It wasn't rape humour*. I was drunk, and wanted to see people over react, since I was reasonably sure I'd picked the most offensive thing to say for someone who agrees with riot grrrls gender politics. I was half expecting to derail the thread. You're not exactly going to be able to 'call me on it', especially as that was a bottle of vodka and some port doing the talking.
@ Caspian: Your assertion that no one would listen to Arch Enemy without Angela Gossow and that she is a 'gimmick' sucks for two main reasons. One, Arch Enemy's music is written by, and pretty much built around Michael Amott's guitar work. It's his band. The second is that Angela is a really good DM vocalist: not only does she manage to avoid the standard gothenburg cookie monster sound (possibly making her the best vocalist in MDM besides Dan Swanö), and she manages to imbue her vocals on her best tracks with a really sick, diseased, organic edge that vies with the best. A third subsequent reason is that she's a much better vocalist than Johan Livas, as anyone but the most blinded chauvanist (Unfortunately this describes a fair chunk of the metal scene) would agree. The only thing that elevates Burning Bridges over the newer stuff is that the guitar work is better (or rather, more audacious), as Amott was in that inevitable 'three duelling solos a song' phase that happens whenever a guitarist gets a band to himself. That said, you could probably dismiss her as a gimmick (Although that's insanely sexist: male singers are never gimmicks), along the lines of the 'all MDM bands must have gimmicks' phase of the early noughties, were there were so many identical MDM bands that you'd only bother listening to a new one if they had a violinist, or wore makeup, or were from Japan.
With the Nightwish thing, I'm not even sure what you mean by a 'gimmick'. Yeah, Tarja was more hired than anything else, but then again, Nightwish's music was concieved with the Beauty and the Beast aesthetic in mind (in fact, Nightwish's music is based around Tarja's voice to a greater extent than most people realise, they were originally going to be a folk band.) Consider the band was formed a year after Theatre of Tragedy released their self-titled. I could maybe agree with you on the count that no one would listen to Nightwish without Tarja (Tuomas cannot sing for shit, though in a way that makes his contributions kind of endearing) though in what universe you consider Tarja's singing to be shit I cannot imagine. Honestly, thats about the only sensible criticism that CAN'T be labelled at Nightwish: their lyrics are half-baked scanglish, their songwriting is pedestrian, their instrumental work generally unremarkable, their album covers, videos etc. are mired in horrendous cliches and their whole formula had been done much, much better by other bands before they ever existed (Lacrimosa and ToT being the examples that instantly spring to mind). Not to mention the clones. Yet to attack Nightwish on the basis that Tarja can't sing seems to me basically insane: as far as I'm concerned her voice is pretty much the only reason you WOULD listen to Nightwish (or if, like me, you have to beat down a boner when a song directly references David Eddings then starts dropping Tolkien samples).
I'm rather confused about what, if anything to suggest. I assumed that this thread would basically just be for posting, for want of a better descriptor, overtly feminist music, but some recommendations appear not to cleave to this (unless I misunderstand the intention behind or content of the suggestions, a distinct possibility). Also, from a purely biological standpoint, this thread should probably be called 'So, you want to listen to music with ovaries?' Since it's not, I feel no badness about recommending every Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows album from 'The Inexperienced Spiral Traveller' up. Anna-Varney is not technically a girl, but she really wants to be! Numerous half-shrieked German darkwave songs about cutting off your genitals are for yay (actually, they're the reason I'm not recommending any earlier albums). Sopor Aeternus is absolutely brilliant music, and though the vocals are...idiosyncratic, to say the least, people here seem to fawn over bands like Deerhoof, so there shouldn't be much of a problem. I mention Sopor Aeternus basically because I was scrolling through my last.fm profile and, though I listen to plenty of female artists, or bands with female members, I couldn't really see any that discussed femininity as a core image, except maybe Inkubus Sukkubus, and their discussion of sexuality is really more to do with fucking vampires than fighting male oppression. Plus I feel kinda awkward recommending Inkubus Sukkubus because I can't actually personally work out why I love them so much myself, and fear they may be some sort of trap. Before I started typing loads of stuff (and maybe if I hadn't had that drunken post earlier) I might have tried some subversion, on the idea that people seem to be having no trouble posting bands with only one female member (whilst I'm sure not a single band with a girl in got mentioned in the music with balls thread) by upping and reccing Bolt Throwers Realm of Chaos:
This based on the fact that, despite being very aggressive and masculine, not to mention basically being about Warhammer 40k, Bolt Thrower do have one of the longest serving permanent female members in any metal band, and also one of the most invisible: Jo, the bassist. The point being, that the result is about as essentially feminine as most female-fronted metal.
*Basically, to qualify as rape humour, I would have to have made it funny. To make it funny, I would probably have to have not been drunk, in which case I probably wouldn't have been such a git. Vicious circle!
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Topic: So, you want to listen to music with breasts? (Read 32153 times)