Boney Joan Returns!

[koganbot]

Sometimes the 'Net is a great place. I received this email the other day from someone who'd found her way to my old Las Vegas Weekly column about the Boney Joan Rule:

Email from Diana from NYC:Dear Frank

Comments

[koganbot]

First thing that comes to mind is that there's a Mariah Joan species of the Boney Joan Rule, given that Mariah in my favorite period of hers was continually singing her voice rather than the song, was complete animal spirits, me me me, and this was terrific (though the songs came through nonetheless, and I wouldn't be surprised if she did a lot of work to make them come through; but to me, the story really was her voice and its sea-diving-plus-aeronautics display

[koganbot]

Here are links to my other Rules Of The Game columns, should any newbies want to peruse my days of '07.

[dubdobdee]

You probably know this and may have thought it through and dismissed this,
but a Kogan book on this whole story* would be both interesting (obviously)
and very pitchable -- you'd probably have to shape into a bogus journalistic
"narrative" at the time of the pitch ("how a new kind of women's singing
found the light and lost it again and found it again", or whatever), but
this could be junked or complicated beyond recognition in the book itself

*ie a book to explain to ashlee why she should trace her ancestry back to
baez, by detailing same

i'd actually really like to see a book that ran this story in parallel to
the tales of the rise, tribulations, oedipal splintering and etc of the
various waves and factions in feminism (political ratyher than academic),
but that may not appeal to you so much! though i think you'd do it very well

[koganbot]

THIS BOOK CLEARLY NEEDS TO COME INTO EXISTENCE,

but...

I'd not thought of writing such a book at all, myself, actually, since I don't know a lot about many of the female singer-songwriters (you know, the Alanises and sub-Alanises and all the post-Bjork quirk girls in Britain and Sweden and Australia), and also, my general feeling is that most of them are substantially full of shit, sometimes lovably so and to good aesthetic effect, often not, so I'm not sure I'd want to write such a book, though editing an anthology on the subject could be interesting, as would learning about all of these full-of-shit singers. I also don't trust my meager knowledge of feminism to write the "relate-it-to-feminism" version of the book, but indeed that would be a fine book, if we can find someone to write it. Feminism has always had a fraught relationship with femininity.

But anyway, THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF BOOKS THAT NEED TO COME INTO EXISTENCE, NOT JUST THIS ONE. So, a call to my readers: what music stories need to be told that aren't getting told?

[jeff_worrell]

Not answering yr last question here, but Mark's book suggestion reminds me of a book published in 1986 by Wilfred Mellers called 'Angels of the Night: Popular Female Singers of Our Time'.

Synopsis on Amazon.co.uk: "Looks at the development of jazz, Gospel, blues and rock music, describes the role of women singers in shaping modern music, and discusses the work of specific performers."

I only read this because (a) Mellers was on the panel for my viva voce at uni, and (b) he mentioned that his book was imminent at said interview (aside: my final year thesis was on INDIE and I must have mentioned the Cocteau Twins in it, whom he'd come across as part of his research for the book - although Liz Fraser was dealt with in one sentence in it IIRC).

It occurs to me that reading the Mellers book will get you nice and annoyed and want to write the book that Mark suggests ;)

[jeff_worrell]

and more to the point, I wouldn't worry that:

I don't know a lot about many of the female singer-songwriters (you know, the Alanises and sub-Alanises and all the post-Bjork quirk girls in Britain and Sweden and Australia)

cos Mellers just wrote about the singers he did know, although all were obv canon, and just paid lip service to the ones he didn't