The Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli, and feminism

I know a lot of Afghan Whigs and Dulli fans who identify as feminists. I'm wondering how, given Dulli's oft sexist, piggish, "I'm a sleazebag" lyrics, one can reconcile the two.

Is it because Dulli fucking rocks? That makes to me.

Is it the appeal of repulsion?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m414n2fiPv1qzg559o1_400.gif

Would Maura's interview with Greg help in this regard, then.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-05-16/music/afghan-whigs-are-uptown-again/

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/05/greg_dulli_interview.php

This fucking awesome piece by Ann Powers answered all my questions.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/05/25/153701148/afghan-whigs-songs-of-love-gone-wrong-done-right?sc=fb&cc=fmp

Meh. That's a false premise. Dulli was far from the only 90's alt rocker singing about failed relationships and bad sex, in fact most of the music I listened to in the 90's was about those exact subjects. It's just that Dulli's lyrical skills are exponentially better than most of his peers. I wouldn't exactly call alt-rock a "boy's club" either unless you're referring to the more radio-friendly version of the genre. Actually I realize that person's impression of al rock almost entirely seems to revolve around Sub Pop.

Curley's Muscle Shoals-influenced bass playing

Oh, COME ON. Sorry I'm feeling a little wired, tired, and grumpy but would you really like to delve into my reasons for obsessively dwelling on every nuance of Gentlemen?

Goddamn I wish this tour was coming to SF. Probably wouldn't be able to get tickets even if did though.

My hunch is that the tour will hit all the usual suspects once it becomes more than a festival cash-in.

failed relationships and bad sex

Doesn't this cover, you know, most pop music?

sex was not really a big topic among the Afghan Whigs' contemporaries, with a lot of '90s alt-rock lyrics there was only the occasional passing implication of sex

I dunno. Plenty of sex in, say, Sonic Youth and all the riot grrrl stuff. But you're right, the grungy dudes are pretty sexless. Does sex exist in the world of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc?

(I hope not, yuck)

Jane's Addiction had a lot of sex (lol) in the 90s, but that strand of 70s rock didn't get picked up by the grungers. But the goofier side of 90s alt rock---the side that starts with Weezer & Green Day---had plenty of sex.

Pearl Jam had a "her legs spread out before me" line (also "I'LL NEVER SUCK SATAN'S DICK!" but that's not really the same thing)

Weezer seemed pretty asexual before they dropped "Tired Of Sex"

re. Weezer I was thinking of "No One Else" & the gigantic wet dream that is "Only In Dreams". I guess it's not explicit but neither is it hyperromantized or stressing that they're feminists or whatever. like I took the Van Halen-esque logo seriously, even before Pinkerton.

I think what we're dancing around is that the Afghan Whigs were sleazy. That's an important distinction to make. Worth reading Bob Gendron's excellent 33 1/3 on Gentlemen. I guess a lot of the vox were done in one night, with Dulli cranked up on coke, trying to impress a stripper. Iirc.

yeah i never really paid enough attention to Weezer to pick up on that stuff i guess (xpost)

heh that's another thing, i wonder how many alt/indie bands were doing coke in '93, as opposed to heroin or just pot/psychedelics

I was gonna say you guys are not putting a lot of effort into this discussion. AW were totally sleazy, and not only does that reflect a familiar reality, but in its own way it can be appealing. I don't find that particularly difficult to reconcile with feminism or the era, really.

you caught me, i'm shooting the shit on a saturday morning over a cup of coffee, don't even like this band that much

unlike david gedge, i don't think dulli ever rhymed 'sleazy' with 'uneasy'

Hipster girls wish they were lesbians.

― thirdalternative

I don't even know what band we're talking about. Are we still talking about Weezer?

What is this thread? Where am I?

dulli's boozy, sleazy bad lover thing does seem somewhat unique in mainstream grunge, which wasn't often explicitly libidinal. i want to say that it might in part be a midwest thing? i suggest/ask this cuz dulli's lyrical stance and themes remind me of prisonshake, another ohio hard rock band (cleveland instead of cincinnati) that formed in 1986 and attracted a bit of indie press interest in the late 80s and early 90s. unlike the whigs, prisonshake faded quickly back into obscurity, but the two bands have a fair amount in common, not least a bleary, swaggering, "let's get fucked" romanticism.

Also, Devo and Pere Ubu. So sexy.

Dunno if Cinci fed off the same butt rock vibes as the rest of the midwest and rust belt. If anything it may be Dulli subsuming the lasciviousness of soul and twisting it into something his own. Like a copy of a copy or something.

the way they covered R&B songs felt a little more in the spirit of, i dunno, creedence and the rolling stones than whatever lineage exists of punk/indie/alt bands up to that point who, if they covered R&B at all, it wasn't frequently and would probably have some element of parody or ironically 'flat,' dispassionate delivery. although there was definitely some edge of irony or playfulness in the whigs' covers too.

Well, to their credit, their covers were rarely straight-up covers. They were always cast through the Whigs' spectrum - different keys, different chords, much darker in tone (see: their Prince, their Supremes, etc.)

heh that's another thing, i wonder how many alt/indie bands were doing coke in '93, as opposed to heroin or just pot/psychedelics

― some dude, Saturday, 26 May 2012 15:30 (4 hours ago) Permalink

i've never really f'd w hard drugs but i've been involved in underground/indie/punk w/e on a local level since i guess it would have been 95 and there has never been a time when ppl weren't secretly or not so secretly doing coke around the scene

even at the mid 90s heroin was supposedly a big deal i never really saw it at parties like ever

though there were stories about the Cows shooting up heroin into their ankles at the entry basement and grant hart would look pretty bad sometimes out and about

yeah i believe you, but as someone who was younger and more naive back then (although still surrounded by potheads), coke seemed to have such an uncool stigma around it for most of the 90s, all these disco/yuppie/wal street type cultural associations that even a lot of rock types who were not exactly leading sober lifestyles seemed to ridicule and/or run from. i don't consider myself too prudish or judgmental about that sort of thing but even today with it being a bit more normalized, when i hear about anyone doing coke i'm like eww gross what a creep.

a lot of the lyrics on gentleman come off self-degrading, rather than outright misogynist, but it's notvlike that's any better, or that self-hate can't be fueled by (or used to conceal) woman-hating.

where he really muddled the waters was in giving the most abject song on the album to the female singer. then again, "what jail is like" is pretty abject too.

yeah i always assumed there was a lot of unreliable narrator/self-deprecation/etc. going on

A man who is "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" is a classic way for a woman to explore her own madness, badness, and dangerousness.

my fav take on what Dulli's up to is by a member of this parish who knows where to draw the line

I seem to remember...Wasn't there a zine in the 90s called."Fat Greg Dulli"? Sort of mocking his lover-boy shtick? ...I never got into them, but saw them once in 1994 in Amsterdam; they seemed high-energy and into what they were doing, at least.

The other relationship-fueled acts in had in mind were The Archers of Loaf, Superchunk, the Pixies, Mazzy Star, Dinosaur Jr. Sure maybe they didn't actually address sex directly but I don't recall Dulli doing that a whole lot either.

xpost re: My Curse -- I heard originally it was a duet, but it sounded like crap. Wait...

http://pushingrope.blogspot.com/2008/02/afghan-whigs-my-curse-marcy-mays-greg.html

Ok, according to this it was originally just Dulli singing it. The live version they link to is incredible tho. Thanks Google.

*I had in mind

Both of those live cuts are incredible. They were the best, but cursed by being in the wrong scene at the wrong time. Dulli should be able to have run this tour as a year-long residency at Caesar's Palace.

and its theme was the malleability of truth

i don't know if i can exactly place the theme of black love (noir-ish gangster-ish scenario at the center of which there are a lot of questions of faith?) but i don't think that's it. great piece though

other common dulli themes:

going for a ride/taking a ride
the light/shining lights

imagine if Vanilla Fudge had been a good band

aside from Gentlemen, this is basically where I am with the Whigs today

Oh I forgot a big one:

downtown/uptown

archers of loaf were not relationship-fueled at all, apart from 'wrong'

superchunk were more so, but rather more abstractly than dulli

i think by abstract you mean "could imagine a relationship as something other than a co-dependent hellscape with intermittent sex."

also 'necessarily vague regarding lyrics that might refer to the bassist'

the whigs' songs often seem like come-ons, like romantic/sexual appeals. in part it's the lyrics, and in part it's the delivery. they're not just "about relationships", they're invitations. that's not true in the same way of archers or superchunk.

Greg Dulli always seemed so old, singing about that stuff. He was 28. It could've been worse.

Sort of surreal to see this thread running in parallel to the stone roses thread. What year is it?

I seem to remember...Wasn't there a zine in the 90s called."Fat Greg Dulli"? Sort of mocking his lover-boy shtick?

OTM.

I never got into them, but saw them once in 1994 in Amsterdam; they seemed high-energy and into what they were doing, at least.

Also OTM. They can't have been on top 100% of the time, but I've never heard of them phoning it in.

There is such a bizarro deja vu vibe going on here, like there are 20 identical Whigs threads going on at once, but yeah, the last time I saw them was one of the best shows I've ever seen. 1997 or 1998 or thereabouts?

The deja vu vibe is because there is nothing new being said here.

Thanks for your valuable contribution.

archers of loaf were not relationship-fueled at all, apart from 'wrong'

I guess I've listened to Icky Mettle almost as much as Gentlemen. "Wrong" is the operative word here.

'Fat':

What do you fucking care for me?
I'm black and blue and bruised all the fucking time.
Why should I fucking care for you?
I've been with you in the morning for the last time.

'Plumbline':

Clearly this is your loss.
Clearly it's not my, my loss.
Clearly it's just bad luck.
Clearly it doesn't mean a thing, mean a thing, mean a thing.

Not even gonna get into 'You and Me'. Contenderizer makes a good point about the difference in context between lyrics of AOL/Superchunk vs Afghan Whigs but that's a lot more subtle than the half-assed argument presented in that NPR commentary.

So did anyone see them at the London All Tomorrow's Parties yesterday?

lol okay xp. are slow worm and toast euphemisms then?

the archers had an ep and three more full-lengths; altogether they had more songs obviously about indie rock (audiowhore, lowest part is free, greatest of all time, etc. -- an argument can be made for plumb line too) than sex. even the songs that fit (bacteria? or is that about rock too) are not as straightforward as dulli at his most subtle

Thanks for your valuable contribution.

Hey, I'm just being honest -- what does any of this have to do with feminism? Nothing (afaict). Is the sleazy sexuality of the Afghan Whigs/Dulli in doubt? No. Was it ever? Not that I'm aware of.
I'm not even sure what the question is here. If you want to talk about the Whigs, try one of the other established threads about them?

guys, base conflict between men and women has no place on an Afghan Whigs thread