Notably, the [1976 Thames Television interview with the Sex Pistols] also showcases Siouxsie’s measured response, one that encapsulates what her life and music has always been about — a challenge to patriarchal structures through measured control mixed with playful dismissiveness. Diana Edelman, Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism, p. 123 Diana Edelman contributed chapter 6Continue reading ““A Woman with an Attitude”: Male and Female Gothic and Siouxsie and the Banshees”
Tag Archives: Rock and Roll
“Work Me, Lord”: Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues
Like the more traditional blues before her, Joplin’s soulful white blues, her “kozmic blues,” is similar to Romantic poetry, as it is charged with radical praxis; it is an unwaveringly personal music that conveys much about Joplin emotionally, and in turn, the sociocultural climate of the flower children in the mid- to late-1960s. The radicalContinue reading ““Work Me, Lord”: Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues”
Bowie the Rebel and Romantic Typology
In a culture generally unaccustomed to theatrical displays of male plumage, the glittered, feathered, frequently half-naked David Bowie of the glam rock 1970s presented an affront to traditional notions of gendered norms, introducing instances of “gender expression” some forty years avant la lettre. Fast-forward to the relatively conventional final decades of Bowie’s private life, andContinue reading “Bowie the Rebel and Romantic Typology”
David Bowie and Space
Bowie’s space/alien lyrics express Keatsean negative capability in the often paradoxical–both egotistical and humble–visions of alternatives in anticipation of the deaths of self, the Anthropocene, humanity, and the Earth itself. Shawna Guenther, David Bowie and Romanticism, p. 53 David Bowie’s most enduring persona, even to the present, years after his death, is as the alienContinue reading “David Bowie and Space”
The Beatles, Get Back
The first really magical moment, when everyone was feeling the power of the music, was Paul’s first performance of “Let It Be.”
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 