Whats so wrong with a girl and her guitar.

As for female singer-songwriters: I don't think there's anything wrong with them at all, and I for one have plenty of examples in my collection. What I find disconcerting is the automatic assumption that a female musician will conform to the (often stereotypical) image of the folky, sensitive and literate girl with her guitar (or piano) rather than choose that among many other options available to her. In other words, it's not Sarah McLachlan that I dislike (Fumbling Towards Ecstacy meant a lot to me when I was 13), but rather her influence - note how eerily out of place and tokenistic Missy's presence seemed at Lillith Fair.

I like songwriters. In fact I like songwriters who just bash it out on an acoustic in a bedroom. So I'm with you really, Anthony.

Er, for the same reason that anyone with a laptop (to take the opposite extreme) is, or at least can be, important -- namely, because beautiful and aesthetically rewarding music can be made thereby. It's still a medium that deserves to be taken seriously, I think, even if it's often disappointing.

And "In this day and age"? For my money, the whole notion of "it's been done" needs to be disposed with as soon as possible. It's the wrong tack to take, and leads merely to self-satisfied critics and music with endless novelty and little content -- hey, it's the "cult of the new"!

(That's NOT the same as "it's been done better before", which is why -- for instance -- a Beethoven imitator would not be likely to be terribly interesting.)

Anyway, taking the question literally -- one person, one guitar -- Syd Barrett and Nick Drake come to mind off the top of my head. On the women's side, I'm harder-pressed to come up with solo performers that interest me -- at least anyone famous, as I have enjoyed performances by not-famous people I've known. It's a format that works much better live, up close and in a comfortable room, than on record or in an arena.

I was at a solo concert given by a member of a moderately famous indie band (who shall remain nameless). About four songs into her set, she stopped for a moment, and said, "Okay, this next song is, like, about how I used to live across town from this guy I was, like, in love with, and I would walk over the river to see him." She pauses, and sings the first line:

"Oooooover the riverrrrrr..."

My girlfriend and I both nearly cracked up.

That's Lilith Fair-brand girl-and-her-guitar at its worst: pretentious, banal, obvious, narcissistic. (The only thing missing is the fetishization of victimhood.)

And for the record, the great Janis Joplin's got just about nothing in common with that!

About Phil's note re: cult of new -- I think there's an intrinsic problem in that assuming novelty = *no* substance doesn't truly hold. I don't think Phil was saying that, but it's a slippery claim that leads too readily into automatic presumptions (quality acoustic songwriting etc. vs. whatever). For my part, novelty means the opportunity to discover more substance than before. :-)

Re: Beano -- actually, surely Beano is also available in pill form for gas. This is one flexible, multitask concept here.

"Pip pip, this is Beano on ESPN with the football report. Allow me to enter your intestines."

While I find her new records fairly bland and boring, there was a time when she was doing something far more interesting and commendable. With her first few albums she was going out there, doing the political thing...sure, nothing new, per se, but she was also doing it on her own terms. She had a political viewpoint, and whether you agreed with it or not, she was telling it how she saw it and no punches pulled. She also managed to infuse bi/queer-friendly feminism with a really good sense of humour--just listen to the lyrics of "4th of July" with her talking about a squirrel skull and tell me that's po-faced humourless feminism. It's not, and her lyrical world encompassed more than the party line. And just listen to her playing that guitar...she attacks the thing with her whole body, not just a pick or a couple of fingers, creating something that was very rhythmically interesting, percussive and complex. Aggressive, too.

That said, I've found almost everything after Out of Range to be a slow slide into MOR territory, and you could potentially attribute that to her falling in love and getting married. Still, sparks here and there through those albums. Search: Puddle Dive, Imperfectly, "You Had Time".

The case for Ani: her guitar-playing style is, or at least was, a very inventive and visceral one (as much as 'acoustic punk' always sounds like the worst type of 'novelty' - hey is Ani part of the 'Cult of the New'?!?!) and her lyrics were excellently put together (phrasing intentional: I always got more out of the flow of the words - plus the circling metaphors, the segues, the unusual imagery... she was like the Wu-Tang of female folkies - than the actual stories they were telling). Plus her occasional bursts of political self-righteousness were tempered by a quite understated approach to balladry. And anyway as political self-righteousness goes, you can't get much better than the awesome "The Million You Never Made".

Of course, a lot of this is drawing on my past experience as opposed to current judgement - India.Arie's "Video" sounds horribly trite and contentwise it's very close to Ani territory.

Anyway, Anthony, I love singer/songwriters, I love simplicity, I agree. Though I generally prefer the concise, melodic, uh, well-crafted songs to the more bluesy, rambling storytelling ones.

I suppose a lot of the distaste comes from real life encounters with girls like the ones Lili and Milla portrayed. A Joni/Ani wannabe and her guitar at a small party or an intimate coffeeshop or sitting on the grass in the quad can be quite rude. And a James Taylor/ Duncan Sheik wannabe is worse.

Love early JT by the way. Sweet Baby James is classic, "Carolina in My Mind" is just gorgeous, and I'd love to see Two Lane Blacktop one of these days, he looks so hot in the stills. "You've Got a Friend" is rather dud-ish though.

To mark s: Indeed, I did grow up on beano, during the year I spent in Singapore as little Sterl.

Good observations about Ani DiFranco, BTW. Though these days I tend to admire her more for her DIY manufacturing/distribution ways than the music (the same way I admire Ian Mackaye and I admired Zappa [sorry to keep bringing him up] for going indie from the big record companies).

Most of the recent singer-songwriters like Jewel, et al. I can't warm up to because their lyrics say nothing to me about my life and with this type of musician that's everything, because there's usually not a lot going on in the music otherwise to engage the heart or spirits.

Jonis melencholy (sp?), the way she sings with the catch in her throat breaks my heart faster and more thoroughly then Dylan . Listen to Blue it is almost a response record to Blood on the Tracks

Tori is harrowing. She talks about things we are supposed to be quiet about ( Rape for one. God for an other) Her songs seem to express the cracks between things.
Buffy St Marie is angry. She has sang her share of Childes . But her dirges ( wrong word) for Natives seem so naked and furious. Like a keening. She points out our hipcrosises more thoroughly then almost any punksters.

I do not think there is anything more lovely then a single voice . It is where we started. We can have all the laptaps in the world but what happens when we lose our voices.

I think I have been called upon to give a enthusiastic response. What's wrong with Lilith vibe, people. Sophie B. Hawkins - "Damn I Wish I was Your Lover" - great song. Paula Cole is really good, all her singles good, and "Throwing Stones" one of my favorite songs. Back before I had to pawn everything I own, I had all of Sarah McLachlan's albums, I still have Fumbling Towards Ecstacy, I love that album. Ani DiFranco made some great music. Dar Williams is great, especially when she's alone with a guitar. I don't see what's so wrong with the Indigo Girls - "I went to the doctor, I climbed to the mountain" - it's got a good tune, huh? I wouldn't want to listen to them, but they're better than Missy Elliott, surely? And they were okay in concert. So was Fiona Apple. Her first album's really good too. I like that country song that's out now, "Who I Am", that's just a girl and a guitar, I think. That Sheryl Crow, she makes good music. That girl Hoku does a good song in the beginning of Legally Blonde. Francois Hardy of course has a couple great songs. I'm not about to defend Jewel, but I own Pieces of You, that's one fine album, I even listened to it once 16 or 18 months ago. "I was thinking that it might do some good / if we robbed the cynics and took all their food" - such a good turn of phrase. Then the chorus: "you always tell me that it's impossible to be respected and be a girl / please be careful with me, I'm sensitive and I'd like to stay that way."

Lillith Fair, though well-intentioned, increases that assumption because it's presentation of a women's sphere is not only largely homogenous but also seemingly seperatist. Whether the harm outweighs the good or vice versa I couldn't say.

I am starting to wonder about the wisdom of even reading/contributing to a music site where people outright condemn singer/songwriters. Sure there are plenty of dud ones, but if you don't want to hear an interesting personality with a good voice sing a well-written song (pick whomever you'd like)(and obviously not ONLY this sort of thing), then you and I don't have much in common.

Note on "Blue" - yes it's a great album, but I don't think it's as pivotal as it's generally represented as being. I've read about five reviews of Ani's latest album that mention "Blue" as a comparison point, despite the fact that Ani is clearly much more a disciple of Bob Dylan than of Joni Mitchell (although yeah, I could imagine her covering "The Last Time I Saw Richard" fairly well).

Sterl -- Back in SB you can get it at UCSB Morninglory cheap.

As an acoustic guitarist, she is much more flashy than even someone like Neil Young or many of her contemporaries male or female.

Mingus and Jaco thought enough of her music to work with her and that is something when you think about how Mingus treated many of his sidemen, he was not one to hold back what he thought. (Granted it was near the end of his life.)

What was so wrong with her lyrics? Read them.
"white people are so scared of black people. they bulldoze
out to the country, and put up houses on little loop-d-loop
streets. and while america gets its heart cut right out of
its chest, the berlin wall still runs down main street
separating east side from west."

She actually has something to say - and refuses to compromise her ideologies for money... that's a fucking rock star.

I hate Whining Women With Guitars (as my mum used to dismiss my father's entire taste in music) for the same reasons I hate Whining Boys With Guitars. I. Hate. Singer. Songwriters. I often think that all acoustic guitars should be smashed up for firewood. I do not care about your sensitive soul, now fuck off. If you aren't good enough to attract and keep a full band, you are not interesting enough for me to pay attention to you. That is my personal taste, end of story.

HOWEVER ... and here is where the sexism element creeps in. "Society" (or The Music Bizness) is willing to accept the sensitive, non-threatening, earthy, cutesy female singer songwriter a HELL of a lot more readily than they are willing to accept other, more powerful female roles in music. I hate the way that the "ethereal singer songwriter babe" archetype is one of the ONLY female songwriter archetypes allowed to be successful in music. It's a particularly strong and common pidgeonhole/stereotype that female musicians are often shoved into.

Hence, why it gets up my nose a hell of a lot more than other musical archetypes that I wouldn't necessarily care for or care about.

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.

Why'd no one mention this beano?

http://www.wirz.de/music/grafik/kellfahe.jpg

Vg

There are very few men OR women that are worth hearing alone with a guitar. One problem, I think, is that very few people really think enough about their guitar arrangements. I was listening to Pink Moon (the album) for the first time in a while and every track has the feeling of a full band because he plays the guitar so rhythmically AND orchestrally at the same time.

I'm sort of a sucker for girls with their guitars.. I'm surprised there aren't more of us. I'm completely in love with that Sibylle Baier reish, for example. It gets me just where Pink Moon does. Lots of this stuff seems to be seeing re-release due to current trends and what-have-you. Has there been a worthwhile girl+guitar voice from the nu-folk thing?

i'm currently 'troubled' by the 'what if/why can't Orson be all girls, and what differences would this make' question in my own head.

?

Dresden Dolls?

Twangy Montreal girl-with-guitar Angela Desveaux is terrific. I enjoyed Rachel Ries' To You Only a lot... And let's not forget Josephine Foster!

ROFL! http://justjustin.nsync.nu/emoticonsforjjb/lmao.gif

Ah, see, you lost me there. ;-)