I got off the train in Sheffield yesterday to a grey autumn day. It was bitterly cold and quite quiet for a bustling city. My tram ride up to my hotel took me past streets of closed shops and people huddled up in various winter accoutrements. This sounds like the start of a horror story, but it really isn’t, it was just the less than hospitable climate that greeted me. Usually I'm a big fan of Sheffield, but it was pretty chilly yesterday.
When I got to my hotel the staff were nice and the place was warm. I ate some weird sandwich concoction on pinky red bread and went upstairs to make my hair go into cyber style Princess Leia bunches with fake dreads, ribbons and goggles. It took as long as it sounds.
Now onto the interesting bit; the gig itself. Aside from getting lost for about five minutes on the way down to the venue (I'd only been there once before, and it was coming from the other side of the city centre, alright?) I made it in good time to collect my ticket and stake out a place with both a good view and away from all routes to the bar. I failed at both. Oh well.
Ayria, the first support act, started early, so I was still trying to buy a copy of their excellent album Hearts for Bullets (shameless plug no. 1) when they came on stage. It’s difficult for a band with only two members to have a stage presence, even more so when supporting someone as big as VNV Nation, but I thought they rose to the challenge admirably. After a few PA issues made Ayria herself’s voice a bit hard to hear for the first two songs or so they picked up and delivered well with their interesting and unusual combination of slamming industrial dance beats and sugary sweet female vocals. Fans of Octolab and Angelspit take note (shameless plug no.2). I also had the pleasure of meeting Ayria afterwards. She was very nice and seemed genuinely touched by my compliments. I can’t wait to see her again when she supports the Cruxshadows next month (shameless plug no. 3. I really, really like these guys, although still not sure if the other bloke was there just for the live set and it’s an ‘official’ part of the band....)
Then the second support act came on. They weren’t terrible exactly, just a bit generic. There’s a lot of shouty EBM songs in German doing the rounds and although there’s a few stonkers out there, these guys didn’t have any of them. I don’t remember their name and I spent most of their set smoking outside, so I don’t really feel like commenting on them.
VNV Nation themselves were absolutely fantastic. They came armed with quite a long set (I was too busy watching the funky light shows to check my watch, but they played for at least ninety minutes) but never lost momentum. Ronan had a real connection with the audience and although I'd heard some complaints that he talks too much I found him really amusing. I think my favourite bit was when they took the glow sticks that had been chucked onto the stage and hung them in a pretty little pattern on the ‘drum module.’ The crowd didn’t seem to get tired either. If anything the longer the band played the more hyper and into it everyone got. They stomped through my favourite song (‘Chrome’) quite early in the set but I didn’t really mind. Even the songs I didn’t know very well I was singing along with by the end. At the encore the band seemed genuinely overwhelmed to hear the crowd chanting VNV! VNV! at them and the finale of ‘Perpetual’ (another firm favourite of mine) with officially the longest sing song end ever was incredible. It sounds cheesy to say but there seemed a real connection both between band and audience and the individual audience members. Although the Corporation is a relatively large venue the gig felt wonderfully intimate.
Afterwards it was a few drinks at the after party followed by an intrepid expedition to see what Sheffield has to offer on a Sunday night. Not much apparently. We convinced on bar to give us a drink despite it being two minutes before closing time and bumped into some incredibly drunk students, one of which wanted to lick my goggles. There was so much dancing going on in the Corp that there was sweat dripping from the ceiling, so the poor lad probably picked up a dose of something nasty, that is if he can feel it through the hangover. I surfaced in the morning rather easily. Probably something to do with the world famour Harley Hotel full English breakfasts.
All in all a wonderful night! I'd never seen any of the bands before but, aside from the Shouty German Blokes, everyone put on a fantastic show and I urge anyone who gets the chance to go see.
Peace and love x
P.S. No blog next week. I'm on my jollies. They're might be a double blog the week after though. I'll see what state I'm in after WGW.
19 October 2009
12 October 2009
'Alternative' Models
So, Bizarre Magazine, a publication very keen on showing their alternative credentials at every opportunity, have ended their search for a cover star. They picked, out of the no doubt thousands of entrants, a slim, conventionally pretty girl who then celebrated her success by getting topless and lounging around a set in provocative positions for the winner’s photo shoot.
And well done to her. I'm not saying that being a model is easy. This is not a personal attack on her. She is a beautiful young lady and I wish her every success in the modelling career that she will no doubt now embark upon.
Nor is it an attack on Bizarre, although I will be drawing a lot of examples from them simply because I do actually read the magazine.
This is more of a wonder if alternative modelling in general is, well, all that alternative really.
Let’s start with what I see to be the main components of ‘mainstream’ modelling. The models are skinny to the point of being unwell. They are that kind of inoffensive, homogenised ‘pretty’ (they can’t be too striking if they’re trying to sell a product. It detracts from whatever it is they’re meant to be advertising). They are very, very sexualised.
All these are massive generalisations of course, but they are also the themes I notice the most in commercial modelling shots, and the ones that irk me the most.
Alternative modelling is meant to be a departure from this. Those who peddle these images often spout rhetoric against ‘blonde bimbos’ and ‘stick thin models’, but are the images actually all that different?
Most commercial alternative modelling (flyers, clothes modelling, the ones that end up in Bizarre) seem pretty similar to me. A vast, vast majority are slim, if not clinically chronically underweight. All the finalists for the Bizarre competition appeared to be no bigger than a size twelve. Very few of the girls I've seen on flyers would fill my bras. There are one or two examples, like the delightful April Flores who has graced Bizarre’s cover twice, who are bootylicious lassies, damn proud of it and look mighty lush while doing it. But they are still very much a minority. The ‘celebration’ around plus size model is testament to their rarity.
And then there’s the inoffensive looks. Inoffensive? I hear you question. But what about the ones with tattoos and piercings in leather corsets? Well, have you noticed that under their tattoos, piercings and pink hair they have very feminine, classically beautiful faces? If anything I'd say that there’s more pressure to appear feminine in alternative modelling than in mainstream shoots, perhaps as a combatant against the masculine body modification so many of them sport.
And now for the biggie; the very blatant sexualisation of these women. Really, does a woman have to be topless to be beautiful? Apparently so. There is so much scope out there, and many models use it to its full extent , to be artistic, but the commercial shots revert time and time again to an overly sexualised type. Putting a young woman in a leather corset and draping her over a tombstone does not make an image and less sexual that a playboy bunny in a bra and panties on a four poster bed.
Many would maintain that the various alternative scenes are a ‘safe space’ for women, but from where I'm standing it looks as if women are expected to be sexual objects for the camera just as much as anywhere else.
There’s some pretty heavy gender bias going on as well. Male alternative models are rare and those that are out there do not get anywhere even close the same exposure as their female counterparts. I'd be prepared to bet that proportionally there are less male alternative than male mainstream models. Is it because half naked men don’t shift the same number of copies as half naked women? Bizarre would seem to think so. I don’t remember there being a single male cover model in my entire four year readership of the magazine. Oh, and all of the shoots are sexualised to some extent even if it isn’t out and out nudity.
Sure this is putting the same pressures on girls in the alternative scenes as those involved more heavily in mainstream culture (God, I hate that word!)?
But, to end on a positive note, there are models out there who create wonderful artistic shots that don’t rely on distorted sexuality. Two very talented lassies are Lethal Gem and Violet Magenta. Go have a look see and get a flavour of what alternative modelling could be if it just dared to be a little more alternative.
http://www.myspace.com/violet_magenta_modelling
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/LethalGem
Peace and love xx
And well done to her. I'm not saying that being a model is easy. This is not a personal attack on her. She is a beautiful young lady and I wish her every success in the modelling career that she will no doubt now embark upon.
Nor is it an attack on Bizarre, although I will be drawing a lot of examples from them simply because I do actually read the magazine.
This is more of a wonder if alternative modelling in general is, well, all that alternative really.
Let’s start with what I see to be the main components of ‘mainstream’ modelling. The models are skinny to the point of being unwell. They are that kind of inoffensive, homogenised ‘pretty’ (they can’t be too striking if they’re trying to sell a product. It detracts from whatever it is they’re meant to be advertising). They are very, very sexualised.
All these are massive generalisations of course, but they are also the themes I notice the most in commercial modelling shots, and the ones that irk me the most.
Alternative modelling is meant to be a departure from this. Those who peddle these images often spout rhetoric against ‘blonde bimbos’ and ‘stick thin models’, but are the images actually all that different?
Most commercial alternative modelling (flyers, clothes modelling, the ones that end up in Bizarre) seem pretty similar to me. A vast, vast majority are slim, if not clinically chronically underweight. All the finalists for the Bizarre competition appeared to be no bigger than a size twelve. Very few of the girls I've seen on flyers would fill my bras. There are one or two examples, like the delightful April Flores who has graced Bizarre’s cover twice, who are bootylicious lassies, damn proud of it and look mighty lush while doing it. But they are still very much a minority. The ‘celebration’ around plus size model is testament to their rarity.
And then there’s the inoffensive looks. Inoffensive? I hear you question. But what about the ones with tattoos and piercings in leather corsets? Well, have you noticed that under their tattoos, piercings and pink hair they have very feminine, classically beautiful faces? If anything I'd say that there’s more pressure to appear feminine in alternative modelling than in mainstream shoots, perhaps as a combatant against the masculine body modification so many of them sport.
And now for the biggie; the very blatant sexualisation of these women. Really, does a woman have to be topless to be beautiful? Apparently so. There is so much scope out there, and many models use it to its full extent , to be artistic, but the commercial shots revert time and time again to an overly sexualised type. Putting a young woman in a leather corset and draping her over a tombstone does not make an image and less sexual that a playboy bunny in a bra and panties on a four poster bed.
Many would maintain that the various alternative scenes are a ‘safe space’ for women, but from where I'm standing it looks as if women are expected to be sexual objects for the camera just as much as anywhere else.
There’s some pretty heavy gender bias going on as well. Male alternative models are rare and those that are out there do not get anywhere even close the same exposure as their female counterparts. I'd be prepared to bet that proportionally there are less male alternative than male mainstream models. Is it because half naked men don’t shift the same number of copies as half naked women? Bizarre would seem to think so. I don’t remember there being a single male cover model in my entire four year readership of the magazine. Oh, and all of the shoots are sexualised to some extent even if it isn’t out and out nudity.
Sure this is putting the same pressures on girls in the alternative scenes as those involved more heavily in mainstream culture (God, I hate that word!)?
But, to end on a positive note, there are models out there who create wonderful artistic shots that don’t rely on distorted sexuality. Two very talented lassies are Lethal Gem and Violet Magenta. Go have a look see and get a flavour of what alternative modelling could be if it just dared to be a little more alternative.
http://www.myspace.com/violet_magenta_modelling
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/LethalGem
Peace and love xx
5 October 2009
The Anti-Football League
Anyone know who Steve Jones is? No, not that Steve Jones, the other Steve Jones. Steve Jones the geneticist and all round smart cookie. Well, anyway, he was on the radio at the beginning of the week (so I'm told, didn’t catch it myself) and one of the things he commented on was those drawings you get that are meant to illustrate man’s evolution from chimps. You know, the ones that start with a chimp, then go onto a more upright chimp, then a hunched over man, then an upright ‘modern’ man?
The way Jones described these was ‘starting with an Arsenal supporter and ending with a guy walking into the British library’ or something remarkably similar. Now, I'm pretty sure that Jones was joking and didn’t intend to directly insult every Arsenal fan walking (or knuckle dragging according to some) the planet. But it was quite interesting to see how football fans are seen by certain sections of society, and it got me thinking.
Football fans come in all shapes and sizes. I know people who stack shelves in Wilkinsons and people who spend their days preparing lectures for Russell Group universities who are avid fans of football. Yet so often they are all grouped together into one baying, swearing, scarf wielding bunch. Anyone who’s been to a football will have seen clearly that not everyone is yelling abuse at the opposition, trying to strangle the ref and/or invade the pitch.
Obviously this is a caricature, but perhaps a potentially dangerous one. By treating every football match as a riot waiting to happen you’re antagonising the fans who just want to go along to watch the match and giving those few likely to cause trouble something to rail against.
Jones’ worlds also highlight the image that people extend to football fans beyond the stadium. They’re uneducated. They’re less sophisticated. They’re not as evolved as, say, someone who’d rather spend their Saturday afternoons in the British library. This is quite clearly not the case, but say ‘football fan’ to most people and they see only a drunk, rude, working class bloke in last season’s shirt.
Note the description. There’s become a nasty class dimension to the demonization of football fans. Football is seen as a working class hobby, not something the educated upper echelons waste their precious time on. The inextricable connection between football and the working classes cast Jones’ comment in an even more uneasy light.
This in turn hints at the way in which working class people (or ‘The Underclass’ as they’re known in some sections of the gutter press) are shown in the media. I can’t quite work out if this is an attempt to keep those who see themselves at the top at the top, the public distaste some people feel it’s acceptable to display towards certain lifestyles or an attempt to ignore the problems faced by the poorer people in Britain. But that really is twisting the logic. Not much about football can really be read into that. They just might be symptoms of the same problem.
I'm not defending the often antisocial and aggressive behaviour of some football fans, but I am emphasising that it is ‘some’. I was unlucky enough to be trying to get home from work when Glasgow Rangers were playing in Manchester and reportedly ‘wrecked’ the city. The actual damage sustained is still squabbled about, but every football fan I met that day was friendly and excited about seeing their team in a European game. They are not all hooligans and, as said above, it’s only counterproductive to treat them as such.
I'm not demonising Steve Jones for a throw away comment either. We all make them, and sometimes they’re pretty funny, I just felt like exploring the social view behind it. Alright, I know he wasn’t targeting ‘all’ football fans, just those unfortunate enough to be following Arsenal, but he could have made the same comment about any premier league club in the country with the same effect.
That’s the end of my musings, but I would like to now state that I am not, nor have I ever been a football fan just in case anyone was wondering (hence still calling Arsenal’s division the ‘Premier League’. I don’t know its new name). When I was little my Dad used to take me to see Leeds United. That’s probably why I never got into the game.
Peace and Love x
The way Jones described these was ‘starting with an Arsenal supporter and ending with a guy walking into the British library’ or something remarkably similar. Now, I'm pretty sure that Jones was joking and didn’t intend to directly insult every Arsenal fan walking (or knuckle dragging according to some) the planet. But it was quite interesting to see how football fans are seen by certain sections of society, and it got me thinking.
Football fans come in all shapes and sizes. I know people who stack shelves in Wilkinsons and people who spend their days preparing lectures for Russell Group universities who are avid fans of football. Yet so often they are all grouped together into one baying, swearing, scarf wielding bunch. Anyone who’s been to a football will have seen clearly that not everyone is yelling abuse at the opposition, trying to strangle the ref and/or invade the pitch.
Obviously this is a caricature, but perhaps a potentially dangerous one. By treating every football match as a riot waiting to happen you’re antagonising the fans who just want to go along to watch the match and giving those few likely to cause trouble something to rail against.
Jones’ worlds also highlight the image that people extend to football fans beyond the stadium. They’re uneducated. They’re less sophisticated. They’re not as evolved as, say, someone who’d rather spend their Saturday afternoons in the British library. This is quite clearly not the case, but say ‘football fan’ to most people and they see only a drunk, rude, working class bloke in last season’s shirt.
Note the description. There’s become a nasty class dimension to the demonization of football fans. Football is seen as a working class hobby, not something the educated upper echelons waste their precious time on. The inextricable connection between football and the working classes cast Jones’ comment in an even more uneasy light.
This in turn hints at the way in which working class people (or ‘The Underclass’ as they’re known in some sections of the gutter press) are shown in the media. I can’t quite work out if this is an attempt to keep those who see themselves at the top at the top, the public distaste some people feel it’s acceptable to display towards certain lifestyles or an attempt to ignore the problems faced by the poorer people in Britain. But that really is twisting the logic. Not much about football can really be read into that. They just might be symptoms of the same problem.
I'm not defending the often antisocial and aggressive behaviour of some football fans, but I am emphasising that it is ‘some’. I was unlucky enough to be trying to get home from work when Glasgow Rangers were playing in Manchester and reportedly ‘wrecked’ the city. The actual damage sustained is still squabbled about, but every football fan I met that day was friendly and excited about seeing their team in a European game. They are not all hooligans and, as said above, it’s only counterproductive to treat them as such.
I'm not demonising Steve Jones for a throw away comment either. We all make them, and sometimes they’re pretty funny, I just felt like exploring the social view behind it. Alright, I know he wasn’t targeting ‘all’ football fans, just those unfortunate enough to be following Arsenal, but he could have made the same comment about any premier league club in the country with the same effect.
That’s the end of my musings, but I would like to now state that I am not, nor have I ever been a football fan just in case anyone was wondering (hence still calling Arsenal’s division the ‘Premier League’. I don’t know its new name). When I was little my Dad used to take me to see Leeds United. That’s probably why I never got into the game.
Peace and Love x
4 October 2009
How to use your Fluffy Little Ball of Hate
Hello World!
I've been doing the odd bit of blogging hither and thither from my MySpace page for about two years now, but I thought it would make more sense to move my musings on the world to a site more blog-centric. So I found one that is entirely devoted to the things. Can't get more blog-centric than that.
As it says in the description I chat crap about anything and everything. If ever something irritates me or offends me, it ends up getting ranted about online. If I go to a gig or find a fantastic book, film or yummy little tidbit on the web that I think the whole world should be aware of, it goes online too. If I end up going somewhere interesting I end up typing frantically about that.
But, with a proper blog comes proper responsiblity. I'm aiming to chat crap at least once a week (not often I know, but I like to keep some ghost of a life functioning offline) and if I see something that inspires me into a four page think then I'll let ya'll know what it was that sparked off my little thought train the process.
So, how to use the Fluffy Little Ball of Hate. Well, step one, read some of it. Then comment if it gets a reaction out of you. If it doesn't then leave and do something more worthwhile with your life. Similarly, if what you read makes you think of something, or you think I've blatently plagerised something or entirely missed the point and you know someone with aim so good they could hit a milk bottle and four miles with a fishing catapult then let me know. Comments are wonderful things.
Peace and Love x
I've been doing the odd bit of blogging hither and thither from my MySpace page for about two years now, but I thought it would make more sense to move my musings on the world to a site more blog-centric. So I found one that is entirely devoted to the things. Can't get more blog-centric than that.
As it says in the description I chat crap about anything and everything. If ever something irritates me or offends me, it ends up getting ranted about online. If I go to a gig or find a fantastic book, film or yummy little tidbit on the web that I think the whole world should be aware of, it goes online too. If I end up going somewhere interesting I end up typing frantically about that.
But, with a proper blog comes proper responsiblity. I'm aiming to chat crap at least once a week (not often I know, but I like to keep some ghost of a life functioning offline) and if I see something that inspires me into a four page think then I'll let ya'll know what it was that sparked off my little thought train the process.
So, how to use the Fluffy Little Ball of Hate. Well, step one, read some of it. Then comment if it gets a reaction out of you. If it doesn't then leave and do something more worthwhile with your life. Similarly, if what you read makes you think of something, or you think I've blatently plagerised something or entirely missed the point and you know someone with aim so good they could hit a milk bottle and four miles with a fishing catapult then let me know. Comments are wonderful things.
Peace and Love x
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
