20th Anniversary of 'Nevermind'

Celebrated by anyone who knew, knows, or has just found out the genius of the iconic Seattle grunge three piece has probably been kicking out their favourite riffs this past week, as Nirvana's most famous, diamond selling record Nevermind, reaches the grand old age of 20.

Various celebrations have taken place, BBC Radio 1 lent me the soundtrack to a rather dubious night journey I ended up taking through the Peak District yesterday, featuring interviews with everyone from The Subways to Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, although, unfortunately, presented by the ever irritating Zane Lowe, who kept insisting that (and I paraphrase) 'everyone' got into Nirvana in the same way, through Nevermind... which, as a teenager who used to listen to Bleach, Incesticide and In Utero not only to school, but in lessons, getting me through some really difficult times, kind of came across as a bit populist and dismissive, BUT, there is little denying what an amazing album it is; and perhaps without it, less people would know about the genius of the late Kurt Cobain, which would be a travesty.

Equally, NME.com have celebrated in creative and appropriate fashion, launching a live Nevermind listening session at 1pm yesterday, where everyone would start listening to the album at the same time, and tweet their comments until and after the album was finished. Cottoning onto this a little too late - but nevertheless loving the idea - NME has offered another fantastic alternative for fans, posting the band's legendary 1992 concert Live at the Paramount for just 24 hours from the 27th of September, so if you're reading this and you've missed it, gutted. It was amazing, of course.

Anyway, without wanting to go on and on (particularly since I've not bothered to blog in months... although beware, more posts are coming soon, and I'm going to try and make them more frank, since no one reads this anyway haha) this is my favourite track from Nevermind, I hope some of you agree.

I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else. - Kurt Cobain

News Corp and Marxist Irony

It's pretty old news now that Murdoch et al have finally come under close scrutiny due to the phone hacking allegations and investigations that are taking place; interestingly only considered an issue once a clear 'victim' was involved. By this I mean Milly Dowler's family of course, and as the FBI investigation now begins State-side, that of 9/11 families, who may have also been hacked, for whom I only have the most heartfelt sympathy, as does the entire country. Nevertheless, it must be said that when it was the realm of sleazy politicians phones - the Galloways - the sluts on the podium - the Imogen Thomas' - and indeed their love rat partners, of course the Giggs of the world, the media seemed to decide amongst themselves it was well deserved. In this instance, it seemed to be a result of rather simple Marxist manipulative theory, 'those with the means of material production' also have 'the means of mental production' (Marx & Engels),
the news told us it was shocking, they told us they were ashamed, nobody needed to ask if they needed to be punished. It had already been dealt, then was simply the time for signing the interview exclusive deals, free to eventually complete the full circle, and pose for the 'candid' photographs, showing the spontaneous sexiness the media raised them to have. Just like Miss Thomas' incredulous trip to LA in late June 2011 proved.

This is something which no one seems to have asked, indeed the cultural hegemony which has been cast, which subliminally makes all its members agree that this was the point at which it is okay to vilify Mr Murdoch, in my mind, has come unforgivably late. As Left Foot Forward reported recently, and something which Sociologists and Economists have known as far back as 1995, Murdoch has been paying 1.2% tax, 31.8% less than the rate of Corporate tax. As some right minded people I know have reiterated, it is not tax evasion, it is tax avoidance, but I hardly think it is the point. In the money Murdoch has saved in paying tax, in a country which he has been a silent political kingpin since Thatcher, he has denied the country at least 4 fully staffed and equipped state of the art NHS hospitals, or equally about 65 state schools, well, whatever it could have been spent on, in a time of cuts, redundancies, elderly welfare diminishing, and units specialising in children's heart surgery facing closure (those greedy babies wanting new valves... don't they know there's a deficit?!) 'evasion' or 'avoidance', there's a whole lot of people who are perhaps suffering now because he's not been asked to pay fairly. Certainly, I think I would take a small army of life-long benefit 'scum' to lose the country the amount of money we've lost out from Mr. Murdoch alone. Indeed, in recent weeks, news of the ever worsening cuts have been a mere babbling brook to the tidal waves of emotional sensationalist news depicting a left-wing revolution, which in reality is not much more than a self-governed set of public slaps to the wrists.

I suppose this is my biggest qualm about the whole media circus that has ensued; believe me, I have dreamt of the day Murdoch, in Shelley-esque style gets turned on by the monster he has created, but I also dreamt that it would be for the right reasons. So caught up one becomes in the repetitious damnation of Rebekah Brooks (again, I feel I must reiterate, I am not a fan of the woman, but she does seem to have taken the role of the sacrificial goat for the Aztec Gods of media manipulation somewhat) and the constant breaking news media cycle which endlessly churns out more and more victims until the whole country starts investigating how they may put a pin on their own phone, Murdoch's far reaching economic and political crimes go unpunished, simply because they are not on trial. And I wonder if they ever will be. If News Corp falls, will Murdoch still have punching power in England? Of Course! Where print media may be on a grim death-march facing the ever advancing armies of digital media, Sky is not set on any such grim course. Providing millions of British homes with digital media (not to mention channels and programmes), and interestingly, less than a week ago, Wales receiving £57m from Whitehall for super-fast broadband in times of strict austerity measures, there are just as many opportunities for wealth and power acquisitions in Britain as ever, and in the nature of private Capitalism, it is beyond the influence of any of its citizens.

Indeed, Murdoch's far reaching global empire is a support network to valuable to world economics to ever be allowed to crumble; his mental production vast enough to ever allow the suggestion to go too far. Indeed, if this is a man who hacks into private information of everyone from politicians to grieving families, who knows what information, let alone money he has to barter with? As Berger argues: 'The mass media still perform their job of distracting people from the realities of society and of "clouding their minds" with ideas that the ruling class wishes them to have', often in the NewsCorp scandal, quite violently, as Elisabeth Murdoch went on record in The Telegraph to say Ms Brooks 'fucked' the company, something which the kindly old Rupert denies.

As Rupert's bloody Friday draws to a close, there is real suggestion and hope for change, heads certainly will roll, but I think perhaps, only to keep the King's off the block. The post-modern world has replaced empires of countries replaced with empires of one presided over by their white male Tycoons who make their own rules to the games they play globally. When Capitalism allows for an individual to decide how much wealth they believe it is fair to pay to a country, and with ever mounting wealth, and means, they can become more and more surrounded by soldiers to wage their wars, it is hard to imagine how democracy can fairly prevail in any country. If you think this is going too far, just look into how Murdoch's impacted every political ascension in Britain since the 1980s.

N.B I write this after the event, where Ms Brook's involvement has become clear to say that this article did not suppose that she had no involvement, the level at which she provably has been is as clear now as it is abhorrent, but that it's image of her preceded significantly the evidence of her involvement, and that I only ever argued a case which I hoped would follow an 'innocent until proven guilty' ethic which rarely is in practice in news media.

I Love a Lady with an Accordion

Considering my lack of lessons (I comfort myself with the hope that post-graduation I can focus on it...) I love being a piano accordion owner. These ladies are fantastic with them too.

My lovely Scarlatti

A young Edith Piaf

The inspirational Christina Hendricks in Mad Men as Joan Holloway

What's in a Name?

Ever since I declared myself as a feminist when I was about 15, I've found that name poses a whole heap of problems.

When I was about this age, like many 'feminists' I know, this was merely an identification with beliefs I already held, a chance to align myself with the powerful, intelligent and outspoken women I'd always had the privilege to know personally, and looked up to publicly. I remember feeling as if I had just walked into the best party, happy to draw eyes towards me, I wanted everyone to know not just what I believed, but who I was proud to be seen with.

What I failed to realise at the time however, was that it was not so much that I would be seen as with feminists, but rather as a frightful amalgamation of the all the women who had ever walked into that party, quite the opposite of strengthening my image, it was the beginning of a life-long conversation with almost every non-feminist I should ever meet as to what I was; I found myself a stranger to even friends. (N.B, I wrote about the damaging effect of labelling in an earlier blog Freedom and the Dialectic, should this be interesting...)

The term feminist was probably too monolithic in its seriousness, too much of permanence for most of my friends at the time; despite attending a private girls' school, I have no discernible memories of anyone else declaring what I had. This gave me much confusion, as the matter was painfully simple to me, my 'feminism', and my soon followed up Marxism was only me saying: 'Women do not have it equally, and neither do the lower classes', the implication of which being that something really ought to be done about it. My feelings on the declaration always had, and still do hold a hovering footnote of a whole plethora of other wrongs in 'equality', gay rights, race inequalities, disabilities; I'm still yet to find a term which I believe fits all these terms, for then and now however, Marxist Feminist at least presents an ideological stance where these other injustices can be explored.

What I felt I could do as a 15 year old was very little; I had just left a state-school education where I had suffered a breakdown resulting from years of daily abuse, unnoticed through wilful ignorance of teachers and students at the school, which had thoroughly taught me to be voiceless - to show intelligence was to invite ridicule and alienation. At the very least, once I had entered an educational environment where the opposite was closer to the truth, I began to relish in any chance to make up for these lost years, and the immense inner strength I found in declaring my ideologies felt revolutionary, I finally had the chance to combine my private injustices with the public injustices I had always been made aware of by my family and inquisitive nature to build lasting strength and character.

At this point I had no idea that, to some 'feminist' was a dirty word. To be feminist, I learnt, was to be a man-hater, to be charged by your ovaries more than your brains, to wish for supremacy more than equality. Of course, this is not the honest meaning of the word, but a lazy media-white-wash created to diminish any voice which challenges something which legitimately challenges society; but apparently I should be observed carefully if I happened to have a lighter and a bra to hand.

One of the chief problems I believe there is with the term 'feminist' is that it encompasses more than any non-feminist believes it does. Ask someone who isn't feminist to name a few types, and you will probably first hear 'radical', maybe 'second-wave' if they know a little more, and perhaps 'Wollenstonecraft' if they've taken history at some point, but much more than that and they get stumped. I don't blame them. If you haven't aligned yourself to feminism, why would you? Even The Guardian aren't about to start publishing separate columns for all the feminisms that exist, so what hope does the non-committing potential supporter have? Nevertheless, for as long as there is ignorance on the matter, the term will still stand as the monolithic testament to every angry feeling of injustice that has ever been recognised by Woman, a frightening idol to even women who do agree with what they have encountered.

Therefore, I have decided to include a list of some of the many feminisms I have encountered, and the woman who have spoken the most famously (although I hesitate to say the best, for as Germaine Greer said at Warwick of her own work, other feminists had done her work better, but a 'feminist' topic never makes publishers hands rub with glee) in their respective fields. This is by no means the definitive list, and please, if you think anyone is unfairly missing, comment, but I feel it is important to try and ascertain; as Audre Lorde once wrote on the differences in Woman's experiences:

'The oppression of women knows no ethnic, nor racial

boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences.'

Sister Outsider (1984)

First Wave Feminism

Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, Simone de Beauvoir, Rebecca West, Olive Schreiner, Ray Strachey, Virginia Woolf,

Second Wave Feminism

Helen Gurley Brown, Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Susan Griffin, Kate Millet, Robin Morgan, Alice Rossi, Valerie Solanas

Socialist/Marxist Feminism

Michèle Barrett, Johanna Brenner, Barbara Ehrenreich, Clara Fraser, Emma Goldman, Heidi Hartmann, Donna Haraway Catharine MacKinnon, Alexandra Kollentai, Juliet Mitchell, Sheila Rowbotham, Gayle Rubin, Sylvia Walby, Nellie Wong, Clara Zetkin

Asian, Black and Women of Colour Lesbianisms/Feminisms

Gloria, Anzaldúa, Angela Davis, Combahee River Collective, Joyce Ladner, Audre Lorde, Amina Mama, Rosario Morales, Alice Walker, Mitsuye Yamada

Lesbian Feminism

Charlotte Bunch, Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, Adrienne Rich, Sarah Waters

Separatist Feminism

Roxanne Dunbar, Elana Dykewomon, Marilyn Frye, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Lisa Leghorn

Liberal Feminism

Zillah Einstein, Betty Frieden, Rebecca Walker, Mary Wollstonecraft

l'Écriture Féminine

Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva

Psychoanalytic Feminism

Phyllis Chesler, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Sarah Kofman, Jean Baker Miller, Juliet Mitchell

Biological/Nature Feminisms

Nancy Chodorow, Anne Koedt, Sherry Ortner, Rosalind Petchesky, Gayle Rubin, Mary Jane Sherfey

Feminism and Peace

Sara Ruddick

Philosophical and Scientific Feminism

Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, Dorothy Smith

Historical Feminisms

Joan Kelly-Gadol, Gerda Lerner, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg

Cultural Feminisms

Gisela Ecker, Teresa de Laurentis, Laura Mulvey, Griselda Pollock

Linguistics and Feminism

Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ros Coward, Elaine Showalter, Barbara Smith

Educational Feminists

Gloria Hull, Marcia Westkott

Revolutionary Graff

Here's a few bits of graffiti which I particularly like; the best street-art leaves you wondering not just about what you see, but who you've just missed.

Following in 'Womanist' Musicians Philosophy

Dolly Parton is a guilty vice for most; for myself I'm rather unashamed in my joy of sitting in my living room with a cup of coffee, listening to 'The Best of Dolly Parton' vinyl I picked up at Oxfam last summer for 50p. I think anyone who hasn't heard much more than Jolene or 9 to 5 really ought to give this little treasure a go, it's sure to have you humming it all day once you've heard it; and to go and search your own Bargain Store for some Dolly. N.B I am aware that's not the metaphor at work in this song...