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Fissile
= Cult of Ray =
518 Posts |
 Posted - 09/22/2013 : 09:48:00
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Article Kim wrote for Vogue Magazine July, 1994 issue about her take on being a "woman in rock".
Will You Carry My Guitar Please?
Vogue Magazine
July 1994
The Breeders' Kim Deal has helped define the image of the guitar gal, selling a million copies of the zingy Last Splash without selling sex. As the group embarks on this summer's Lollapalooza tour, she recounts some discordant notes from the road.
When you're a "woman in rock," you never think about it, unless journalists ask stupid questions. But since forming the Breeders in 1989 with my sister Kelley, we've been touring the world, and I've experienced several episodes that made me wonder about people's attitudes – including my own – about behaviour between men and women, whether in rock or out of it.
Off Base. A beautiful June afternoon in 1992 in out hometown, Dayton, Ohio. Our bass player, Josephine, was in from England. We were rehearsing, and Josephine blew out the fifteen-inch speaker in her amplifier. We wanted to replace it with a Peavey Black Widow – a pretty standard speaker – so we called around Dayton to find someone who stocked them. Finally we found a Peavey supplier; I phoned, and a man answered.
"Hi," I said. "Do you have a fifteen-inch Black Widow in stock?"
He put me on hold and checked. When he returned, he reported, "Yeah." So I told him I would be coming over to pick it up.
"Well," he said, "when you get down here, make sure to give me a hug!"
I said – let's see. I can't even remember what I said. I suppose I said, "Yeah, OK" or "Um, whatever." After hanging up, I was still trying to understand what he meant.
Josephine, Kelley, and I piled into the car and talked the whole way over about who was gonna hug this guy.
We got to the store and picked up the speaker, which they'd set aside for us. Then while I was paying at the cash register, Kelley and Josephine hurried out of the store, abandoning me.
Just when I thought I would get out of there without having to meet the man I'd spoken with on the phone, an old guy with whiskey on his breath walked up to me. He said, "Are you the one who promised me a hug?"
I paused. I hugged him. I left. Kelley and Josephine laughed. It wasn't funny.
Hotel-lobby concert. A Saturday afternoon in January 1993. The Breeders had been asked to play before one of those music seminar things in a charmless San Francisco hotel conference room. Since we were playing only two songs in front of about 300 people, we brought some teeny amps to the hotel.
While people outside pounded on the door to get in, the guy who ran the public-address system in the room was busily running around, a little flustered. He was like most microphone guys: under a lot of pressure, doing a job.
As he was plugging my microphone in, a woman suddenly leaned over and whispered into my ear, "I'm sorry about this. If I was a man, he's be kissing my ass right now."
Where did this come from? I thought to myself, ‘Boy, is she wrong. He's a microphone guy. Microphone guys are always uptight. They have expensive equipment. She really thinks that her being a man would change that?’
After the Breeders played our two songs, I found out who this woman was. She was hosting a conference at the seminar, called Sexism and Racism in Radio. Who's sexist here?
Dutch Girl. Fall 1993. The Breeders were touring Holland, and backstage after a show some guests were hanging out in our dressing room, like Frankie somebody or other, a European football star. Very exciting.
I was drinking some Choco-mel when a Dutch girl barrelled into the backstage area yelling, "Keeem, I am a lesbian, I want to make love to you!" Over and over again.
If she had been a heterosexual man, yelling, "Keeem, I am a heterosexual man, I want to make love to you!" people would have thought it inappropriate; you know, pushy.
Eventually she toned down. At the end of the evening, we all went to outside and started walking to a bar. Somehow I lost the rest of the band, and I found I was alone with five fans, including this lesbian chick. She started up again about how she wanted to make love to me, all liberated and empowered-like.
When we started off, she'd been wearing a backpack and pushing a bicycle; I noticed that by the end of this very long walk, she had played up the helpless-female angle to convince one boy in the group to push her bike and another to carry her backpack. This while saying all along, in an empowered way, "Keeem, I am a lesbian, I want to make love to you!"
I hate girls who won't carry their own shit.
To add to this surreal experience, a German man in the group then whispered in my ear, "That's why I don't like Dutch girls."
What?
Dances with men. I was reading an interview with a fellow "woman in rock," Juliana Hatfield, in some sort of music magazine, where she said, as some women do, something like, "I prefer the company of men." "Why?" the journalist asked. "Because," Juliana answered, "women are sexually competitive." I was bummed. I thought to myself, ‘She's right. You know, women with earrings and other ornamentation in a group of men can sometimes just sell it too hard.’ It bothered me so much that I immediately called Josephine at her home in England. I read her the quote: "Juliana says she prefers the company of men because she finds women sexually competitive." And Josephine said, without missing a beat, "But – but that's the best thing about them!"
No offence, Juliana.
Stairmeister. July 1993, Munich. I travelled with a big red plastic Samsonite suitcase – I like the colour. The band was staying in one of those micro European hotels, and of course there was no elevator. So I started up the flight of stairs, lugging this my big red suitcase.
On the way, a carpenter doing work at the hotel passed me and asked if I needed help with my luggage.
"No, thank you," I said, surlily. I thought to myself, ‘What? He doesn't think I can get this suitcase up fifteen flights of steps? He thinks I'm a weakling, just because I'm a girl?’
I carried on, dragging the suitcase step by bumpy step.
Then a woman stopped on the stairs and asked me if I needed some help.
"No," I told her sweetly. "But thank you so much for asking."
I thought to myself, ‘Boy, isn't that nice? People just offering to help out when they see someone who needs it! ‘
So this summer, if you see me carrying my guitar at Lollapalooza, don't come up and offer, "Keeem! Let me carry your guitar!" OK? I can handle it myself.
The amp, on the other hand, is quite heavy… |
Edited by - Fissile on 09/22/2013 10:06:15 |
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Will You Carry My Guitar Please?
