Open Letter To Rolling Stone

[Diemen]

I found this on the net as a letter from Joan Jett to Rolling Stone, but it actually was written by Maya Price (performer/writer). Anyway, it's really good, and even though I admit I don't really listen to many real rock and roll women, I pretty much totally agree with it.

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An Open Letter To Rolling Stone

I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.

By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!

Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.

Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.

Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor.

Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.

Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons...Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes. Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.

Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages. What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these--instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.

In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold." The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.

If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.

 

[daisybean]

I love this..

I felt the same way when I saw that insipid cover...but she words it so much better.

 

[IWasBored]

i can't say i listen to many women in rock music either, but any moron can tell that britnay spears isn't rock. it's like when they say averill lavine is punk...

RS sucks

 

[HelloAngel]

That letter was great, and that issue of RS offended me badly.

PJ Harvey also only received ONE LINE of recognition.

 

[Flag Pole Pear]

wow, nice letter!

avril lavigne is a punk rocker, cause she says she is. come on guys, shes hardcore real. shes the anti-britney.

dumbass.

"slap my bitch up!"

 

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

FUCKING A, I want to kiss the woman who wrote that letter HARD.


She said what I think the majority of people (excluding 12 year old wannabes) wanted to say.

 

[Flag Pole Pear]

you kiss women?

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

avril lavigne is a punk rocker, cause she says she is. come on guys, shes hardcore real. shes the anti-britney.

someone once told me of a story where this mom and her 15 year old daughter were returning something or the other because, as her daughter put it, "it wasn't PUNK enough!" it was something dumb like a toothbrush. she was dressed just like her, down to the painstakingly straight hair, oh-so-perfectly unfrizzed. because all punks care about looking picture perfect whilst performing in concert.

during the entire return process, she belted out her version of "complicated."

well, we all know avril is "keeping it real," since she tells us so every other word in every interview she gives.

 

[adamswildhoney]

SWEET THAT ARTICLE IS AWESOME

 

[Diemen]

FUCKING A, I want to kiss the woman who wrote that letter HARD.

Hard female kissing?



____
someone had to do it...

 

[yertle-the-turtle]

I recently picked up an issue of Rolling Stone at my local library...and prompty put it back. Utter rubbish. I guess I'll stick with Q for over-hyped music eh?

 

[Kieran McConville]

The thing is, Rolling Stone are clueless and have been for many a year. It's nothing new. For some strange reason the 'rolling stone' name seems to allow them to retain some tiny shred of kinda-serious-journalism, but even that is fading fast.

It's not much of a choice really. As occasional readers of my posts (ha!) would know, I regard the British music press with a venom that cannot be described. Their elitist, public (private?) school mindset is poison to the very notion of music as something that one might take joy and hope from. So that's the UK, and in the US we have good old Rolling Stone. Are Spin in the US too? Whatever, they are also nearly as bad.

The best bet is to stop reading them. I did long ago. You will note that generally albums are not reviewed based on the actual music but on some spurious political and ideological notion of grasping the 'zeitgeist'. They perform intellectual somersaults and can no longer tell their ass from their elbow.

None of which is to deny that sometimes 'it's all about the songs maaaan' can indeed be a load of bollocks. Just not always.

 

[u2loopy]

That article f**kin RAWKS!!!!

 

[dsmith2904]

I was completely outraged over that issue. Five years ago when Rolling Stone did their first Women in Rock issue Madonna, Courtney Love and Tina Turner were on the cover. Though the edginess of their rock credentials could be questioned, these were all women who wrote their own music and were responsible for their own images. To have these three fantastic, talented, inspiring artists be replaced by Britney, Christina and Shakira is beyond ridiculous. What about Gwen Stefani, Shirley Manson, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Alanis Morissette? How about women who actually play instruments like Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch and Norah Jones?
Not only were the RS cover girls not rock artists in even the smallest sense, they don't even possess the spirit of rock, that fearlessness and individuality that make true artists memorable and great.

 

[HeartlandGirl]

I bow down in homage to the author of that article.

<---considers herself one of those who still hold sacred the word "rock."

 

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

you kiss women?

Only ones with balls like that.

 

[hiphop]

Only ones with balls like that.

You rock.

 

[sharky]

I actually remember cancelling my RS subscription when i got my "RS Hot Issue" with the hottest trends. Anyways, the "hot" model of the time was someone I had never heard of but she was NAKED on the cover. Gee, I thought I was subscribed to a music magazine, not a porn magazine.

I would rather read Q. RS has no merit anymore.