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Gwenihana

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All Acting Regiment

20:47 / 27.11.05

Here's a link. Basically (and I suggest you read the full article) it's suggesting that Stefani is taking a strong/assertive japanese youth culture and making her own, passive/giggling geisha version of it.

What do you think?

21:37 / 27.11.05

I think Gwen Stefani needs to be taught a lesson by Petey Shaftoe, Ganesh, Haus and the rest of the Cosby gang on gender/sexuality/etc sterotyping.

On the other hand, people are the new accessories. She's a marketing genius.

22:44 / 27.11.05

Ooh, it's Paninaro all over again. Except not.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:18 / 28.11.05

I don't think it's an 100% positive thing or an uncomplicated thing by any means, but I'm also not convinced by all of the criticisms of this, some of which seem to get entangled with a) internet rumour taken as fact (allegedly the Asian-American performers who play the four Harajuku Girls who accompany Stefani have a clause in their contract stating that they can only speak in Japanese when in character: the rights and wrongs of this aside, I don't know the veracity of the source), and b) good ol' fashioned straight-up anti-pop hateration.

The song 'Harajuku Girls' is pretty clearly about fandom and voyeuristic cultural obsession, Stefani placing herself in the role of awkward, geekly white girl, one step behind the cutting edge. The only duff note for me is the moment when mutual fandom is revealed - hey, the Harajuku Girls love her too, and they love her loving them - but then again maybe that's not so far-fetched:

When told that they were the inspiration for a popular singer in the US, they were visibly excited. "We are very happy," the girls squealed in unison. "I think American women are attractive, so this type of fashion would look good on them," added one girl.

There's also this whole idea Stefani's hinted at that the Harajuku Girls as they appear in her videos, songs, and public appearances don't really exist: that they're a figment of her imagination. One could argue that this makes a point about how Western perceptions of the Other are inevitably a fantasy divorced from the reality... etc. Maybe. This then brings us back to "but what about the women who have to play her sidekicks?", and again, I'd have to see the contracts, not to mention the paycheques.

Would it be better if there was an Asian-American pop star as prominent as Stefani, rather than just these four sidekicks? F'sure. Is that Stefani's responsibility in the meantime, or rather is it her responsibility not to have these sidekicks? Less sure.

12:42 / 28.11.05

Also, as the wife of Marilyn's former squeeze, she's probably reasonably practically acquainted with certain aspects of sexual stereotyping. She clearly doesn't hate all bisexuals, anyway.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:51 / 28.11.05

Whuh?

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:52 / 28.11.05

I had no idea about that.

12:58 / 28.11.05

Cool, innit?

13:00 / 28.11.05

Then again... Rossdale seems to be backtracking somewhat.

All Acting Regiment

16:46 / 28.11.05

(worries due to) good ol' fashioned straight-up anti-pop hateration.

It'd certainly be interesting to see what the same article would have to say about, uh, I dunno, The Futureheads' take on Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love.

I remember feeling a bit unsure about that (male fronted) pop-punk band who covered the song with the lyrics She only comes when she's on top/The neighbours complain about the noise from above.

16:57 / 28.11.05

...the male-fronted pop band that wrote the song, you mean?

All Acting Regiment

18:49 / 28.11.05

Ah. I was sure it was originally by Kate Bush, and now I'll shut up.

18:55 / 28.11.05

well, the fact is that the kind of fashion you see in the japanese magazines + the books based on them (for example, Fruits) are a thousand times more interesting then gwen's hip-hop market ready wishy washy trash.

so she should at least be faulted for doing a mediocre job of repackaging something that's originally cool.

18:56 / 28.11.05

Hounds of Love is by Kate Bush. Laid is by James.

03:59 / 29.11.05

I have to say - I'm infinitely bored by Gwen Stefani now. I used to love her and her quirky outfits when she was fronting No Doubt. It was ska - sort of - I guess. But I don't know. Now she's like every other celebrity with a clothing line and a hip-hop song produced by Pharrell Williams. So she kicks up the "bling" factor with some Asian girls who dance better than she will ever be able to. But she's just like every other celebrity. Props to her for doing it, but - man - I love for the days when music artists were wearing clocks around their necks and it was considered cool.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:03 / 29.11.05

Oh dearie dearie me. More unexamined bullshit nostalgia. The idea that Stefani as a solo artist is somehow less interesting than Stefani as singer of No Doubt... Just in terms of relative quality of their musical output, she's already better off on her own.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:05 / 29.11.05

Come to think of it, matt, large parts of your last post don't even make SENSE.

07:27 / 29.11.05

she isnt less interesting overall.
she is more exposed.
what she has for us has been given often enough now that it has become less interesting.

on another note, it always seemed to me that a big part of her appeal was that she was a 'hot alternative chick', something that is significantly rarer than a 'hot pop chick'. the 'big fish in a huge pond' thing will surely have an effect on the leeway she is granted these days.

i dont know how the human accesories would have played earlier in her career.
i'd wager her production budget couldnt have covered it until now.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:05 / 29.11.05

on another note, it always seemed to me that a big part of her appeal was that she was a 'hot alternative chick', something that is significantly rarer than a 'hot pop chick'. the 'big fish in a huge pond' thing will surely have an effect on the leeway she is granted these days.

Well, it's good to know where your priorities lie. I'm confident that there are many other people who "grant" Gwen Stefani "leeway" on the basis of the music she releases, the quality of which has improved significantly of late.

09:42 / 29.11.05

No Doubt had its moments of poppiness that had an actual hook. Having watched Stefani on the television the other night, performing her performance (that is, almost singing while striking very sub-Bowie glam poses while people in uninteresting kit walked and posed around her, some of them almost playing instruments in a way that should be called music) I feel safe in saying the hooks have slipped out and are irretrievably gone, now.
It's like, very very weak pseudo-glam, isn't it? There are good showy show-bands, where the act is integral and very entertaining. Goldfrapp, Monster Magnet, David Bowie, Guitar Wolf, but I'm watching this concert (called in to share the pain, as it were, for a few minutes) and it's... she's bored, the back-up is bored, the audience there in the flesh seem to be enjoying themselves but cheer and shout with no relation to the actual music or performance, so perhaps they've got their own very excellent party scene going on in the stands, with its own rhythms and entertainments. If everyone on stage is totally not into it - and, that isn't the point, like the thin white duke's temporary disdain for us all or the quiet not giving a fuck about pretty much everything Dean Martin - what's the use? There's better music and better music for you.
And certainly there's better clothes.

09:48 / 29.11.05

Some of us are almost being sniffy in a way that should be called valid comment.

But not quite.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:56 / 29.11.05

Previous thread about Gwen Stefani's solo album, which as far as I can tell contains no glam rock nor any attempt to do glam rock. You encounter some odd fellows on Barbelith, it must be said!

10:17 / 29.11.05

Not glam rock as a sound, but glam as an... ambience? Hey, I've been up past the twenty-six hour mark and I'm out of caffeine, pissy responses to music threads are bound to arise.

10:23 / 29.11.05

I'm confident that there are many other people who "grant" Gwen Stefani "leeway" on the basis of the music she releases, the quality of which has improved significantly of late.

uh...sure.
i'm one of them.
i think you are misinterpreting what i mean by leeway, dude.

i feel, from observing other's reactions to her music throughout her career, that some folks appraisal of her music has been skewed by her appearance.

i'm thinking of a lot of the really quite sub par no doubt stuff and the almost ubiquitous "she looks great,hey?" that has accompanied a lot of the discussions of same.

do you feel that she would be who and where she was today if she were less physically attractive?
do you think she would be as big a hit?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:29 / 29.11.05

Do I feel it's an interesting angle from which to approach discussion of music?

Have a guess.

But no, if she was less physically attractive, she wouldn't be quite who she is. In exactly the same way that any given human being would be a slightly different human being if they had different attributes. There is no body/soul divide.

10:51 / 29.11.05

its a crap way to evaluate music, i agree.
nevertheless, it is one that is used by many of my fellow talking monkeys on a regular basis.
discussion of pop invariably makes me think of the mechanics of pop consumption, and the stuff that goes along with it.

i'm not evaluating her output or even her eligibility for human pet ownership, but commenting on how others may do so.

my apologies if that wasnt clear to you.

11:01 / 29.11.05

Do I feel it's an interesting angle from which to approach discussion of music?

i hadnt even thought of asking that.
perhaps because i feel how you want to discuss it doesnt and shouldnt really matter to me when i post.
you are free to ignore this aspect of poular music consumption if you wish.
your feelings on its relevance are not entirely my own, however, and i do talk about it when i feel it is pertinent.

gwen stefani is more than just a faceless musician.
she is a pop product and a figurehead as well as a singer and a creative force.

11:52 / 29.11.05

It was ska

No. It was not ska.

12:02 / 29.11.05

be fair- he did say sort of, and a lot of it was.
tragic kingdom had some, and so did much of their earlier stuff.

they were primarily a ska band before they hitthe big time.
'dont speak' was roughly the watershed, although their influences were still visible after that.

12:17 / 29.11.05

If it wasn't made in Kingston in the 1960s, it wasn't ska.

All Acting Regiment

12:21 / 29.11.05

If we can move the discussion on a bit, I'm always a little confused when people make this distinction between "Ska" and "Pop", I mean, Ska is simply a form of popular music from the carribean- I think people look at, say, The Specials, and apply a sort of retrofit "credibility" thing to them, making them different somehow to "pop", that I rather doubt The Specials, at least, would have cared that much about.

Then there's the fact that a band like Less Than Jake or Rancid can make the bounciest, poppiest tunes ever, and can obviously come from priveleged backgrounds, yet still be regarded as Real Ska, whereas I doubt the people who pass that judgement would allow Sean Paul or Beenie Man the same respect.

12:27 / 29.11.05

so you say music cant travel through time and space?
i disagree.

12:56 / 29.11.05

I have no idea what you're talking about. Sean Paul and Beenie Man are both dancehall artists. Whereas Ska is a specific musical form originating in the 1960s when Jamaican soundsystems couldn't get enough US r&b records to fill their dances and clocked that it was cheaper to get homegrown musicians to write songs imitating the r&b style. This eventually became a new and distinct sound, influenced by kumina and burru drumming rhythms and the earlier Jamaican folk music.

I would actually hesitate to call The Specials and their contemporaries "Ska" in quite the same breath as, say, The Skatalites in the same way that I would hesitate to call Eric Clapton "the blues" in the same breath as Robert Johnson. Let alone Rancid and No Doubt! I know I'm being unfair and hugely subjective, but the music sounds massively different to me. I love 60s JA ska. I can hear elements of it echoed in the later music that calls itself ska, but I really, really don't like what mostt of those bands do with the sound. It's a completely different thing to me. With one or two exceptions, it's like ska with all the bits that are brilliant diluted out of it, leaving only a dry, desicated corpse to be artificially reanimated by a shit saxophonist.

But that aside, what are you saying in that post, exactly? I really don't understand it. You seem to writing from a frightening world that I cannot follow.

13:03 / 29.11.05

i was saying music has a tardis, dude.

but yeah.
i hear you.
i love that stuff too.
the whole waves of ska thing takes care of admitting to liking stuff you dont by accident.
you like first wave.
no doubt are third wave.

i dont think its fair to say it isnt ska when it isnt exactly the same, though.

a lot of music evolves as it ages and spreads.

13:23 / 29.11.05

Toksik: Was responding to the post above yours. I didn't understand the stuff about ska, pop, dancehall and authenticity. I follow you with music has a Tardis, and agree with you. I know I'm being massively unfair and can't hope to win the argument I'm making. But still... I think a lot of what I like about ska is really specific to the 60s stuff, there's a spirit to that which isn't present in the 2tone stuff - which I think is actually influenced by the late 70s/early 80s post-punk sound as much as it is by JA ska. Later bands with a "ska" sound are the inheritors of all of this, so what is meant by the term ska gets further muddied and unclear. It becomes a certain guitar sound and the use of brass, a cartoonish parody of the creativity and experimentation that you'll hear if you listen to a 60s ska comp.

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