Who rage against the machine thinks they are. I don't agree with either of their messages, but...betta recognize!
Still have this on vinyl
Posted on 11/23/2002 4:57:59 PM PST by I_Love_My_Husband
An Open Letter to Rolling Stone
This letter was written to rolling stone after their "women in "rock" issue was published, but was not printed by their editors. Please forward it to all the rocking people you know!!!!!
I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.
By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!
Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.
Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.
Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.
Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons...Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.
Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.
Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.
What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these--instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.
In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold."
The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.
If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.
I SO miss Napster. Format-wise, MinMX is as close as it get (but it's incredibly SLOWWWW)
I've heard the spyware thing about Kazaa, what exactly is it and what does it do?
Exactly what I think...
Liberal has-been Jett Joan at best was a mediocre and pseudo-female Joey Ramone. If her career had been anywhere at this point, a gig in Afghanistan would be the last venue she'd be playing at.
I always heard Joan was from the Main Line in Philly.
Maybe she left and didn't (Go Back To) Rockville... and waste another year. :-)
Other than that it's 610 for a little sports. I really only need two buttons and a CD player and I'm good.
Regards,
LH
Hey...just like Carlos Hathcock's rife... Gore's M16 is still in use, and still in safe condition.... (NOT TO COMPARE GORE TO HATHCOCK!!!)
Yeah, "don't go back to Rockville"...you may get sodomized by Michael Stipe!
And you're right, WinMX is dead slow, even with a high speed connection. At least with Napster, if you had DSL or cable, and you were dloading from somone with the same connection, it would move pretty fast. Not with WinMX.
Is "nature-boy" Stipe also from "nature-girl" Jett's hometown of Rockville?
Who rage against the machine thinks they are. I don't agree with either of their messages, but...betta recognize!
Still have this on vinyl
Jett was born in Philadelphia, PA; her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 12 years old. By the time she was 15, she had formed her first band and was performing around town. Kim Fowley, a Los Angeles record producer, discovered the band at one of their gigs and became their manager; soon, he renamed the all-female group the Runaways and secured them a contract with Mercury Records. The band released three albums that never had much commercial success in America, yet were very popular in Japan; the group were popular in both the Los Angeles hard-rock and punk scenes, which led to Jett's production of the Germs' first record, G.I. The Runaways group broke up in 1980 and Jett moved to New York to begin a solo career.
However in there she must have been in Rockville because she went to Richard Montgomery HS, a friend of mine was her history teacher and I have heard her interviewed and she spoke about being here. I doubt that she had a very typical childhood.
Floyd would be dead in the water with the three-minute-attention-span generation. Thank God this idiotic generation can't take the great ones away from us.
Let 'em have their MTV. We've got Floyd. We win.
no...I'm saying that no one I know or can imagine would say that... "I don't think anyone calls pop tart barbie dolls or one in tight pants and a spiky bracelet someone who "rocks." "
I don't know of anyone who says "I'm going to a rock concert" when they have Britney tickets.
Then again...I've never been to a britney concert. She might open up with "HELLO DETROIT!!! ARE YOU READ TO ROCK!?!?!"
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