Stop Thinking and Just Enjoy the Music

With these recent writings of mine, I worry these stories I am sharing may seem trite. How many untold marginalized individuals haven’t experienced untold discrimination and subtle cruelties and insidious messages? That is why I want to share my stories — because while I feel that nagging doubt about why any of it matters, it is important to share these everyday experiences if only to illuminate the depth of which issues like misogyny infiltrate every aspect of everything.

There is a Facebook group called Now Playing, and in 2013, I was active on it. People would post photos of their vinyl albums, usually next to their record players or hi-fi systems. They would comment on the artist, or what they liked about the song or album. Usually the albums were rock-orientated, or experimental, and rare, but not always. Most of the posters and commenters were men.

Being an enthusiastic music nerd, I relished the group at first. I posted about some of my recent vinyl acquisitions. I didn’t have a ton of records yet, but I was excited to share albums like the 12” single of Rene & Angela’s “I’ll Be Good” (still the best song ever), ABC’s Poison Arrow” and an 80’s r&b album by Alfie. Nothing particularly rare, but songs I was gleefully enthusiastic about. I was in the group for a few months before I started to notice a trend.

“The wife’s away, gonna blast this Merzbow (or insert avant-garde band name here) while she is away”.

This post would be followed by supportive comments. Nobody really questioned these posts much. But the theme with these particular post was the nameless wife/girlfriend would leave and NOW it was man time, time for some real music that her woman brain surely couldn’t handle or process. These guys didn’t sound all that different than a Tim Allen or Al Bundy cliche about needing to retreat into their man caves.

Before my more recent full-blown conversion to disco, I was an experimental/noise music devotee. For years, I organized an experimental music festival. I hosted a radio show that almost exclusively focused on avant music and I had live artists from the experimental scene perform live. My love of this music led to an individual who has since assiduously cyber-stalked me comment on my MySpace page — “You are not like other women, you have amazing taste in music!”. Sadly, this would not be the last time I have heard a comment of this nature. If you want to know why my love of experimental music has seriously waned, this attitude is in part to blame.

The point is, I knew my experimental music stuff back then. I was deeply annoyed by men insisting that women didn’t seem to like or tolerate their elevated music like deeply avant-garde genres like free jazz, or like Vibracathedral Orchestra or whatever. I may have pushed back on these comments in a snotty tone but I honestly don’t remember.

Then there were the records posted featuring scantily clad women on the cover, and of course men had to comment about how hot the women were. Even if they weren’t discussing the cover art they would talk about the attractiveness of the female artist. It was discussions like all the above that said — this group is for men or women who are not going to make a fuss.

One time, someone posted cover art for an album by the band Sparks. Sparks were a band to whom I was especially devoted at the time. I had met my husband because our mutual love of the band helmed by the brothers Mael. I adored them. But I pushed back against them and their weird quasi-sexist songs in the comments. Songs like ‘Something for the Girl With Everything’ and ‘Young Girls’. I wasn’t trying to start a fight, I had made an aside comment about their weird sexist songs even if they were being ‘ironic’.

I was swarmed upon. One commenter called me ‘ridiculous’ and another asked why one had to think about music at all, “just dance and enjoy it!” they responded. It took another woman intervening to almost reassure them that I obviously loved Sparks and it was okay to think critically about art. But I had learned my lesson about stating my opinion there.

It took men salivating over the Lost in Soundtrack soundtrack, featuring a scantily clad Scarlett Johansson butt, for me to finally leave the group for good. Male fandom in music is often defined by possession — records especially as cultural objects, as signifiers of cool. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in a group dedicated to sharing records in which the object was worshipped most of all, that women would also be treated as just another object and that men’s spaces are the default.