A surreal moment from back in the day

[laughingrat]

[Charlie Rose interviews Sioux and Severin in 1986]

The juxtaposition of Charlie Rose and the Banshees stopped me in my tracks. Rose is a good interviewer, and it'd be a great interview if he'd've stopped talking over Severin so much. Personally, I enjoy the part around 5:15 or so when Severin says that what makes their music different is that they're actually interested in a wide variety of things, and that most people aren't deeply interested in anything at all. I do believe we call that "being a geek," these days, and it's part of why I liked their stuff so much as a weird, awkward teenager.

If you're unfamiliar with Siouxsie's career and the way she hacked out a new space for women in music, this post provides a nice overview of that, including some necessary commentary about problematic aspects of her work--and there's plenty of them. There's also a little about Siouxsie's ways of performing gender. All of the analysis is tantalizingly short, especially to someone who has a pretty good familiarity with the music in question, and who's basically a lifelong fan (ahem). It's a great place to start, though. [YouTube, incidentally, has an absolutely astonishing amount of Siouxsie's work, not to mention interviews and documentaries.]

Part of why I'm getting passionate about the Banshees again after an embarrassing number of years is because of Siouxsie's amazing in-your-face presentation, which is completely lacking in meekness or apology, even when she's singing a ballad or a dance tune. That attitude was exactly what I needed as a teen, and I'm finding it quite inspiring these days, too. Another reason is that, what with her having a 30+ year career, it's possible to look back and watch her growing up; you can see her gradually abandon much of the worst problematic imagery and behaviors, for instance, and the music itself changes constantly. If listening to music I haven't listened to for 20 years is making me feel my age, I can at least watch Siouxsie, who seems to be constantly in a state of Becoming, and find another way to frame growing older.

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

I had been looking into her, and then I met one of her songs, can't remember which one it was at the moment and my growing love affair came to a screeching halt. I am glad that she seems to have learnt and grown up because there is a lot about her to like. Thanks so much for this!

[laughingrat]

*nods sadly* The angry/violent/horror imagery from their early stuff I don't have much of a problem with, strangely, because it seems to fall under the "let's shock people" umbrella. That racism, though, that is the pits. There was a lot of problematic stuff around race/ethnicity in their early work especially, but honestly, I think even these days "cultural appropriation" is just a string of meaningless syllables to her. *sigh*

[the_future_modernes]

Damn. Damndamndamn. :/

[laughingrat]

Well, it's more in terms of borrowing beats, musical styles, etc.--but, you know. Still. I can't pretend it's not a problem.