This, I think, happens to all musically creative kids, whether the music around them is world-shaking or just plain bad. This is why it’s imperative that the weirdos step out of their bedrooms and show off everything they’ve made. The achievement is not to make something amazing and blow everyone away, but just to keep creating all the time, and put your creations out there to sink or float. It is by digging creative ditches (so deep that you can no longer see the world that you came from) that one stumbles upon unfound gold. However, in order for those weirdos to come out into the open, there has to be a place for them to go. To talk about the venue issue seriously, you have to piss people off. I don’t count for-profit venues as really being inside the arena of possible “good venues.” This is because, for a laundry list of reasons that not only deserve their own column but their own book, for-profit venues are designed in such a way that they have to exploit a lot of bands (especially young bands, frequently in a pay-to-play format) in order to continue running their business. Not only that, but they exist at the whims of the owner’s wallet, rather than for the benefit of the larger community (which means turning down bands looking for a gig if the show won’t sell enough drinks and/or tickets). Forprofit venues don’t want to benefit anyone except their owners, and that’s a matter of course to the business design. (This is even true of a relatively good venue like Off Broadway, where they do give a lot of locals the chance to open for national acts, and Steve Pohlman, the booker, does a great job of giving people a shot and judging potential openers with his gut.) The only venue in town that serves as a safe space for people experimenting with their creativity to play shows is the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, which is, very unfortunately, a horrible place marred by exclusivity, judgment, and misogyny. (These attributes have led to its downfall in the past few years; it’s still open, but I don’t know many people who still have even a passing interest in the place.) Pig Slop and Floating Laboratories were good venues, but they weren’t alcohol/drug free, making them dubious places for a 14-year-old to hang out (which is around the age I started getting seriously interested in music). The same is true of MushMaus (if it can even be considered a music venue) and The (Blank) Space, the latter of which being what I now perceive to be the best venue in town. A large part of the reason that I think Angel Olsen wouldn’t have been very successful in St. Louis—couldn’t have been very successful in St. Louis—is the infrastructure of the venues and the journalists. But another part of it is the popular attitudes in
Photo courtesy of Angel Olsen
Feedback
Angel Olsen, performing February 7 with Water Liars at Off Broadway. town. I don’t think the misogyny of the LNAC is uncommon; in fact, I think that a lot of the men (and sometimes the women) that believe they’re doing something good for female musicians in St. Louis are actually being incredibly hurtful, and oftentimes sexist. I was browsing Facebook when a noted former member of the St. Louis music circle posted a status linking to a list of the Top Ten Female Experimental Musicians. The whole concept of the list infuriated me; I don’t see why it’s necessary to separate out female musicians from male musicians. Why not just make a list of the top ten experimental musicians and include the
get attention in the first place, presumably leading to five, rather than eleven (as was the theme of the lists), songwriters. (Even more, not all of the songsters on the list were local.) But even when women do sometimes get the spotlight, it is, just like the RFT’s list of Ten Best Female Experimental Musicians, in an insultingly separate way; it becomes the women’s league of music, just like it is in sports—theoretically equal, except people just care a lot less. Angel Olsen could never have thrived in that climate. She needed to be surrounded by people that were open-minded and creative in ways that she is not. (She’s one of the few pop songwriters releasing music on Bathetic, a label dominated by noise and drone musicians.) Unfortunately, she is one of several female songwriters who enlisted the help of a male “producer” that fleshed out her songs on Half Way Home, similar to what Aaron Dessner did for Sharon Van Etten on Tramp, which suggests a sort of male domination/dependence that makes me more than a little bit uneasy. It is not my intention to give a lecture to a city that oftentimes seems perfectly content in what I perceive to be its failures, but I do believe that these things can change. Quite obviously, it is not that Olsen lacked the potential for success, but I do believe that, had she stayed in St. Louis, that potential would’ve been squashed. And the fact that she came out of St. Louis at all gives me the hope that there are many more like her, tucked into hiding. Perhaps neither of us—Olsen nor myself—are the ones to do it, but the city needs artists that will, perhaps at their own detriment, stick around, build communities, share themselves, and raise their voices against the status quo in a way that is yet unseen.
It is not my intention to give a lecture to a city that oftentimes seems perfectly content in what I perceive to be its failures. women that you think are doing great stuff? Why necessarily segregate things? In the December ‘12/January ‘13 issue of Eleven, there are a lot of lists. One of them is called “Phenomenal Finds from the First Five Female Folksingers from the Decade’s First Fifth.” [compiled by Eleven contributing writer Kyle Kapper -ed.] It seems to me that the man behind the list should’ve spent less time thinking up the alliterative title and more time thinking about the following things: 1. Why make this list in the first place? 2. Why are there only five songwriters, when we all know there are plenty of female musicians in the city/world? 3. Why focus on folksingers? The women that get attention in St. Louis are almost always wielding their acoustic guitars and being quiet. I don’t think it’s necessary to elaborate on the implied sexism in that fact. Few women
Eric Williger is a musician who lives and works in Olympia, WA.
elevenmusicmag.com | ELEVEN | 19