Steve Reynolds Program - Hot Topic
Zemblanitous Hello!
The word “serendipity” means “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” Today’s song is titled “Hot Topic” and the topic for me today is it’s really, really, really hot. There’s nothing happy or beneficial about a 105 degree day, so a google search shows the opposite of serendipity is zemblanity, named after the Arctic island Nova Zembla where the USSR tested nuclear weapons, an island unlike Serendip (Sri Lanka), the lovely tropical island lovingly happened upon on by sailors.
So yeah, it’s hot. I’m a regular Rizzoli and Isles to perceive that. It’s so hot you don’t want to move, lest the movement of your body creates energy that then would translate to heat which would contribute even more to this most decidedly non-Canadian location I’m in right now. At least I’m not in Arizona or Texas where it’s a smidge worse.
To change the subject, I just read French Exit by Patrick deWitt and loved it. How did this author follow up The Sisters Brothers, a brutal tale set in Oregon and the Sierra Nevadas during the gold rush, with a surreal novel of a disaffected New York mother and son with lots of unearned money and the dead patriarch’s soul occupying a cat? I don’t know, but it’s inspirational for trying something new.
Song #35
Hot Topic
by Le Tigre
Hot topic is the way that we rhyme
That phrase, in subculturespeak that I don’t understand, is sung over and over in the 1999 queer electropunk dance hit, “Hot Topic.” The bed music, a chugging groove, feels like a preset on a keyboard lovingly dirtied up, like Gorillaz did with “Clint Eastwood.” All its lyrics shown on the web do not capitalize the t in topic, so it’s purportedly not entirely a tongue-in-cheek reference to that mall store that sells pre-packaged rebelwear to the teenage consumer demographic.
But it’s gotta be a take on that shop, right? It really does read like, “oh, you think Axl Rose and Soundgarden represent something edgy and challenging? Well here are real patriarchy-smashing, paradigm-shifting artists.” Kathleen Hanna sings in near-rhyme (favorite example is near-rhyming “Laura Cottingham” with “The Butchies, man”) artists, authors, academics, musicians, and others who uplift feminist and queer theory and/or were badass women or queer throughout the 20th century.
It’s a hell of a litany. Fifty-seven people. It’s a reassurance that the listener is not alone. There are people out there who articulate the unfairness of it all, the anger and ecstasy of finding yourself in a system designed for someone else. The names go from the hugely famous (Aretha Franklin, Yoko Ono) to friends of the band (The Needs, Justin Bond) to a lot of folx in-between. The references served as a launchpad for research for many young women. Looking back, I imagine less than a handful have timed out in their esteem.
Even with this list that would make Wallechinsky and Wallace proud, it’s the other lyrics that elevate the song to a top hundreder for me. Kathleen Hanna’s voice is so loud, so beautiful.
So many rules and so much opinion
So much shit to give in, give in to
So many rules and so much opinion
So much bullshit but we won't give in
What’s the difference between Hanna’s “give in” and “give in to?” I feel deep down there’s a difference. Does one mean “compromise” and the other “accept until it’s part of you”? Are the previous sentences of this paragraph nitpicking semantics part of the bullshit?
Don’t you STOP!
I can’t live if you STOP!
That plea kills me. Hanna might be singing to a specific someone here. I don’t know. But I know any listener can feel the emotions behind that voice. Here, friend. Here are fifty-seven life preservers we’re throwing out to you. One of them is bound to keep you afloat on Bullshit Ocean.
I love lists. I mean, this newsletter is me telling you about a list. A list can be a signpost to who someone is or whom someone would like to be. A list can be a curated bookshelf or a cyclone fence catching flying objects racing past you. It can organize or overwhelm. They’re like music as they can be organized patterns.
That’s Le Tigre’s strength. Their music and their aims are to use lists of sounds and names that build a world where their ideals rule. It’s the way that they rhyme.
Inanitous Goodbye!
This issue’s Song I’m Mad I Forgot To Put On The List is “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto— the band shouted out in “Hot Topic”mixed hip hop and diva with a bit of exotica (time for someone to assess the rediscovery of Martin Denny, Esquivel et al in the mid-90’s and its influence on music then).
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