For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Somewhere in the third act of Oliver Stone’s The Doors Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) asks the question “what is wrong with being a large mammal?” By this point in the narrative it’s March 1969 and Morrison is well into the drug abuse/alcoholism/rampant self-indulgence phase of his career. One of his handlers makes the trenchant observation that “rock is cock.” And now that I’ve joined the ranks of those who pay for radio, in my case XM, and I have access to hard rock playlists again I’m increasingly wondering why that has to be true.

I’ve been a headbanger most of my life, including that crucial period in the late-1980s when MTV’s unflinching, objectifying eye provided me with enough half-dressed, oversexualized portrayals of women to get me comfortable with the male perspective. While MTV and the largely white and, Lita Ford and Heart aside, male dominated world of metal/hard rock, gave me as a young lesbian in a culturally conservative environment a safe outlet through which I could look at and desire women, I find that two decades later no matter how much the music has changed, and it has changed enough to notice, the atmosphere in which that music is served has gotten even more misogynist and objectifying to the point where I’d call it degrading.

Nearly two years of slowly exploring the current hard rock environment has revealed a soundscape that is markedly different from the spandex and eyeliner fueled world of Headbanger’s Ball. True, there are the requisite number of songs about sex and drugs, but there’s another strain that runs through hard rock these days. Songs that deal with frustration, with existential angst, with the noise that modern life can create inside your head are a far cry from the party, party, party world of Motley Crue, Winger, and Def Leppard. While all of these songs feature the heavy bass, aggressive percussion, throaty vocals, and fuzzy guitars common to all hard rock, what they don’t have is that female presence that is prerequisite to misogyny. Yet, the DJs that play this music insist on injecting that snarky frat-boy mentality into their broadcasts. What else can you call it when a band gets introduced as “soon to be signing your sister’s tits?”

What I question is not why this music is delivered in this environment; indeed, the answer to any why question about a cultural trend is “because someone thinks there is money to be made from doing it that way.” More, what I question is why women put up with this shit?

In discussions with my uncle, rest his shocking, smart soul, about culture we would inevitably come around to the women are 51% of the population shoal, the sticking point for me about why women don’t wield more cultural power. Depending upon how much wine we’d both had he’d point out, quite rightly, that while women may hold a small edge in total population we control 100% of the p*ssy. So why is it that women tolerate this treatment? Yeah, it’s nice to be appreciated it but culturally we’ve reached a point where the appreciation isn’t even vaguely real; hell, it the veneer on it isn’t even dry enough to pass the smear test.

It just astonishes me in an era of ever-dwindling music dollar, you’d think that the music industry, that includes broadcasters, would be doing everything they can to court every possible dollar. Instead, hard rock seems committed to a broadcast model, something that greatly influences sales because after all if I can’t hear it, like it, and decide I want it I can’t frakking buy it (after all, it’s not like seeing a cute “top” from the aisle in the mall and stepping into the store), that alienates a potentially huge shopper base.

I guess I’ll just have to keep sending the boys at Squizz rude e-mails when their insecure, frat-boy crap intrudes on the listening experience.