The Mean Kitty Song

The Raincoats - Don't Be Mean

Music, Thoughts etc.

I've wondered lately about where this blog is going and who will relate to my previous rants on here in regards to certain subcultures.

The intention of starting this blog was for me to write about arts and music, but save for posting a few videos of stuff I like I haven't written much about it really. Perhaps it's time to start.

I did think of posting my own lyrics and chords etc on here but I decided not to because of copyright issues, and the fact that I don't want anyone performing them. I don't want to write stuff for other people to perform. Whether or not I'm a good lyricist is besides the point, I don't do it for love or money. If anyone's gonna perform what I write it's gonna be me. I haven't uploaded anything of myself because I don't do guitar solos (I'm not really good enough for that) and I don't have a band at the moment, so I'm just networking at the moment. Where it is going to go is another question -but it is a lot harder to get anywhere with music than one assumes, even if you can play your instrument up to scratch. Bands form and break all the time, sometimes due to differences in taste, other times due to personal issues. There is little democracy in a rock band, normally it is one person calling the shots, whatever good intentions one starts out with. I know a few professional musicians who are pretty much broke and have not got anywhere, sometimes through their own personal shortcomings (over-confidence or a lack of it) or simply through bad luck.

Anyway, if anyone has looked at my other blog as well as this one they'll know I've had issues to contend with. The other blog was initially about politics and current affairs, but recently it became personal (and this one was supposed to be the 'personal' one for my own musings). I have to admit though, to my shame, that I haven't really been following current affairs that much, I've had my own stuff to contend with lately. Music is therapeutic in that sense - helps me get some of that shit off my chest. Even if my lyrics are a bit dark and intense at times - titles such as 'Dirt', 'Death Leaves', 'Loaded Gun', 'Snow White' etc might give you an inclination as to my themes. I can't really give it a label, but a lot of my inspiration lies in Velvet Underground, punk rock and the grunge scene. Anger isn't always bad - it can be channelled constructively. Whatever all that grief cost me it at least inspired some music and lyrics. One day soon they will be on MySpace once I get myself a percussionist and a bass player, along with someone to play some lead guitar.

Or should I dream on?

Because what does piss me off big time is the arrogance of some men with guitars. Every musician has their own style- but I have had more than one man (each with his own distinctive style) try to tell me that theirs is the 'right way' of playing and that most rhythms are like theirs. To hell with that. I know it not to be true. It's harder to find female musicians to play with because there are too many arrogant men who believe, consciously or not, that music is a male thing and that men can play guitars better than women. I have even heard some women repeat that view as though it were a matter of fact. Ok, so add together all the famous musicians and most of them are men, for sure. But doesn't this have something to do with the fact that more men have played musical instruments for longer and composed music for far longer? And why is this? Perhaps because we have lived in a male dominated society for centuries?

The men who have this attitude rarely get anywhere because their heads are too far shoved up where the sun fails to shine, whether they have any talent or not. Some men treat their instruments like some do their cars - treat them as extensions of their egos or as they would an objectified lover. Look at the way a man treats his guitar (or his car for that matter) and you may get an inclination of how he treats women. I knew a man who bashed the hell out of his instrument - and he even once threw my acoustic guitar out of his vehicle, and tried to throw me out with it. And surprise - he was one such musician with the ego problem described above. The drawbacks of his attitude - sexism as well as arrogance - outweighed the benefits of his musical talent, despite the fact he was not a talentless musician.

I don't deny that men with guitars can be a turn on for me - but in a sense I'm glad that the man I'm seeing now doesn't play guitar. Because I don't have to put up someone around me constantly telling me what music I should or shouldn't play, that my music is shit, and listen to constant derogatory remarks about female musicians. Oh, and he treats his car pretty well too.