first time she saw Bowie on television:

"My parents were reading newspapers and I was sitting directly in front of the television as I always did then, watching. Suddenly this colorful man or perhaps it was a woman, i really couldn't tell, was in the centre of the TV. I was amazed. I turned to my parents and demanded to know more about this thing. 'Oh... that's David Bowie," replied mother, "He's gay.'"(Qtd. in Vermorel and Vermorel 73)

Even today its still kind of a topic about he really is a homosexual or not, but today we see lots of performer straggling on how to create a topic that let people talk about them. apparently Bowie is the most famous one in his time to let people just simply talk about him. 

As Bowie got success and more recognize from the main stream, more and more artists, especially female rocker realize that they do not need to always fill themselves in to a man character, them could also just be themselves, or just whoever they wish to be, and I think this is a fundamental change in the music industry, which in the same time strengthen the women's importance in the industry. 

April 22 2011

I found this glam rock is much more easy to read and more reader-friendly than the last Women & popular music book we read.
In the chapter two, the book talked about the history of glam rock, how it started, and how it achieve a great success in the United Kingdom in the early 70's, and how it only get a limited influence in the United States, only in a few cities where glam rock get popular. Also, why its only took hold in the UK than in the US. Some people said that British rockers and their audiences had a more developed penchant for theatricality than the Americans, who "have put down outrageous acts as being nonmusical". but in the same time, Glam transvestism was relativly uncontroversial in Britain, perhaps because "cross-dressing has always been a part of British popular entertainment." American glam artists and their supporters, apparently experiencing a measure of homosexual panic, were at pains to insist that any tendency to dress lavishly and use makeup should not be taken as signs of sexual abnormality. After all the writer used some examples to further introduce the glam rock's history.

In the Third Chapter, author begin it with a discussion of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the group with which Bolan became a fixture on London's underground music scene in the late 1960's. Primarily the author focus on the group's musical style and its relationship to psychedelic rock to show that Tyrannosaurus Rex developed a kind of music that responded to the interests of the hippie counterculture. After that, author write about Bolan's musical transaction from psychedelic music to glam rock and from Tyrannosaurus Rex to T. Rex. In the final part, writer talks about Bolan's physical performance style with the two groups and suggest that Bolan established the basic elements of glam rock performance style through the implicit queerness of his persona and the self-conscious, highly theatrical manner in which he presented himself on stage.

April 15 2011

With regard to 1960s' rock, both the music and its culture were resolutely fraternalistic and, as Janis Joplin's example so poignantly reveals, women were either excluded from the inner circle or were drawn into being 'one of the boys'. Folk, and more particularly the folk protest movement of the 1960's, however, provided a more viable space , not least for women with sweet voices.

It seems that the early 1970s was a propitious time for women to break into the solo folk singers market, we have Carole King emerged as a performer on her highly successful album "Tapestry", we also have people like Janis Ian and Carly Simon whose also enjoying success as solo artists. Yet, as Joni Mitchell's album "Blue" reveals, being independent, creatively single minded and original continued to raise problems, not least those of grappling with a career while, at the same time, maintaining relationships.

Joni Mitchell's musical career started in Calgary, where she trained as a commercial artist and sang traditional folk songs in local coffee bars. In March 1970 "Clouds" won Joni Mitchell her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance, Joni Mitchell started to gain success from mainstream. And in 1971, "Blue" was released and sold over a million copies. Mitchell's distinctive harmonic guitar style, and piano arrangements all grew more complex through the 70s as she was deeply influenced by jazz, melding it with pop, folk and rock on "hejira" which released in 1976.

Mitchell's work is highly respected by musicians, Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever", even Janis Mitchell stopped recording over the last several years, but in 07 she released "Shine", her first album of new songs in nine years.

April 08 2011

We spend this whole week talk about Janis Joplin and how this girl survive in a industry which largely dominated by men, and been called "the rock queen".
The book mentioned, as a teenager, "Joplin had been stigmatised as different, interested in poetry, music art and reading," and point out, "as a female, peer group acceptance depends largely upon conformity to the accepted norm. Intelligence is tolerated, overt cleverness is perceived as aberrant, but fatness, spottiness, situates the woman as undesirable." Joplin also famous with her outspoken attitude towards sex, just like her favorite quoted "singing as fucking" and "fucking as liberation". In the University of Texas, the campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined "She Dares To be Different."
She left Taxes in 1963 and went to San Francisco to chase her music dream. In this period she's still mainly focus on blue music, and it's also the time when her drug use increased, she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. And, her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.
In 1964, Joplin's bluesy style get attention from the big brother and the holding company, She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, who had know her in Texas and in the same time was managing Big Brother. In 1966, she joined the band. In the Big Brother and the Holding Company she achieved a big success, TIME magazine called her "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", but in 1968 she left band to formed a new backup group, called "Kozmic Blues Band", but she could not be a leader of the band at that time, so at the end of 1969, the group broke up. In 1970 she tries to put together another band called "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and believe this time it will work. But on October 4th, 1970 at the age of 27, she dead in the Landmark Hotel from an overdose of heroin.
Lots of people blamed her death on herself and drugs, but actually it is the competition in this industry killed her. We can see every time when she quit this industry, her mood turned positive, like when she went to Brazil, and in their she stopped drug and alcohol use, but immediately after she came back to join the band, she starts to use them again. She's not only compete with others as a singer, but also as a woman, in a industry which largely dominated by men, her pressure maybe is just too big to handle with.

Every time I listen "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", it gives me a feeling that I'm getting drunk. The reason for that is probably because the bartender that I always visit back in Beijing love to play this song when he mixes drinks. But... this is the first time that i know this song is actually called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and its played by The Beatles.
This song is written by John Lennon, for Sgt Pepper's album. As the book mentioned, "Musically, the gentle beat works towards a slowing down of the listener's own pulse rate, while the gradual shifting harmonies in the chromatic descent in the bass line suggest a relaxation in the a comfortable and languorous dream state".
The Sixties is an incredible age, while the British Invasion from Beatles mixed with Martin Luther King Jr's speech, Vietnam finally turned Cold War hot, and the Hippie movement followed by that against the war. The world is changing so fast and so many things are coming together, people in that situation sometimes just need a break, in such a intense world maybe just need a break. I think that's part of the reason why this song is so successful and changed the world so much.
The book also talks about the women's roll in the sixties where many of them emerging from universities, education, self-education and political intervention, and how they drag attention from the public world to express their voice, but also how it is evident that the principal trajectory between the counter culture and the women's movement lay in the debates surrounding freedom and repression. This reminds me that in the sixties seems the whole world is in the movement mode, where in capitalist we have the feminism, the women's and the black rights movement, and in communist world we have this great leap forward and culture revolution, as we can see here the the feminism is a part of the big civil rights movement.