Muses
This morning on NPR they had a piece on Kristen Hersh of Throwing Muses fame. Or maybe it should just be Kristen Hersh of Kristen Hersh fame, because I guess she’s been solo now for longer than she was with the band. Whatever. NPR always does its best to lionize the marginally famous and today was no exception. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Throwing Muses or Kristen Hersh, but the laudatory comments on NPR drove me up the wall. First they had some ‘zine writer who mentioned that Throwing Muses were the first American band to get signed by 4AD, and this opened the door for other Boston acts to get big, like the Pixies, Bosstones, Julianna Hatfield, and The Lemonheads. Uh, let’s not confuse early with seminal, bub. I find it a real stretch to believe that if not for Throwing Muses the world would never have been blessed to have heard the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was some woman talking about the positive effect Throwing Muses had on women who wanted to play music, and how you could draw a direct line of influence from them to other types of music including, get this, Riot Grrl. This is about as good an example of pushing a tenuous relation to the brink of absurdity as I think you’ll find. To illustrate my point, let’s just take it a step further.
Riot Grrl were women bands of the nineties. The Corrs is a female band from the zeroes. Riot Grrl music influenced on the Corrs.
Upon Further Review
I noticed while toggling around my Bluehost account that the server my websites are located on is physically located in Utah. Therefore, I think this might be as good a time as any to take back all of those nasty things I said about Mormons a few weeks back, and mention that I saw six Mormon kids parading up and down Florence Street just this past weekend. They were all very neatly dressed. It was a pleasure to see idealistic young people out in the streets, trying to do some good. Although I’ve never read the Book of Mormon, I think I will give it a try. I’ve heard it’s very interesting!
Bummer
Read about David Halberstam passing away after I got home last night. Summer of ‘49 is one of the best baseball books ever, even if it has a lousy ending. Which is sort of like Halberstam in a way.