The Organ (Or The Lack Thereof)

I was surprised on my morning commute, to find an interview with The Organ in Metro. Now I like The Organ, they have a particularly choice line in that same sort of post-Smiths landscape that band like Luxembourgh (who I saw last night, hurrah) inhabit. However, The Organ have the distinction of actually *being* female, rather than homosexual or feminine-identitified male.

There are so many ways in which the interviewer could have addressed this, but no! They pulled out the tired old question - "So how does it feel to be female in the music industry?" question. If I'd sold a record for every time I'd been asked that question, my god, I'd be on TOTP.

What irritates me about is not the desire to relate gender to music and approaches to music, which is actually a quite interesting and valid question. What irritates me is the way that this question just *assumes* that it is somehow normative to be male in the music industry - especially the "indie" portions thereof - and that it treats females like some kind of curiosity or aberration solely because of their sex. Find other questions, please. My answer has become "Well, firstly, the main difference is that men never get asked what it's like to be a *boy* in the music industry."

Lyrics bang around in my head, but I can't write the song because I'm at work:

My gender is not an agenda
Is is simply who I am
My gender is not an agenda
There is no master plan

And then it turned into another song, but it popped like a bubble when I walked into work. I was dissing other indie bands, it was great. Very rough work in progress which will probably never see the light of day, but I just want to get it down. I hate indie. I hate masculine preconceptions of music. I hate indie rock boys who hate themselves for being "popular". The same old themes.

Charlie Simpson, Graham Coxon, suck my dick
...And I don't even have a dick
Your priviliged indie purist world
You know it makes me fucking sick

I want your mother to like my songs
And your little sister, too
Shaggy boys with your shaggy preconceptions
You're good for nothing (unless you're here to screw)

Four skinny rock boys, all on a stage
I must admit, you do something to my heart
But your tired tunes and your hackneyed attitudes
I've got no time for your "art"

Anyway, I've got to go analyse some data or something. Sigh.