Thank You For Being A Friend! Again! (Now with our donation receipts!)
Thank You For Being A Friend! Again! (Now with our donation receipts!)
With apologies to Supertramp for taking liberties with their lyrics, you gave a big bit!
Wow, wow, WOW. DAMES NATION YOU STEPPED THE HELL UP! AGAIN! You knock our socks off. In response to last week’s call for donations to various abortion funds for us to match up to $450, you came through in the abundance that this newsletter has always embraced, donating over $2000 to 13 funds including:
West Alabama Women’s Center
Nebraska Abortion and Reproductive Justice Fund
New Orleans Abortion Fund
Midwest Access Coalition
We — Dames Karen & Sophie, and past Guest Editor Jen Miller — could only match $450, so if you are someone with a hankering to match a little more, please please do! The good people administering those funds are volunteers who need every penny to continue to offer direct assistance to patients in the forms of procedure and travel subsidies, and more. If you prefer, you can donate to a specific fund, organized by state.
Since you all sent in your donation receipts, we’re pleased to share ours, which we’ll append to the web version of this issue, as we are getting very close to Substack’s space & words limit for emails. [EDITOR’S NOTE: hi! you can see our receipts at the very bottom of this issue.]
As you may recall, we used the Underground Railroad as a historical analog for this moment, when people seeking abortions may need to travel out of state for care. An incredibly thoughtful and generous member of Dames Nation wrote to us with a cogent critique of that rhetorical choice. She’s agreed to be quoted anonymously here:
Abortion bans are terrible laws that endanger the lives of pregnant people and dehumanize all those who are capable of becoming pregnant. The SCOTUS decision from yesterday is a miscarriage of justice, but it’s not the revival of the Fugitive Slave Act. Abortion bans are not the same as chattel slavery. Leaving a state to obtain a safe legal abortion is not the same enslaved people attempting to liberate themselves from chattel slavery.
Our thoughtful reader continued:
I’ll also note that just a couple of weeks ago the National Network of Abortion Funds named a new Executive Director, another Black person with deep roots in the repro movement, Oriaku Njoku. In envisioning the future of repro Oriaku wrote of “A future where our bodies will not be criminalized, where we no longer use coat hanger imagery or say forced pregnancy is female enslavement because our future has no place for trauma, fear, harm, shame, and inherently racist fear mongering.” It strikes me that the image of the Underground Railroad invokes the same racialized trauma and fear that Oriaku is talking about. I think folks should think carefully about how they are invoking that.
She’s absolutely right, and we apologize for our cavalier usage. We won’t be making that mistake again, and encourage everyone reading to do the same.
A quick bit of housekeeping: Your Dames are taking next week off, so the next issue of Two Bossy Dames will hit your inboxes July 15. See you then!
Dame Karen Celebrates Kate Bush Mania With A Trip To The Wonderful World of Ecto!
In the midst of some truly dark times (when oh when will that stop being an appropriate introduction to my portion of this newsletter? Probably never? Great, well, I’m tired and sad but I’m going to keep living and trying, so join me, please? <3), one good thing is Kate Bush mania sweeping the globe! Stranger Things used “Running Up That Hill” in a key scene and put a-yay-yay-yooooooooooo into our ears just when we needed it most! Kate Bush is having A Moment! How cool is it that she’s now the youngest (“Wuthering Heights,” 1978, 19) and oldest (“Running Up That Hill,” 2022, 63) woman to have a self-penned song top the UK charts?!?!? Her music is truly weird, dreamy, innovative, kind of spooky, kind of angelically ethereal, kind of wild, kind of oddly mannered…what genre is she, really?
Well, it turns out that over 30 years ago, a bunch of music fans got together on the then-nascent popular internet and decided to create a spot online for fans of This Kind of Music to talk about it, share it, and discover new artists. The internet was a whole new world for so many reasons, one of them being people who had obscure or specialized interests could gather with people from all over the world to…talk about their interests! If you lived somewhere with, say, no other Kate Bush fans, suddenly you had a space in which to meet other fans and exchange information! I know you all know this, but it still has the power to shock and amaze me! I also occasionally become very aware of how weird the existence of air travel is while in an airplane, which my boyfriend once classified as “Karen discovers the miracle of flight again.” Look…it’s amazing!
ANYWAY, it turns out that the artist responsible for inspiring the naming of the genre known as “Ecto” music is not Kate Bush, but an artist named Happy Rhodes (above). Rhodes writes, sings, and plays guitar and synthesizers; she also has a four-octave range that allows her to harmonize with herself as well as sing what sounds like beautiful duets. In fact, in 2000 someone posted one of her songs, “When The Rain Came Down,” on Napster and mislabeled it as a duet between Kate Bush and Annie Lennox! Ha! It does indeed sound like that; it’s the second song on the Numero Group’s Ecto playlist, which is how I found out about Ecto. The playlist includes some of my favs like Sinead O’Connor, Margaret Mary O’Hara, Cocteau Twins, Kristin Hersh, Julee Cruise (RIP!) and of course Kate Bush, reminded me of music I loved and lost in the ‘90s, including Jane Siberry, Black Tape For A Blue Girl, and Dead Can Dance, and introduced me to a whole bunch of stuff I hadn’t heard before. Can’t recommend Numero Group enough. They put out “the first authoritative compilation” of Rhodes’s work and also did a radio special in 2018 featuring Rhodes herself, during which she talked about and played some of her own music and some of her favorites by other Ecto artists. See also a loving and comprehensive Bandcamp profile of Rhodes by Jes Skolnik.
The original Ecto sites still exist and are an amazing resource. The Ecto Homepage was created in 1994 by the same people who had been running the alt_music Ecto newsgroup since 1991. Their name and the genre of music they loved was inspired by Happy Rhodes’s fourth album, 1987’s, you guessed it, Ecto. There was even an Ecto webring! Bring back webrings, please! The newsgroup’s FAQ gives a great overview of genres found within Ecto and shows how it’s actually much more wide-ranging than the dream pop-centric playlist from Numero Group. (Country! World! Jazz! Experimental! Blues!) Another source is The Ectophiles’ Guide To Good Music, which is even more thorough and includes indexes by artist, genre, and country of origin…BE STILL MY HEART! This music is truly a balm to me right now and maybe it will be to you, too?
Dame Sophie’s Smattering Of Glastonbury Highlights
I have retired from attending music festivals (shout out to many XPN Singer-Songwriter Weekends, at least two years of the Y-100 Fez-tival, and Lilith Fair 97!) and high-quality YouTube clips make it easier than ever before to feel great about that life choice. I’ve compiled Glastonbury Festival round-ups at least twice before (2019 and 2020, respectively, though the 2020 clips are from festivals of yore, owing to the Covid-driven cancellation of that year’s festival) and am happy to be making a little annual tradition of it.
Because I listen to so much Top 40, Classic Rock, and New Oldies on the radio and often succumb to the soothing pleasures of algorithmically constructed playlists, festival coverage is one of the main ways I learn about really interesting, new-to-me artists. I hope you find someone whose music you like right here, and of course, I’d love to know about your recommendations. Sound off in the comments!
Kacey Musgraves isn’t at all new to me but I’m moved by her simple act of dedicating her performance of “Rainbow” to everyone working to ensure access to abortion care across the US. I held it together until the inevitable a capella audience sing-along. Once again, my emotional porosity makes me an easy mark. Special mention to her Hunter wellies/sequined mini-dress, a classic British music festival pairing!
New-to-me trio Gabriels’ performance of of their catchy as hell BLM anthem “Love and Hate in a Different Time” has made me a fan. Singer Jacob Lusk’s voice — a deeper and more sonorous cousin of Sylvester’s — is a revelation, as is his exquisite choice of stagewear. The cape! The double pocket square, arranged to resemble a red rose! The perfect, perfect tuxedo!
Arlo Parks is so wildly talented (you don’t have to take my word for it, she’s the 2021 Mercury Prize winner!) and I really wish her voice were not so buried and murky in the sound mix on this performance of “Hurt”, so listen to the studio version first and then watch the live one.
I generally don’t enjoy Sleaford Mods’ music at all. I treasure their existence, though – it’s great that gigantically weird weirdos are out here making their own very idiosyncratic stuff, long may they do so regardless of how much I enjoy it (or don’t)! I’m not the boss of art! Color me a delightfed shade of surprised to learn that I kinda dig this one, “Mork and Mindy”, featuring Billy Nomates.1
Khruangbin is one of those bands that started popping up in my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist and then on friends’ playlists a couple of years ago, and I’m always so happy to hear them. I’m a sucker for guitars that sound like the Golden Hour, and of course this performance of “Texas Sun” featuring Leon Bridges on vocals (aka the song that plays over the credits of Big Little Lies) is basically designed in a lab to lure me in.
It’s time for Retro Corner at Glasto, featuring T-Boz and Chilli of TLC [infinite row of sobbing emoji] singing “No Scrubs”, and “Waterfalls” (which they dedicated to Left-Eye’s memory and included her verse. Again, weeping). In the category of Eternally Glad To See These Guys Who Are Still Tinged With Delicious Melancholy, hearing Neil Finn’s opening chords on “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is so, so dreamy. On the purely joyful side of Retro Corner, here’s Mel C. with a great guest turn on Blossoms’ cover of “Spice Up Your Life”. Try to stay seated! I promise you, you can’t.
I love a “you think it’s one way, but it’s really a whole other thing” song, and one of the greatest in this genre is Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s A Sin”. From the title and lyrics alone you might imagine it’s a repentant confession, but the maximalist disco production and Neil Tennant’s triumphant vocal reveal it as a joyful anthem of defiance. “It’s A Sin” is in conversation with the song narrator’s life, past and present, wondering aloud, “Oh, my behavior is sinful, huh? Ok, and? What’s your point?” This song is from 1987, an artifact of some of the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. You know this newsletter’s views: we insist on joy most especially when everything feels like it’s going sideways. Get on your shiny silver trench coats, friends, we’ll see you on the dance floor.
And finally, I’m pretty sure that it’s required by law to include Wet Leg in any round-up of musical things in 2022, but I’d do it anyway, because I simply cannot get enough of these Isle of Wight-ers and their whole deal of being cheeky, primly dressed yé-yé girls playing spiky guitars. Herewith, their raucous “Chaise Longue”, which very helpfully answers the question, “what if Paul Westerberg and Television had a baby with a deadpan Françoise Hardy just after a cigarette break?”
Two Bossy Dames is Brought To You By:
Abortion funds, now and forever
Artle, the National Gallery of Art’s take on Wordle (fun and often lightly mortifying! Dame Sophie’s bacon has been saved at least twice in the last week by zooming in on the artist’s signature or mark and making an educated guess!)
Derrida inadvertently causing a roomful of people to take studious notes about cows.
Every time you tell a friend to subscribe, some woman, somewhere, takes to the dance floor on horseback in a stunning headdress. [OK, probably just Beyoncé does that at this point in time, but still. ::heart eyes emoji::]
Receipts from our matching donations to various abortion funds:
Dame Sophie’s matching donation:
Dame Karen’s matching donation:
Guest Dame Jen A. Miller’s matching donation:
As Dame Sophie was jotting down notes for this issue and mentioned Sleaford Mods, we had the following amusing digression and are sharing it here for those who enjoy a little peek behind the curtain:
Karen: my friend Jeffrey is a huge fan and was like DO YOU LOVE THIS and I was like I do but now I need to listen to Seals and Croft for an hour
Sophie: Sure, I'll listen to this new & aggressive & loud pop music for a while but then I must submerge my ears into a soothing vat of yacht rock
Karen: exactly lololololol
Sophie: A bariatric chamber for my delicate aging ears!
Karen: They’re so tired! So delicate!