FFB Guest Post: Peaches

Hello! This is Jacky from Northwest Is Best, here to share with you my musical heroine as part of Feminist Fashion Bloggers.

Peaches is niche pop star within a niche genre. Her spat-out lyrics may be crude and her electroclash beats simplistic, but I love her. She's fearless, brutal and looks like she'd be a good laugh down the pub. At 44, she's over the hill in conventional pop star terms, but age doesn't define her. Neither does gender. Peaches - born Merrill Nisker in Canada, but now based in Berlin - is definitely a woman. Look at her. She has hips and breasts and hair. Lots of hair.

My main love for Peaches is her gender play in her songs and videos. Consider the above video stills from Downtown, a single from her 2006 album Impeach My Bush. She performs as a seductress stalking the corridors of a spacious hotel, all pillowy cleavage and stockings. Then she's a bellboy, hair slicked back and no make-up. At the end, she fuses the two - dressed as a man, pouting in the mirror from beneath a veiled hat.

And her lyrics? She's not ashamed of her body - how about 'I drink a whisky neat / you lick my crow's feet' from 2009's Trick or Treat. Or, as she tells Iggy Pop in their 2004 glam-shock hook-up Kick It, 'if you play Moses you need burning bush / and that is just what I got'. (I did mention the hair, right?) After four albums, she keeps getting stronger and continues empowering women through her Spandex-covered live shows. As she told The Guardian in 2006 'in my songs, the girl needs to be the antichrist'.

I'm not likely to follow Peaches' example and leap around in a silver jumpsuit, but I'm glad she's out there.

Thanks Aly for having me.

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Check out my guest post at Oranges and Apples and check out Jacky's blog, northwest is best, for Franca's guest post!

Check out a round-up of all today's posts here!

Wrock Concert

Hello, all!

So, yesterday you got the pre-scheduled-since-January post about math class, since I was at a Wizard Rock (Wrock) show two hours away until really late last night. I got home at 11:30, and Claire and I spent several hours being lost... so... yeah.

I took lots of pictures and a bit of video (pictures will be loaded to facebook, and video eventually to youtube), but Claire posted a video vaguely about our trip on the way there.



Olivia wrote a blog post about the concert here (I follow her blog and got to meet her yesterday).

This concert wasn't quite the same as ROFLCOPTOUR, since it was in a bookstore rather than a library. Lots of people were walking by and such, giving us weird looks. It was kind of harder to meet people than last time, but the music was fun! I finally got to hear the Blibbering Humdingers (check them out on Facebook here) and say hi to Lauren Fairweather (half of the Moaning Myrtles) and Matt Maggiacomo (The Whomping Willows). I even brought them COOKIES. (Everybody loves cookies, and Wrockers are no different.)

I... well, I don't have much to say. Also I'm hungry. This is fail. It was a fun concert, not as awesome as Summer Tour, but I got a Whomping Willows CD and said hi to sort-of-friends and got hugs and compliments on my Pizza John shirt, so all in all... completely worth it and pretty dang awesome.

This song was my favorite of the evening (I loved them all!) since we had a giant dance party to it.


A demain!
-Aly

Guest Post: Claire on Music

Music

Yesterday I got the best thing ever in the mail: a ukulele. I was frustrated at first because I couldn’t seem to hit the right notes and form a coherent song, but after an hour or so, I learned a dozen chords or so and could stumble through “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” And, yes. I realized how cliché that is. But there was something about the music, the kind of pureness of the sound that made me stop worrying and just listen. The next time I looked at the clock, it was one o’clock in the morning.

Not that I’m saying it’s good to stay up late and play ukulele, but there is something about music, that even if you aren’t naturally musical, transfixes us and makes us forget our troubles. Maybe it’s just me ( I AM the only person I know of who walks down the hall at school singing show tunes in her head, and pretending she’s the heroine of her own personal musical,) but there is still something about music that brings us all together.

My dad owns an acoustic guitar, and has become pretty good at playing it in the past few years. He likes to sit in his office on the second floor of our house and play his guitar and sing along. There is a comforting tone in his voice that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When I was just a little girl, my dad would come into my room every night and sing to me. And now, it breaks my heart when I realize that I can’t remember the name of the song he would sing, or the words to go along with it. I just have a faint recollection of a tune that tugs on my heartstrings whenever I hear it being played. And I know that one day, I won’t hear him serenading the household anymore, and I can’t begin to imagine how empty and lonely it will be without him and his music around to comfort me.

Maybe that is one of the reasons that I want to learn how to play ukulele. Or maybe it is just so that I can find a way to deal with the stress or anger or depression that builds up inside of me. Because, when I start to think of the music, it makes my heart feel less heavy and things seem calm and peaceful for just a little while.

For those of you who play Ukulele, here are the chords.

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by E.V. Harburg and Harold Arlen

Verse 1:

[C]Somewhere [Em]over the rainbow
[F]Way up [C]high
[F]There's a [C]land that I heard of
[G7]Once in a lulla[C]by

Verse 2:

[C]Somewhere [Em]over the rainbow
[F]Skies are [C]blue
[F]And the [C]dreams that you dare to
[G7]Dream really do come [C]true

Chorus:

Some [C]day I'll wish upon a star
And [G7]wake up where the clouds are far be[F]hind me
Where [C]troubles melt like lemondrops
A[G7]way above the chimney tops
That's [Am]where you'll [F]find me

Verse 3:

[C]Somewhere [Em]over the rainbow
[F]Bluebirds [C]fly
[F]Birds fly [C]over the rainbow
[G7]Why then, oh why can't [C]I?

Ending:

[C]If happy little bluebirds fly
Be[G7]yond the rainbow
Why, oh [F]why [G7]can't [C]I?

******

Okay, so that was by the lovely Claire! Go check her out on youtube, since her blog is neglected.

Thanks, Claire, for saving my crappy post today with one of much higher quality. She may be coming back on Thursdays this month :)