Does indie culture, asks one reader of CiF’s ‘indie professor’ Wendy Fonarow, really offer its female participants sanctuary from sexual objectification and imposed gender roles? Or does it, in fact, offer nothing more than objectification of a less overt nature and an alternative but equally rigid set of expectations?
The indie professor responds cautiously. Outwardly, the indie scene might be less macho than others, but wankers get everywhere, and remain wankers even if they listen to fey guitar music. And just because one of them has swapped his pink Ben Sherman for a bootleg Dirty Projectors tour shirt, his raging cock issues won’t magically resolve themselves.
Another reader – SexyLikeLemmy, apparently – isn’t at all happy with this assessment. Not that he particularly disagrees with it. No, it’s more that he’s sick of journalists sullying the purity of his musical experience with their ‘political ideology’, such as that of expecting not to get sexually assaulted.
Thanks to Nicholas.
This is infuriating! Why am I surprised that a music writer would write an article completely void of anything to do with actual music. Why? Why do music writers always do this? What compels you to apply your own vision of how you think the world should be on every one else?
What is it with you fucking people? Why must you try to enforce some ignorant orthodoxy of your own on every scene that comes down the road? Why? Why can’t you just see music for music? Why must you always try to attach some political ideology to everything? It’s asinine and it makes YOU the only one running around trying to be the equality hall monitor.
Is that what it is? Where all music writers hall monitors when you were kids? Miss the power over the other kids?
Let me let you in on how it REALLY works out here in indie-heaven. Whenever a group of guys gets together to build a band they always have to take into consideration that they’ll get slagged off in the press if they don’t find some way to live up to indie expectations. Get it? Whose the real cultural enforcer? YOU PEOPLE!
Think about it, you got 2 guys trying to put together a band, they know damn well they BEST get at least one girl, if they can’t find one, they better get a gay friend in there some how. Who cares if they know how to play? That’s not important. What’s important is getting treated fairly. You don’t stand a chance in the press if you don’t play there little game. Fine, find some girl and stick her on the bass, just turn the fucking amp down live so she won’t screw everything up!
You writers know fuck all about music, what you do know about it thrusting your orthodoxy on everyone else.
SexyLikeLemmy
So there you go. The truth, if you can handle it, is that Kim Deal was only there so the Pixies could call themselves an equal opportunities employer, and Vivian Girls are probably some sort of bloody PC local government initiative.
But take heart, girls in bands. Because as useless as you are, you are at least marginally preferable to benders.
77 Responses to “LikeFuck”
It’s lucky that SexyLikeLemmy has made such an eloquent and rational argument, otherwise it would reek of failed musician and twuntishness.
Failed musician, failed music writer. And never quite got the hang of being human either
Guessing he lost that hall monitor election to the kid who liked music and could string together a coherent sentence.
Normally this sort of invective is supposed to be reserved for writers who slag off your band in a review. I am guessing that SexyLikeLemmy’s band doesn’t even get bad reviews so it all came out here instead.
All together now…
“You hacks don’t know where it’s at
You can’t appreciate the master of the Strat
Not that I’m concerned (‘course you’re not)
Your paper’s full of crap (‘course it is)
I only read the gig guide anyway”
I watched that thread evolving. SexyLikeLemmy ticks most of the boxes for point-missing antifeminist rage, but a special mention should go to TomoWilliams, whose request involving the author’s breasts was cruelly removed by moderators before anybody had the chance to call him a wankspider. The wankspider.
By SexyLikeLemmy‘s reckoning, the Scissor Sisters must be the anti-Christ. And he’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.
Oh, and search for his stupid name brings up this:
http://www.tallahasseeshows.org/board/profile/?area=showposts;u=734
And a link to what appears to be his aptly named band, Attention System.
Ah, the powers of the interweb.
I bet his band are well good.
Um, if everyone goes crowdsurfing, who’s gonna be the crowd?
@Undemocratic Speed Bump
Correct. Anyone who does THAT to Comfortably Numb deserves a slap.
Are indie girls the ones with the really tight jeans? Cos I like them.
They don’t have a girl on bass, so they’ve fallen at the first hurdle. Rookie mistake.
@Ugly Newt: congratulations on the term “wankspider” – my new favourite insult.
I’ve always viewed being randomly groped at a gig to be a bonus, but then doesn’t everyone!
p.s. The anti file sharing threads on cif are always good for laughing at failed muso’s bitter impotence
The poignant and plaintive second paragraph reminds me of yesterday, when I was watching the England v Pakistan (‘Porkistan’ according to the chatroom poets – get it? PORK-istan – they’re all Muslims! HA HA HA HA!) T20 via one of the internet’s less reputable content streamers. One user in the chatroom kept posting the following, once every 10-15 seconds:
but the funny thing was that each time it was subtly different, so they were clearly typing it out furiously from scratch each time. Insults are always more powerful when hand-typed – no-one ever got successfully offended through copying and pasting.
I’m more of a targeted groping man myself. With the random stuff you can end up with an elbow or a shoulderblade. Try getting off on that.
I like SexyLikeLemmy’s intro to his second post on that tallahasseeshows site;
I wonder if he’s ever considering having that tattooed across his forehead, just to warn people what’s coming whenever he opens his mouth.
There’s a name for that tactic used by SexyLikeLemmy. What was it called again? Not quite the same thing as “I’m not racist, but…”
I recall the nuances of fucktard rhetoric were discussed in some obsessive depth in a previous thread. Appeals to higher authority, etc. etc.
Yeah well, according to SymptomaticVoice:
And then he goes on to say that the only reason women are less likely to be “gropped” at an indie gig is because so many of the men are gay.
SymptomaticVoice? Symptomatic of what, I wonder?
Most “indie” now (it’s not a fucking musical fucking style no fucking matter how fucking many fucking stage school fucking kids get fucking assigned fucking listening to the fucking Smiths as fucking homework) is more a gap-year option or dating service for rich kids than anything to do with music.
ClearlyHasntSeenLemmyRecently hasn’t factored this in to their critique. The new Klaxons album, for example, is so shit that they’d need to have a primordial dwarf playing the drums in order to have a hope of distracting lefty journos.
Gosh, all this indie-talk takes me right back to my college days. The most important thing of all was what music you listened to, and whether you had their early stuff. *pauses to change Abba CD*
Ooooh, so that’s why I haven’t made it yet – being female I missed the part about being able to actually play the drums and guitar – I thought I could… oh and I sing too and produce my music at home but maybe I’m imagining that I can do it and it really only translates well to Dolphins? Good job SexyLikeLemmy was here to put me straight. No wonder I’ve never been a success! Thanks Sexy, you’ve got snapped me out of my delusion.
Cock.
Now I wish I’d googled “wankspider” *before* I posted. Well, at least the results are entirely appropriate for the type of idiot who demands “tits or GTFO” every time he notices somebody female online.
The following isn’t particularly snappy, but sums up the position nicely:
http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/2009/07/politics-is-simple-when-youre-as.html
The thought of wankspiders creeped me out. Not enough to eclipse the fucknuttery of our featured poster, mind.
Thanks
. That did actually answer my question, which was, “What’s the name of SexyLikeLemmy’s opening gambit?”
To which the answer is, after reading the FlyingRodent link, “Being a cunt but trying to say you’re not”.
Or, indeed, just “Being a cunt”.
did this fellow even read the article or did he just scan the words “indie music” and “women” and then jizzed an “oppressed white male” card all over the keyboard?
because I’m pretty sure he is EXACTLY what this article was warning about
@Dirigible
I am printing that first paragraph out and turning it into a poster!
I don’t think there’s any way to do this without sounding like a cunt, so here goes…
As I’m sure SexyLikeLemmy would be the first to point out, it should just be Pixies, not the Pixies.
@ dirigble
We like to be described as “new rave” thanks. And please don’t mention our new drummer again please, it’s supposed to be a suprise for the new tour.
God bless, and keep those trousers tight.
I don’t think there’s any way to do this without sounding like a cunt, so here goes:
*makes wet slapping noise with lips*
Insert weak pun about Jay-Z and gardening here.
I’ve got 99 problems but this whining wankspider ain’t one
Dirigible – you sir/madam might just be a flipping genius.
Primordial dwarf! – pure class!
Sexylikelemmy one day you will realise that people don’t like you or your music because you lack imagination, human warmth and any discernible talent. Your ownership of a relatively small penis isn’t the issue. And no, the girls won’t laugh at it.
I remember reading some equally bigoted turdfest about women comedians being shite compared to men.
Which, of course, is totally untrue.
I know, I know, but ‘Pixies’ sounds wank.
SexyLikeLemmy’s band lost the 2007 Tallehasse battle of the bands competition to an all female nu-folk combo called Mooncup. In his eyes Gay Bikers on Acid/Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopheads were the ulitmate in cynical music industry marketing.
Ooh ta, It’s the leather bikers with the merciful release emblem painted on the back.
I just listened to a few bars of Attention System. By god, I wish I hadn’t.
kurt cobain was such a naive fool. if only he’d let a girl play in nirvana, they could have been as successful as melt banana, acid king or melys.
I’ve just noticed, the Guardian is the only news site that allows swearing in its comments section. So when we hear right wing rants about political correctness and freedom of speech from Daily Mail, BBC and Telegraph readers on their comments pages, do they fail to realise that the paper they support is far less liberal than the supposedly left wing ideal of the Guardian?
Well since they fail completely at not being a bunch of shambling cunts, I’d say that’s pretty much a given.
Spelling – Gaye Bykers On Acid – Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds.
Also Rektüm – a fictional East German band who escaped over the Berlin wall.
I used to go to a lot of grungy gigs – I still do gigs but they’re a bit more high-brow these days, and I most impressed by the name of a support act I saw in Dudley once, ‘Lesley Presley and the Press-On Towels’. I don’t know whether they were misogynists…
And Have Your Lurk, don’t feel guilty about your musical choices – I’ve listened to Arcade Fire, The Smiths and Abba in the last 48 hours – you won’t go to hell I promise
wow the comments page on this blog is depressing
the posts are quite funny but you lot are really lame
The commenters on the BBC don’t (willingly) support it. They haven’t
worked out how to opt out of the TV Tax, so they think that as they’re
paying for the site, they should get their money’s worth.
nick, your real name isn’t by any chance Morrissey, is it?
Is Kim Deal the reason that Pixies were so shite? Or was it a combination of reasons?
@ nick
wow thank you for taking the time out of your brutal wank regime to share
it’s a good job your post was funny and sorted this place out
ps I’m with you capitalisation full stops commas and grammar are like really lame
Yeah, right on, brother. What’s the point of having a band if you can’t get at least one groupie. It should be a law. We had a band for 3 years and I didn’t get my doorknob polished even once! But, then, I wasn’t lead singer, was I? Oooh Noooooo…. Pretty boy Russell was, wasn’t he? Primping about in his radical clothes, bought on his Dad’s credit card, and singing a quarter tone flat; he got all the girls, didn’t he? While the true, unrecognised talent stood at the back trying to drown out his nasal squawking. AND SUGGESTING ONE DRUM FLOURISH AT THE END OF THE BRIDGE DOES NOT MAKE YOU CO-AUTHOR OF ONE OF THE GREATEST SONGS IN HUMAN HISTORY.
It’s OK though, the Caribbean cruise circuit is a great life. And I love smooth jazz.
*sob*
Actually I think it is a kind of law. De facto, not de jure. If your group doesn’t have at least one groupie, it probably doesn’t register on the league table.
Rotwatcher,
Jog on.
That is all.
“Does the spirit of the Blitz live on?”
Like fuck, apparently:
18. At 08:13am on 07 Sep 2010, krokodil wrote:
Very hard to say until such time as britain is under air attack during a war with our european neighbors again. I would like to think the “spirit” would show again but I expect firing squads and martial law would have to be judiciously applied to certain sections of society…which would be no bad thing.
complain about this comment
Remarkable. Eighteen posts and you can find someone so dedicated to subhuman fennec- fisting that he’s dangerously near to spurting across his keyboard while imagining his neigbours being dragged from their beds and shot… Maybe he has the uniforms confused?
Never mind. A great thinker of our time has deigned to enlighten us:
54. At 09:53am on 07 Sep 2010, Stephen wrote:
Yup; third-world [at-best] living-conditions, infrastructure, transport… & of-course education, education, education
Knuckle-draggers [supposedly] believed buying ‘British Rail’ below-cost shares bleat-surprise when private-investors demand their-money-back [dividends]; UK£200+ day-return one-of-many benefits Manchester-London job-interview [day-or-so notice].
‘BR’ requires UK£1+ TRILLION TODAY to-fund tunnel… excavations enabling double-deckers. Population-tracking [No 10 Petitions PFISecurity, HomelandSecDB...] would have prevented Stockwell, 7/7…
Enron, Ford-Pinto… ‘model’ ignoring rape, terrorism… risk is NOT a saving.
complain about this comment
Well, that makes me feel better, though for all the wrong reasons.
Blimey! Somebody call London Zoo and tell Stephen the monkey keeper that he left his laptop in the chimp enclosure again and that this time the chimps have managed not only to type some words but to post them.
Interestingly, what the chimps have written is not as incoherent as it might seem. If you reverse the effects of the laptop’s auto-correct facility and then translate it from chimp to English the actual message reads:
“Hey, Stephen, you twunt. Give us three buckets full of fresh bananas if you want your laptop back.”
I’m a failed indie musician and I approve this message. Whatever it was. *Shrug*
The rampant hyphen-abuse in Stephen’s stream-of-stupidity seems awfully-familiar. Haven’t we seen-him-before?
Now I can’t get Morrissey singing That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore out of my head. That troll nick fits perfectly into the metre.
I just might die with a smile on my face after all.
Yeah, I’ve been doing that a bit lately since they put a paywall up on The Times.
It’s fucking gash, isn’t it? What about that Julie Burchill woman?
I’m not sure what all that stuff about getting a token girl in is about. I guess I must have just imagined bands like Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers – the three biggest indie bands of the last few years – being comprised entirely of men.
(yes, they’re the only indie bands I can name off the top of my head – but that just proves they’re the three biggest).
There’s some glorious pseudoscience over on the Graun at the moment – so bad, it made the hookline. The commenter responsible is busy doing the maths of how inefficient supermarkets are, but he reaches the conclusion that…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/06/supermarkets-food-transport
Why’s he worried about emissions at all? If thermodynamics works the way he thinks, we can counter global warming just by leaving our fridges running with the doors open.
* – “clearly”, in this context, is self-satisified debate terminology for “far from clear, but I hope that by suggesting that you’d be stupid to disagree, I will prevent you from looking too closely”.
From the BBC student immigration thread
To be fair to the government, for every bogus student entering the UK, the government is sending a young Brit out to Iraq and Afganistan to get killed or maimed to even the numbers.
To cope with the increasing numbers of bogus students, they are opening new fronts up in Iran amd North Korea soon.
*rolls up sleeves, cracks fingers*
What the fuck is it with people named Tim? Handily, the old US TV show “Home Improvement” has supplied the answer to be used to all Tims (nice but dim, Taylor or otherwise).
Which saves us the bother.
@Timmy. Come on now – new ‘joke’ please
Q. What as a brown trunk, green folage and a 100 pairs of eyes?
A. A tree in Pakistan! Get it? tree Pakistan floods, lots of locals in it!
no sense of humour you lot!!!!
Totally fuckin’n beyond me this. Great bands, at random and written in a drunken and angry state: The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Slits, The Selecter, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Throwing Muses, Babes In Toyland, Hole, The B52s, The Breeders, Cranes, Portishead, Sugarcubes, Swans, Young Marble Giants. All shit groups with token females. Christ on a bike, I thought ‘indie’ had lost it’s way but this cock should be listening to Bon Jovi, jelling his hair and buying expensive clothes from a boutique. Leave the real music to those who really give a shit, Mr Indie.
Timmy. As you are unable to use my English as proficiently as our guests from my Commonwealth, I hereby order you to leave.
or Gipsy Kings
I love thrusting my orthodoxy, me.
*sings* “I’m young and I want to be lo-oved, just like everyone else does!”
I’m looking at you Nick…
How do you know jews are living nextdoor?
There’s wet toilet paper on the clothesline
What’s the difference between jews and boyscouts?
Boyscouts come back from their camps!
What’s the difference between a jew and a vampire?
One is a blood sucking vampire, and the other has wings.
What’s Hitlers least favorite planet?
‘Jewpiter’
Whats the difference between a jew and a pizza?
The pizza doesnt scream when you put it in an oven!
Whats the difference between a Jew and a Canoe?
A canoe tips
How do you get 100 jews into a car?
Throw a quarter in it.
How do you get them out again?
Tell them Hilter is driving.
How many jews can you fit in a VW Beetle?
54, two in the front, two in the back, and fifty in the ashtray.
How do you know you have a queer Jew?
He likes money more than girls.
Have you heard about the Jewish sports car?
It stops on a dime, then picks it up
What is a Jews biggest dilemma?
Free pork
What’s the difference between TimBulb/Dhimmi Taylor/Pete Tong and a decent human being?
Everything.
The bit that offends me is not the subject of the jokes but the sheer, eye scratching shitness of them.
Also what the fuck are
Serious question. It makes no fucking sense. Foreign students pay money to come and get a degree here. That’s it. There aren’t thousands of young people getting through customs by simply claiming to be students.
…It is almost 5am. I am awake.
Tim Nice But Dim
Timmy Taylor
Pete Tong
I smell the cheesy aroma of sockpuppets.
Just felt like fucking up Dr Zeus’ comment in the following thread.
La, la, la.
There’s one thing Tiny Tim (to collectively nickname him) is good for: he makes posts by yours truly look great.
Since I posted, this thread has degenerated into the most stupid and puerile state. What’s wrong with you? This is Speak Your Branes for fuck sake. It’s a forum for intelligent but disgruntled people to comment on the idiocy that surrounds them, namely HYS.
To be fair, there is far more cuntishness in the man than any one pseudonym can bear alone.
Why, thank you. I do try my best.
Er, nothing. What’s wrong with you? Is there a End User License Agreement on the front of this site saying, “When commenting you agree to only slag off HYS cunts and similar”? This is the internet, mate. It is what it is. If you don’t like the comments, then go ahead and moderate ‘em (assuming you are Dizzy or Gainsbourg or Nelson or someone).
Speaking personally, and getting a little semi-serious, I think of this site as a refuge from the twattery of the world. Yes, many of us are childish etc. etc., but, um… er… can someone help me out here? I don’t do joined-up thinking. Ooh! Star Trek Remastered is starting on TV. ‘Bye!
If you wish to support me then do so in your comments. Please do not co-opt my name for yourself.
You are not Lenny Long Legs. I am.
Post under your own name.
I do agree with what you say…
Lemmy IS sexy.
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