'Its my way of say FUCK YOU!'

Hello everyone, i have a rare day off.
so i am going to the pet shop, then i'm going out for a drink with, wait for it, A FRIEND.
i may have made a friend.

after the last 2 posts you will notice that i was starting to get a little bit annoyed by my essay, this always happens with essays.
and then it clicks in my brain and i stop worrying and start working, so for all of you who ave been wonderful enough to read through my mini ordeal i have a little treat for you.

below is my essay, i am proud of it. i hope you have fun reading it.

Nat.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

Riot Grrrl is often misunderstood in the media and consequently the general public but what was the movement actually like and was it due to the media that it remained underground?

To put it very simply Riot Grrrl was a feminist movement. The subculture was partly a catalyst for the 3^rd wave of feminism, though this is debateable, that happened in the early 1990’s. Its epicentre was Washington DC, USA and the movement has spanned an impressive 21 years although, even at its height in 1992, it has remained largely underground despite the fact that many members of the general public have heard of the movement even if they have not heard any of the music that came out of it, or participated in the subculture.

This is partly because of the way the movement was written about during its 4 year peak. The general media did not take kindly to the subculture or its music and so the Riot Grrrls were given a reputation equivalent to having a dark markŒ

Where Did Riot Grrrl Come From?

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines

that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

- 1^st Rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto

Riot Grrrl finds its origins as far back as the late 1970s and 1980s from women who were members in punk or rock bands such as Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith and The Runaways. During the early 1980s New York City produced a number of female folksingers that wrote and sang about feminine issues while also addressing current social and political issues in a immensely personal way that the future riot grrrls, and anyone, could understand and relate to.

In 1987 the teen magazine Sassy launched, the magazine covered tough subjects that other teen magazines did not. The Riot Grrls will have been teenagers at the time of Sassy ‘s publishing. In 1989 Women, sex and rock and roll was published in the magazine Puncture and became one of the first manifestos of the movement.

In 1991 Your Dream Girl, a radio program hosted by Lios Maffeo debuted on the Olympia, Washington radio station KAOS. The program was aimed at angry young women.

During the early 1990s the Washington/Seattle/Olympia trio had adapted and embraced the ‘do it yourself’ punk ethos when it came to its music and the women participating in the underground music scenes took advantage and did it themselves, self publishing their feministic views in punk rock fanzines and forming garage bands. The punk movement at the time used fanzines, made out of printed and Xeroxed A4 sheets of paper, to activate underground music, leftist political views and alternative subcultures. However women in the area found that while they identified with the larger music orientated subcultures they did not have a voice in their own areas, so they became the voice by creating fanzines, music and art that got their views across. When riot Grrrl began female punks tended to be either lead singers in bands or groupies, this lead to the belief that women could not play music, they were only good as sex symbols. The women needed a way to show the men they were wrong, add this feeling with the DIY ethos and you can understand that the girls needed their own ways to be heard.

However it was a political event that was the starting point for Riot Grrrl. In 1990 there were 2 specific political events that caused the feminist young women of Seattle, Washington and Olympia to get mad, and speak out about it. In what was the unofficial response to the Christian Coalitions Right To Life attack on the right to legal abortion and the Senate Judiciary Hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas$ many young women’s voices spoke out in protest to the events through organised protests, actions and events, that later became part of a larger organized consciousness. In late 1991 this consciousness and understanding and anger over women’s rights and issues snowballed, it came together and grew tall and became Riot Grrrl.

There has been wild arguments as to who actually came up with the name for the subculture, the most believed argument is that in the summer of 1991 Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman, Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail collaborated together to form a fanzine called Riot Grrrl however the term Grrrl had first appeared in Vail’s fanzine in the phrase “Revolution Grrrl Style Now”. Its true origins are from early Bratmobile member Jen Smith. It was the Mount Pleasant race riots in the spring of 1991 that prompted Smith to write Allison Wolfe a letter stating that ‘this summer is gonna be a girl riot’, shortly after Wolfe, Neuman, Hanna and Vail started Riot Grrrl.

Who Were the Riot Grrrl’s?

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

- 2^nd rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.

- 3^rd rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto

Perhaps the biggest misconception of the genre is not the picture painted by the media, it’s the idea that Courtney Love was at the epicentre of the movement. Courtney Love is famous for a handful of things and one of them is the band Hole, for which she is the singer. She did make angry music and she did dress in the Kinderwhore style that became popular with certain people and bands during the movement, probably because of Love. She is also famous for marrying grunge icon Kurt Cobain, she is thought to have killed him. She has been a drug addict and she is still making waves and music today but Riot Grrrl she is not.

‘Look, you've got these highly intelligent imperious girls, but who told them it was their undeniable American right not to be offended? Being offended is part of being in the real world. I'm offended every time I see George Bush on TV! And, frankly, it wasn't very good music’ – Courtney Love, Spin Magazine October 2005

Love went on record several times and slandered the movement, saying that the Riot Grrrls were hypocritical is what they believed and what the practised, she also went on record about her non existent and rocky relationship with Kathleen Hanna.

‘I still don't like her. She bugs me. Kathleen Hanna runs that ship [her relationship with Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz] in a way that is far more Yoko than I would be. I envision her being in a decked-out loft with a little corner for a desk that look like it belongs in a poor person's East Village apartment, with her battered-women's stuff and her Ms. magazines and all her communication with leading feminists. I really liked [drummer] Tobi [Vail] and Kathleen in the beginning, and then I just thought they were hypocrites’. – Courtney Love, Spin Magazine, October 2005

Love also never participated in any of the subculture ‘requirements’, she never produced or even wrote for any of the zines involved and she never set up events or protests, she was part of the genre, but not part of the movement.
So who was the sugar mama of the Riot Grrrl movement?

Kathleen Hanna was born in Portland, Oregon and attended college in Olympia. It was here that she first encountered activism and censorship on a personal level. Hanna studied photography and her first exhibition dealt with sexism and aids, however the school took down the exhibition before it was viewed, this prompted Hanna to set up an art gallery where she, and other people could show their work without fear of being censored. To keep the gallery running she would let bands plan shows there before exhibitions opened, it was during this time, in the late 1980’s that Hanna formed her first band with gallery partners Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland called Amy Carter. It was around this time that Hanna started to participate in spoken word shows, speaking about sexism and violence againt women, an area of interest to her after volunteering at a domestic violence organisation but it was counterculture icon Kathy Acker that told Hanna it was easier to get the message across through music, rather than spoken word so Hanna sought out the help of Punk Zinester Tobi Vail after seeing The Go Team, an early band that Vail was in, and recognising that Vail was the mastermind behind the popular zine Jigsaw, which she admired.

Hanna and Vail made a fanzine before they made a band, the fanzine was called ‘Revolution Girl Style Now’ and let to a later zine called Bikini Kill’. Which was a response to the sexist views of punk. Bikini Kill featured writings from Hanna, Vail and their partner Kathi Wilcox. The 3 eventually formed a band, taking the name of the band directly from the name of their now popular fanzine. Bikini Kill soon became a very popular band in Olympia and so in the summer of 1991 the band travelled to Washington DC to meet up with like-minded people and show off their band.

Kathleen Hanna is one of the true icons of Riot Grrrl, protesting, campaigning and empowering women to this day and sharing this spot is fellow band mate Tobi Vail.

Vail was born in Washington and came from a musical family so she started to play music early in her childhood, it was not until she started college in Olympia that she started to write, sing and protest about a number of womens rights. She started a zine called Jigsaw which led to her mmeting with Vail and Wilcox and starting the band she would become best known for, Bikini Kill.

‘When Bikini Kill first started people reacted to what we did very strongly - either they really loved it or they really hated it, and a lot of times that was kinda hard to deal with, especially just starting out. I thought we would just be asking questions, and people saw us as 'dogmatic'...I didn't see it that way. Maybe our presentation was sort of dogmatic because every show we played was like a war, cos guys would try to beat us up and stuff, it was really violent...we had a lot of fans and we didn't have any crowd control, we didn't have a manager, we'd just play these crazy places like bowling alleys and then cram like 600 people in there, you know, no security’

- Tobi Vail, The Riot Grrrl Retrospective

Riot Grrrl was not just for girls though and many of the Riot Grrrl bands included male members, however the movement was mostly followed by white females aged between 18 – 25, the majority of the followers were from middle class backgrounds, normal families and normal worlds but many of them had secrets in their past, or views on the world that they could not share in a normal society. Many of them had been brought up in Christian families, thought there is no comment on whether religion was a defining factor it is understood that religion was neither a bad thing or a good thing and no real lyrical content from the genre contains religious comments. Fashion was not a huge thing in the movement, many of the girls wore jeans and baggy t-shirts often with whimsical things screen printed onto them, though there is a style of dress called Kinderwhore that is thought to have emerged out of Riot Grrrl. The style is part traditional schoolgirl, part Japanese Lolita, part prostitute and part thrift store chic. Kinderwhore is mostly candy colours with bitten nails, knee high socks, ripped baby doll dresses, Mary Jane’s, messed up hair and smeared make up, a style popularised by Courtney Love. Riot Grrrls were thought to use this style as a way of sexing up a little girl image, which correlates to some of the lyrical content used that speaks about experiences that the artists had as a child.

For some it was about finding sister musicians, for some it was a place to process and talk about experiences of rape of violence and for others it provided a channel to respond to the countries conservative backlash with guerrilla art projects and shared resources.

Dragging Feminism into the Mosh Pitð

The media did not take too kindly to Riot Grrrl, turning everything written about it and by it into a joke. The general consensus is that the movement was too radical and took on subjects that popular publications would not touch with a barge pole and so the wonderful zines of Riot Grrrl were treated as nothing but a joke.

There were a lot of very important ideas that I think the mainstream media couldn't handle, so it was easier to focus on the fact that these were girls who were wearing barrettes in their hair or writing 'slut' on their stomach.

- Sharon Cheslow, EMP’s Riot Grrrl Retrospective

It was the media that eventually spelled out Riot Grrrl’s demise and the attention rose to its peak in 1992 with many of the pioneering women of the subculture calling for a press block after their personal lives were thrust into front page news with false headlines, the press relied on either false or speculation when it came to the personal lives and motivations of the Riot Grrrls.

It was not just the personal lives of the girls involved that became a national newspaper plaything, the entire ethos of the movement, the idea that women could and would speak about whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, without fear of being laughed at or ignored was taken unfairly by the press and many people felt that the cultures message was being marginalized by the press.

A lot of times we have been asked why we don’t do interviews very often if we are so concerned with being misrepresented. To us this seems obvious... it is mostly based on our experiences. As a rule we don’t do interviews with maninstream newspapers or magazines. In the few cases where we did do them we fell like we were totally fucked over by the way our words were framed to back up ideas that weren’t our own.

- Taken From Jigsaw #5 ½

The press coverage of the genre got so bad that bands like Bikini Kill, L7, and Bratmobile refused to do any kind of interview, which was counter productive when it came to the ethos of the movement. This coupled with resignations from people like Jessica Hopper spelled the demise for the movement.

What did it sound like?

For the most part Riot Grrrl sounded angry, dirty, sloppy and badly recorded. The lyrical content used ranges from rape, abuse and sexism to shouting insults at boys.

Speaking about the subcultures feeling towards boys Molly Neuman once summarized: "We're not anti-boy, we're pro-girl”. This was, and still is one of the biggest misconceptions about feminism as a whole, the idea that if you’re a feminist you do not like boys.

The music its self is very simply put together, even Bikini Kill’s record label released songs were of a very poor quality, however on first listen the songs of the Riot Grrrls are not as scary as they seem. The songs may address scary subjects but the recordings themselves are not as thrashy as punk, Riot Grrrl the genre is like Punk rock by FlumpÅ, a little bit lighter on your ears.

Guitars are overdriven, but not to the point of distortion, the vocals are usually growly, but not to the point of thrash metals screaming and the drums are prominent, but they are nothing like the 5 minute drum solo’s of Slipknot. The chords that are used during the songs are very simple, and the song structure generally sticks to the pop song verse chorus verse structure.

Read all about it! Read all about it!

So was it the media’s fault? Did the misinterpretations and the lies of the media kill the scene?

Yes.

The media painted Riot Grrrl in a very grim picture, twisting words that bands said and taking interviews, essays, fanzines and lyrics out of context. The media turned the bands against each other by taking comments from members about other bands and making them sound catty and bitchy, when they were not intended that way. The media also took advantage of these young women by deliberately printing personal things such as real names, places of work and personal experiences that were told to the media in confidence. Riot Grrrls naivety may have been its downfall.

The reason that Riot Grrrl stayed so underground was due to a number of things, its epicentre being one of them. The movement never strayed further than Washington, Olympia and Seattle (although in seattle it was largely overshadowed by its male counterpart Grunge) which meant that the only way the public could really find out about the movement was through the media as the internet was not as big a part of normal life as it is now and because the media painted a grim picture about the movement that’s what the people of the world believed. The publics naivety may also be Riot Grrrls downfall.

There was also Grunge to take into account. Grunge and Riot Grrrl existed around the same time but it was Grunge that won the hearts of the world and Riot Grrrl that stayed in on a Friday night, twiddling its thumbs and reading about women’s rights. Courtney love is also partly to blame, as she was not the media’s favourite person and Love was closely associated with the genre.

There is also the publics feelings about feminism, which even today are a little hostile with most people believing that feminists are butch lesbians who burn their bra’s and don’t shave their legs, Riot Grrrl was defiantly not like that. The Riot Grrrl’s were active, self-riotous women who were creative and ambitious, they paved the way for New Feminism, Girl Power, The Spice Girls and countless current girl bands and female artists, writers, bloggers and women in general who all sight their influences as the angry Grrrls with their Mary Jane’s who stomped around Seattle, pushing their self made tapes, magazines and work shops. Riot Grrrl may have been a short lived thing, but it has indirectly affected millions of lives whether the women of the world, who have a right to abortion, health care, and free speech know it or not. It is this legacy that makes me proud to be a Riot Grrrl.

---

ΠThe Dark Mark was tattooed onto followers of the character Voldemort who is the bad guy in the Harry Potter series of stories by J.K Rowling.

$During which Anita Hill, a former college and professor of social policy, law and women’s studies, accused Thomas of making provocative and harassing sexual statements while under oath. Hill, as a result of the accusations, was mocked by the media.

, The band L7, who were a popular Riot Grrrl band, hosted the event Rock For Choice in October in 1991. The event is designed for musicians to help support the pro choice movement, however attendants of the concert are encouraged to speak out about a number of women’s issues. The event still runs today.

ð audience members at gigs push and shove eachother around in the name of entertainment, to experience one visit a metal or punk gig in your area and let your anger out.

Å A flump is a type of marshmallow that is usually sold at newsagents and sweetshops, its long and twisty and will make you smile.

(The HTML did not transfer well, its my shoddy copy and paste technique)

'Hold On! Im close to figureing it out!' part two

I am sat on the floor, i have a migraine, no one gives a shit, so i will do work and be quiet, like i am supposed to.

this was supposed to be a exercise in finding out how much i know about riot grrrl, but it has just been an exercise in how good i am about attempting something, doing a half assed job of it, and then giving up.

i am becoming panicky about my assignment now. i do not know how to attack it at all, not a clue.

i really want it to sound smart, and level 5/university grade writing, but i do not know how to do that, i cannot form opinions on things and then analyze it and i cannot argue a point using someone else's opinion.

all i am doing is beating myself down here.

i just dont know how. i am not that smart.

i dont know what to do.


Okay. Riot Grrrl.
what is my opinion of riot grrrl?

ill get back to you.

Nat.
Come for the music, stay for the fun.

'Hold On! Im close to figureing it out!' part one.

Its a sunday. Its one oh eight pee emm. I have not been to sleep yet, as usual.

So, first things first.
My 'Gripe of the Week'
a gripe is not a fruit, its an annoyance, just so you know.

Cocky Bastards
these are generally men, and they are the guys in the bar who try and barter drinks out of you.
they are the guys that are most likely to throw a hissy fit when you say no.
if this is you then please understand that abusive behavior is a valid reason for me to refuse to serve you and kick you out, right?

Next.

I have this essay in this week, and i basically have to pick a question and answer it.
Im doing my essay on Riot Grrrl, the subculture and the genre.
but i'm getting a bit lost on the whole thing.

QUESTION: How did the Riot Grrrl subculture affect Riot Grrrl as a genre? Can we pick out specific qualities of the music that reflects the subculture and its influence?

so i know what i am writing about.
May i just admit one thing to you dear reader?
i haven't actually listened to any Riot Grrrl, i am a little afraid. i know its shouty, and angry and i am scared of it.

i will now listen to some, and tell you what i think on first listen, then i will listen to it again and assess its musical quality.
oh, isnt it fun?

DISCLAIMER: this is just my opinion of Riot Grrrl as a genre, not as a subculture.

Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl

Its harmless enough at the start, to be honest.
the beat makes me wanna clap.
the guitar isnt so heavy. the womans voice is in now, very strong accent.
now there just shouting, its in key though.
the quality is terrible.
but its not as heavy as i thought. it doesnt make my ears bleed. its not very tuneful. and its not saying anything heavy, there isnt really any political saying in this at all, its more lesbian than anything.
very heavy accent, ah, more lesbianismn.
not really very deep at all.
and now its over.
lets have another.

This next one was an influance to Riot Grrrl.
x ray spex - Oh bondage! Up Yours!

'Some peopuw fink littuw guwls shud be seeen an not eard, i fink OH BONDAGE! UP YOURS!'
maybe this is a political comment, sort of a I DONT WANT TO BE TREATED LIKE A LITTLE GIRL ANYMORE?!'
dont take my analogies seriously though, i am new to this you know.
I can see the influances here, the angry shouting and the instrumentation are very much the same.

here are the lyrics:
Bind me tie me//Chain me to the wall I wanna be a slave//For you all//(chorus)Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more//Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more//(verse)Chain-store chain-smoke//I consume you all//Chain-gang chain-mail
I don't think at all//(chorus)Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more//Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more//(verse)Thrash me crash me//Beat me till I fall//I wanna be a victim//For you all//(chorus)Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more//Oh bondage up yours//Oh bondage no more:/

i will take a break for the moment from this analiseation and ponder my answer to my original question.
This is what i understand right now. and this is just based on what i have read.
Riot Grrrl (the subculture) was women saying 'hold on, we can do it too!' it was the 3rd wave of feminism. everyone has heard of Riot grrrl, mostly through courtney love, but love was nothing to do with the subculture, she didn't actively participate in the zine culture, she spent most of her time slandering the movement, love was only part of the movement by genre, not by subculture.

The subculture was not angry, and the style was not butch. the 1991 race riots have something to do with it, and Tobi Vail was the pioneer.
above all, it was about women's rights and gave women a way to empower themselves and talk about anything they wanted.
however i dont feel like i can really form an opinion of it, at first listen it seems like the music had nothing in common with the subculture.
the subculture claims to be voilent and angry, and the opinions of the genre are that it is angry, but to me it doesnt seem angry at all, especially if you compare it to other genre's of punk.
so what was it really.

'Im Not Crazy Or Anything'

Its Wednesday morning, I haven't been to sleep (do you expect anything different) and i am sat in class, researching Riot Grrrl for an essay I am writing.
I am half deaf at the moment, i lost the hearing in my right ear, and all i can hear at the moment is my tinnitus and as i am a worrier i have come to worry about going deaf, what if i really have lost the hearing in that ear?

i think i would have to kill myself if i couldnt listen to music. there would be no point in my life, music is all i know.
well, apart from bar work. Im sorry, it is fun yes, but i dont want to base my life around my ability to put liquid into a glass.

Suddenly all these questions have surfaced about riot Grrrl, all i did was put on some pendulum and poof!
my mind ran off on one. so now i have a list of questions that i am no where near answering.

The subject has intrigued me though.

this was a pointless post.
Nat.

'whats My Name?'

Of course I have to have a job on top of all this, i have an addiction to shoes, you see. so something has to pay for it.

In real life, i am bar staff. i am the over stressed girl behind the bar of the club your in pouring your drink. I'd sorta like to just rant at you about things i dont like (or do like)about bar work. I was playing this over in my head the other night, while trying to wind down after getting in a 7am. There was a fight, people were rude, we ran out of red stripe, the DJ fell over and broke his ankle, people were taking drugs on my bar, people were shouting at me and while all this was happening i was wondering why people dont have any respect.

What is it, reader, that makes you think i am stupid/slow/incompetent/blind the minute you tell me your order?

I would first like to take a minute to explain the 'Jobs that pay the rent theory'. well here, in a nutshell is the definition of JTPTR.

'to have a shit job that you work your ass of for but dont earn you any money. The supermarket clerk, the receptionist, the bar staff, the glass collector, the maid, the waitstaff - the really shit jobs that the general public judge without thinking'

If you are in a JTPTR then i applaud you. you deserve a pay rise. you are a tank, a unit. you are hardcore. Because you have 2 JTPTR while you do a degree. you get 4 hours of sleep a night and the only way you can go to sleep is if your drunk. your so stressed that you have become accustomed to panic attacks and stress rashes. your a tank. go and sleep.

Honestly.

And you, general public! why are you rude to us? were just doing a job the way our managers want, and the only remotly good thing i can say is 'Im sorry, there is nothing i can do, its a company policy' and that just mkes you worse.
why do you think your better than me?

LIST ONE: The 'dont' list for cutomers of a bar/club/pub

1. Dont wave money at us, we are not that poor that we become hipnotised by your grubby £20 note.
   
2. I will not give you a kiss because its your birthday, you are drunk. and married.
   
3. Unless you know my middle name i will not give you a free drink. i dont care.
4. WE DONT TAKE CARDS. bring cash with you, silly plastic toting airhead.
   
5. NO, that drink is £3.40, not £1. it will never change.
6. Do you want a guiness? order it first.
   
7. if you dont want ice/want a straw or ice/ want hot water in your drink blah blah blah please tell me so.
8. if you notice i am pouring you something you didnt ask for, try and warn me. i dont like wastage.
   
9. you lost your phone/keys/card/knickers/coat/dog/boyfriend i cant actually poof it out of the air, i am not harry potter. the chances are they have been stolen, im sorry. really, i am.
10. I dont remember what your 8 drink round is, i have served 400 drinks since you dribbled drunk on my bar, can you tell me what it is?
11. really, i am very stressed.
12. its not really possible to have a good night while i am at work.
    
13. when i say 'the bar is closed' i want you to take it in, and understand me.
    
14. touch me, hit me, swear at me and i have and will kick you out of the club.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not rude. i love my job and im good at it. i just want to get through this shift with nothing going wrong.

LIST TWO: The 'dont's for if you work behind the bar.

1. When you pour shots do it like this. go and get the shot glass, put it infront of the customer, then go and get the bottle and pour it into the shot glass, dont try and carry 8 shots across a busy bar, it will end up on your shirt.
   

OKAY. i have many more of these. but i am tried, and have to go back to work.
BYE,

Nat

'Mother Fucking Crew'

'God Bless Us Everyone
We Were Broken People Living Under Loaded Gun
And It Can't Be Out Far
It Can't Be Out Done
It Can't Be Out Matched
It Can't Be Out Run'

Linkin Park - The Catalyst

Its been a while hasn't it? its 4:34am on a Saturday morning, i have work muuuchhh later today and today, my trademark blonde hair has gone, put in its place by a directions dye called 'fire'. I was feeling a little childlike. this was the outcome.

i feel like me again, so that's all that counts. I have just found the album A Thousand Suns by Linkin Park and my god, its an emotional journey. there are songs that are depressing things, there are songs that make you feel a million miles tall and there are songs that make me glad I'm in love.

To get you up to date with what I've been up to lately i shall let you peek at my to do list.

• Find Uni professors and email them a pretty please let me on your course
• construct UCAS application
• 1000 words for self directed project
• 700 words for tour management
• conduct some actual research for self directed project
• write some of the content for self directed project

(self directed project is basically a study hall. I've had to choose an idea and actually do it, now my idea involves journalism and I'm not really very good at that, but its basically a band advice and knowledge how to website thing. that's the basic idea. it sounds dumb even to write it down, and yes before you ask it was a morning without coffee that i came up with that idea)

so as you can see my main 3 conquests are: getting into uni for my 3rd year, doing an essay for self directed project and planning a (hypothetical) tour.

The tour is a little maybe-i-have-bitten-off-more-than-i-can-chew-here at the moment, but its getting there. I really enjoy it, so i want to do it right, at least i know I'm going to pass that one, which is good. I'm doing an east coast tour of America, starting at New York's Madison Square Gardens (Capacity 20,000) and ending at Miami's American Airlines Arena (capacity: 21,000). if i were actually doing the tour it would be shitting myself, but I'm not, I'm just planning every tiny aspect of the tour and not doing it. One of my favorite day dreams of the moment is finding out that i really will tour manage a tour as a big as the one i am planning.

Gosh, I've gotten this far and lost my writing bug. Don't you just hate that?

Maybe I'll just leave it at that and wit for the next writing Bug. I might go to bed.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

I am bored in class, my partner won't talk to me and no one will sit near me as my lunch smells.

I Love Long Titles.
I am nom noming on a tuna pasta salad, and it smells and no one will sit next to me, so please as you read this sit and eat something thats smelly. have some stinky food.
Okay. I know it's been a while. However, i have been a busy bum and i am very proud of myself.
So, last Friday I got a job. It's a work experience 'you will not be paid and i will throw all of the work at you' but it's still something i am very exited about. I am now part of the Quenched Unsigned team. search for them on here plzz? they write band reviews and stuff like that and they do album artwork. i spoke to them about their long term goals and it sounds like they want to just take over the unsigned world. they're in partnership with Kerrang! and T4 and the BBC. so this is good for me right? i am to take care of all the business side of things and my first port of call is to both write a business plan for them and compise a list of ways they can make money. simple, right?

oof. more later. im going home.

I'm like the ringleader, I call the shots,

Hello.

so this is my attempt at actually doing an assignment on time and when i am supposed to do it, instead of doing it 12 hours before it's due in.
GUESS WHAT I DID TODAY?
(none of this happened today, ive been at my parents all day. having a manicure and buying sweets. which made me happy.)
Ive branched out?! oh yes, i am now an event manager.
Kinda.
so yeah, we have to put together this 5 day festival full of educational and fun things for people who cant speak english.
sound hard?
yeah.
i had LOADDSSS of things to put down here, and now i cant remember any of it.
:(
ill post more tomorrow, im really tired and have to commute into Manchester on the train tomorrow.
TEN TO EIGHT CREW FTW!
night everyone.

Nat.

come for the music, stay for the fun.

It's 6am on sunday morning and i have some truths to tell.

Good Morning.
Please disregard anything i have ever said. It has been a lie. a complete and utter lie. and i am sorry for lying to you.

FIRSTLY. this blog has been for the purpose of an assignment and now it isnt. please do not go and look up winterlong, they are terrible. and teriffically useless and unreliable.
i finished the essay on thursday and usually the best bit about finishing an essay is putting the word count at the end, not with this one. the best bit about this one was dropping the band and hopefully having no contact with them ever again, good luck to them i say, 7 years and waiting guys.
7 years.
so.
here are some of the real things that you should know about the music industry.
ONE: lie. seriously. my teacher told me this one. it is easier to lie about ti all, like when your doing PR, Promotions or general pimping. it is easier to lie.
take this sentence: Winterlong are waiting for gigs in manchester and are currently in talks about up coming reviews.
now take this one: Winterlong are due to headline manchester venue SUB61 this week and have just secured several reviews in blog and publications nationally.
which one sounds better? the second one, of course, is the lie. Winterlong havent got jack shit.

SECONDLY: the music industry may as well just say BAA. they are all sheep. thats the worst part. One goes, the others follow. HOWEVER. at the moment, what with record sales going down and the music industry facing a change it is not yet ready for the sheep just do not want to move.
its a simple as looking at a field.
The music industry needs to start taking risks.
now, i know that the music industry has not been hit that hard by all the credit crunch mess that has happened, but it has been affected and somehow it needs to adapt to all of this. Its as simple as this.
you cannot get a job if you have no experience, but you cant get experience without a job. the music industry is much the same and there is not a set way to actually get noticed, it is simply a case of right place, right time and a huge amount of luck.
The book 'Kill Your Friends', about the A&R process puts it very well and, even though it is fictional, it says alot of very well put truth about the music industry. 'There is no formula, no way of knowing if what we do is right, we only have to hope that the general public like it, and then we can relax. for a while.
BAA.
At my paying job a couple of months ago i was talking to the former promotions manager for the famous Manchester nightclub the Hacienda and he told me that you have to have an ultimate goal, he asked me what was mine. I told him that i wanted to make it easier for women to not only make it in the industry, but overcome prejudice.
THIRD: The glass ceiling exists. its not as bad as it used to be. but it is still there. i may be a little feminist about most things but really, this is not my feminist dig at men in power. i respect a great many men who were and are in power, but i can draw on this from personal experience. The industry is a very testosterone driven thing. There is still hope yet though girls, dont go burning your bra and sucking every cock yet. women in men dominated industries tend to be driven, and more hard working than our male counter parts. its true. a man told me. this is because we want it more, and honestly, i thing the cocksucking career woman is now reserved for trashy novels only.
we have power. where it counts now.
maybe its time we used it?

FOUR: dont accept anything less than the most professional. dont ever take on a band that are not professional about what they do. if they treat it like a hobby then why do they have a manager, if they are not going to give it their all then why are they wasting your time? and if you know this then why are you wasting yours?
and if you are in a band then please...dont ever waste the time of someone doing you an unpaid favor, you will just upset alot of people along the way. be professional and give it 100%, always.

FIVE: the best song is always the last one written. The former manager of the strokes told me this one. if the best song is the first one written then people will believe that the band, or you for that matter may be one hit wonders.

SIX: music does trend, to an extent. but you cannot know where music is going untill you know where it has been. study music history. pick up a book that will teach you something.

SEVEN: LEARN TO READ AND WRITE MUSIC. AND I MEAN NOTATION. i am sick of people calling themselves musicians when they do not know what an E Minor and A minor chord is. you are not a musican untill you know what the names are.

EIGHT: thicken your skin. When someone hits you, get up and do it again and again and again, and then maybe one day you wont fall down. ALSO get some fucking balls. no one will believe in you untill you believe in yourself.

More Soon. night night.


Come for the music, Stay for the fun.

7am on sunday morning is the best time to post a blog

I'm taking a break from working, i swear.
Good Morning everyone, welcome to Treble Clef if your new here. thanks for coming.
please read this with a cup of coffee, its that time in limbo between me going to sleep and the rest of the world getting up.

so im working on the mailing list for Winterlong.
PLEASE GO LISTEN
www.myspace.com/winterlong the band.

ive finished pimping now.
HERE IS WHAT I DID TODAY
I found this ace site. its a site that catalogs blogs/reviews etc. go to www.blogcatalog.com. it basically tells you a bit about the blogs. theres a search bar at the top, i looked for 'heavy metal' and it gave me 500 ish blogs, half of them were in different languages (one of them looked like it was written in viking)
go check it out, it saved me about 2 hours in search time.

so yeah, im just working on the mailing list for the lucky people who get to receive a fun email from me that basically shamelessly pimps the band.

Ive basically given up on them though after they told me it was a no to playing sub 61.
what else did i do this week?
ive basically just added to the mailing list. i spoke to danni @ Quenched Unsigned. hes a very nice man, gave me a number for a scotish label who i am to call on monday.

this is not finished, ill do it in class tomorrow.

'If its not ment to come out, then dont force it out!'

Hello.
happy Easter kids.
please nom nom on easter egg while you read this.
i would love to start this post and say 'YES, i have done loads this week'. however, in work terms i really haven't. i have a had a personally happy week, and i have greatly enjoyed it.
I'm not lazy, i promise. i have done some work.

okay, so. here is your most favorite bit.

HERE IS WHAT I DID THIS WEEK.
I sat down with a mac on Thursday night and tried to get my head around HTML. now, i can navigate myself around HTML, but the bastardized version used by MySpace, not the real one. i sat there for ages, honestly, just trying to work it out. Like every 14 year old i loved tinkering around with the genetics of my Myspace page and took great pride when i found a code generator that would enable me to get rid of my comment box and music player (your on my page! you should listen to the music i like), however web has changed and now we have a new and shiny version.
mmmm 2.0
I guess MySpace bastardized this version as a kind of ceremony, 'we ballsed up the first, we may as well balls up the second'.
so, after finding out that
wasn't going to change my line at all when everything that i wrote on the page just ended up being onnee biiigg paaarrraaggrraaapphh i decided to call my friend daffodill, who could practically speak HTML in normal, everyday conversations.
so i found out that its
at the end the sentance that will start another.
silly 2.0
i know that as a very long explanation for a sentence that could have just been 'i learnt how to use HTML' but if i said that you would be really bored and my blogs wouldn't be as beefy and impressive as they are now. :)
SO.
so then i redid the bands myspace as it was all white and you couldnt navigate anywhere. and then i put a press pack together, however the band i happen to manage are actually kinda unreliable.
my memory stick is a little fried, and all the audio for the press packs was on there, so now i have SHINY EXCITING press pack without the most important thing.
balls.
i made a band facebook and twitter. neither of which have any friends.
poor lonely winterlong.
to add clickky www.twitter.com/winterl0ng and for facebook search Winterlong.
thanks. :)
and thats all i did this week actually.

bye bye
Nat.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

'I Think Your Onto A Winner'

Haaaiiii everyone.
whats with the normal text? for some reason i cannot get the text editor to come up.
its all gonna be the same size! oh dear.
okay, so here's the section that i think i will now call 'HERE'S WHAT I DID THIS WEEK'
HERE IS WHAT I DID THIS WEEK
i got sick. seriously. i just got rid of it.
(and yes, i know this is my work blog, blah blah. BUT i have a perfectly good reason as to why i have told you that i got sick)
so really i havent really done much. but despite not having done much i still got WINTERLONG a gig.
at a band night at sub61. i ran into the booker/promotions guy at rockworld on friday night and i didnt even realise that it was him, BUT he said that yes of course i could put my band in the slots that he has. i sent him the link to the myspace and he actually likes it.
so then i text the singer and told him.
and i got a really gay text back that just said
[INTERMISSION: i just found out why i am on normal text. i was in edit HTML rather than compose. shush you, its 3 in the morning.]
'i am sorry but the band cannot do either of those days. we are going to a gig'
Here's a tip for anyone in a band.
DON'T EVER EVER SAY NO TO A GIG. THE MORE GIGS YOU PLAY THE MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
whats more important?

i am not ranting at all. no.
im just stating some advice. i did say this would be an advice blog.
please take the advice.
OH! and if you are wondering why all this blog is edited properly its because i didnt want to leave the whole thing looking like it was normal. if i didnt edit and put lotsa different sized text in you would get bored.
ALSO.
why do people not take flyers?
ive just been out, flyering for South, and seriously the amount of CAJOLING i had to do to just get someone to take an actual flyer that they probably wouldnt read at all.
do flyers bite? what is so offensive about a flyer?
and also, and ive been wondering this for a while, what makes a club successful? what gives it a good reputation? because i can bet that the flyerers for 5th ave dont have to cajole people.
actually, im really quite angry. im only writing this so i dont have to do it tomorrow. i have 2 and a half weeks of solid WORK ahead of me.
yay me.
so, that is what i did this week.

here, have some quotes.
'I really like them. i think your onto a winner' - booker, sub61.
'most people go to the grave with the music still in them' - Anon
'my dream when i was a kid was the usual dream, i wanted to be a footballer, then i grew up a bit and wanted to be a musician' Shayne Gallagher

so, on that note i am going to play the sims 3.
Bye Bye.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

Hello. Hola. Commo Esta Mi Bambini?

Good Afternoon.
firstly, a quick explanation.
This is not my only blog, but it is what i will be referring to as my business blog as it will deal with music, and music only. i got sick of ALL those blogs and articles that claim to make it easy for musicians and budding music industry people to get started, however, they confuse me and are usually written by someone who doesn't know a thing about the music industry or by someone who is already firmly in the quick cement that it is.
so here, have some advice/rants/prods/ from an 18 year old girl who is in the same boat.
This is also where i will be mercilessly plugging the band that i represent.
Are we clear now? okay good.

so, hello. I'm Nat.
Ive just finished the press releases for Winterlong's press pack that i will soon be sending out to lotsa people, my poor fingers ache at the prospect of it already. I got told to write 2 releases, one centered around the band that will go into publications from where they are from and one (and this seems so self centered) that will be about me, that will go to publications where i am from and where i live.

(though i don't think the gangsta's of south Manchester will care and I'm pretty sure that people don't let sheep into gigs in Manchester. my hometown is mainly made up of sheep and their farmers)

So anyway, the press releases.
I don't have some of the info on the band by the way, so please excuse my 'insert name/place/road here' thing. :)
Band Centered Press Release

Band Members Names Here are all from Place here and attended College/school here. The four boys formed Winterlong Number years ago and have been performing in and around Nottingham. The band have just been signed to up and coming Manchester label Future Echo and have been released on a compilation that has been sent to South By South West, one of the years biggest music conferences held in Austin, Texas.

Winterlong's fusion of 1990's funk and modern day rock is set to rock the music industry. Winterlong are represented by Manager Natalie Kols and have shows lined up on Nottingham and Manchester .

For more info click www.myspace.com/winterlongtheband, FACEBOOK HERE and TWITTER HERE.

Me Centered Press Release
INTERMISSION - 'Welcome to the music business, your fucked' - Martin Atkins

Local girl Natalie Kols has released a promotional album that has been sent to South By South West, one of the biggest music conferences on the year, Natalie has released the album through Manchester based label Future Echo.

Natalie, 18, from Diggle represents Nottingham based band Winterlong and the band have shows booked in Nottingham and Manchester. Information about the band can be fund at www.myspace.com/winterlongtheband and at FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Dont laugh at where i am from.

So far, so good. All i have to do now is get a list of people to send this to, along with the rest of the press pack, and also Email all of them with a very boring and very generic email. i really need to look at how the hell i can make a generic email sound better. I'm trying to make it sound professional while making it sound like this band shits gold and burps little kittens.
its surprising how hard that actually is.

i know that i promised this blog would give you tips on the music industry, BUT on the bright side you know what a (badly written) press release looks like now, which you didn't know before. so well done. you can go now, while i write a list of the lucky people that getta receive a email from me.

Ah music, by the all the way through this blog i have listened to Bryan Adams, Rachel Stevens, Sisters Of Mercy, Marilyn Manson and Def Leppard.

Till next time.
Nat.

Come for the music, Stay for the fun.