There is one question that every music
connoisseur dreads, and though it is often innocently asked, can be
astoundingly difficult to answer. It might happen at a party or an
intimate dinner gathering, on a first date, or on the fiftieth. But
inevitably, as a means of qualifying your musical tastes, future,
past, or present, it's perfectly natural for a friend or acquaintance
or romantic interest to casually wonder “What's your favorite
band?”
For some, the question doesn't invoke a
desperate clamor or sheepish backstory; the answer is permanent and
enduring and needs no defense whatsoever. For others, such as
myself, it can be a bit more tricky. It's not that I'd deny my sonic
proclivities, but my musical obsessions have been known to shift from
one moment to the next. That doesn't necessarily make my love for
any of these acts less deep, but I do end up with a quite a long list
of sometimes obscure material that sort of leaves the original query
unanswered.
Throughout most of my life, I've sort
of maintained a Top Three essential acts that I feel provide a
definite framework from which most of my musical interests can be
gleaned; with these, I try not to mention anything too obscure or
recent so as not to alienate anyone or pigeonhole myself. Typically,
one or two of these might rotate, but for the last several years my
go-tos have included Caribou and Animal Collective, which I don't
think are really much of a stretch in terms of their similarities to
one another, and pretty representative of the sort of genres I tend
to explore nowadays.
And then there's my longtime, all time,
most favorite band ever, which isn't like either of the others. As
my interests in music have evolved, there's one constant which so
completely informs so many aspects of my personality and my past that
it will never be ousted by any other act, no matter how experimental,
challenging, or prolific they seem at the time. That band is Hole.
Now, I am fully aware that Hole's early
and mid-nineties contemporaries offered far more in terms of
innovation and contribution to the history of what was to become
alternative rock, a genre that I hold responsible for my eventual
introduction into independent music. But I look to their presence in
that movement as a whole to act as a sort of stand-in for so much of
what was important to me at that time. They existed at the
confluence of grunge and riotgrrl, two forces that offered me a
precise blueprint for the way I would form my opinions, express my
emotions, and live my life from that time forward; the center of the
wheel from which all spokes of my being would radiate. If you think
I'm exaggerating, I assure you, I am not. Even my aesthetics as a
young artistic hopeful were indelibly shaped by what these bands, and
Hole in particular, offered to the world at large.
She warned me it would be this way; I
remember the specific moment I heard Courtney's gravelly premonition:
“Someday you will ache like I ache.” I saw her black-and-white
heartbreak over the loss of husband and rock idol Kurt Cobain,
writhing in crumpled bedsheets each time MTV aired the video that
accompanied “Dollparts”. My bad skin thankfully wouldn't last
for the rest of my life, but it ensured I'd never be the prom queen
on the cover of Live Through This, an album so blistering and
beautiful it felt like the truest thing in my life.
I felt a kinship to Courtney Love, an
ugly-ish girl obsessed with vanity and needing to be heard, to be
appreciated, to be loved, and able to see the loveliness lurking in
hidden, sometimes unattractive places. I watched her trashy glamour
transform into Celebrity Skin, a glittering piece of pop-rock
perfection with just a bit of a bitter underside. It arrived in an
era where girls my age were pimped for Total Request Live, their bare
bellies and pouty lips so far from anything I was interested in being
or seeing, their horrible songs the last thing I wanted to hear.
Instead I pumped “Awful” with a knowing smirk, in on the joke
even if no one else laughed with me. Courtney's impeccable aestheticism in
film, music, literature and fashion felt specifically curated for me
alone, and it was with her recommendations that I explored cultural
boundaries not typically tested by other girls my age.
But I don't often go into these lurid
details when someone asks about my favorite band, for it seems too
detailed an explanation. If I align myself with what Courtney once
was, I feel I have to amend it these days; she's become a sad, drug-addled
train wreck incapable of her former brilliance as a lyricist,
performer, or songwriter, her tastes questionable though at one time
I saw her stamp of approval as essential. And I've grown out of the
need for an idol, especially when that idol has grown into a joke.
One of my biggest regrets is never
getting to see the band perform live, never standing before Courtney with
her leg propped on the monitors, her skirt hiked up and her guitar
swinging brazenly. Her solo releases were kind of pathetic, and last
year when she revived the Hole moniker as a desperate means of
selling records and concert tickets I only briefly contemplated
buying in. It would simply not be the same without Eric Erlandson's
prolific guitar or Patty Schemel's thunderous drumming, and though
she wasn't an original member, Melissa Auf der Maur's angelic backup
a deft bass seemed essential to the equation as well.
On the eighteenth anniversary of Kurt
Cobain's death, I realized how truly essential these people were.
Though I've made a pact with myself never to patronize evil
bookselling empire Barnes & Noble, I had to make an exception
that evening - Eric Erlandson was releasing his book of prose poems,
Letters To Kurt, and would be joined in conversation with
Melissa Auf der Mar. The discussion was warmly and expertly led by
journalist Katherine Lanpher, and I was pleased as punch that Patty
Schemel was also in attendance. Through the course of the evening,
Erlandson fielded questions pertaining to his writing methods, the
hardships he had been through both during his time in Hole and the
period after they'd disbanded, and even touched on the state of
American economics, politics, and music. The conversation was
punctuated by both musical performances from Melissa and Eric as a
duet, and readings from Letters to Kurt.
Eric opened with a shimmering banjo
solo, joking that Hole had been known for their use of “traditional”
instruments; his picking became more urgent and darkly tinged as
Melissa introduced and began singing “My Foggy Notion”, a track
from her first solo album, Auf der Mar. For later numbers,
they would cover Jacques Brel's “Le Moribund” (better known as
“Seasons In The Sun”) and close with The Smiths' “Paint A
Vulgar Picture”, songs chosen for references that had been casually
inserted into Eric's writing but also for the relevancy to the somber
anniversary at hand. When Patty Schemel joined the group on stage,
the three of them shared memories of the impact of Kurt's death, and
Patty related a beautiful story about the first anniversary of his
passing, in which Hole was on tour in Europe. A Parisian youth was
waving a fanzine around desperately trying to get the band to read Kurt's interview within, and Melissa had to translate it
from French. It turned out to be a blurb about how much Kurt had
loved Hole, found Live Through This to be a brilliant record,
and thought Patty to be an exceptional drummer.
That's the thing that made the evening
(and the work presented) less salacious and more authentic than one
might expect – it seems impossible, almost unreal, but these people
were there, as an integral part, of music history in its making.
They had a hand in writing some of the most dramatic, chaotic and
prolific chapters in the story of rock music. But until now, their
voices had been drowned out by the loudest, proudest widow of the
bunch, who wore her pain on the sleeves of her babydoll dress.
Almost two decades later, Erlandson has presented a body of prose
work that attempts to approach and possibly relieve the pain that
surrounded him and his band, and reproach the mistakes made not only
by his muse, but those made by himself as well.
Which brings us to the “letters”
contained in Erlandson's book. They are seething & surreal,
hallucinatory free-associations densely packed with metaphor and
memory, lifting references from pop culture and self-help manifestos,
as incantatory as spells that threaten to rouse old ghosts. He
delivered these pieces with a sarcastic snarl, but in reading each
short chapter it's apparent that anger is not the only emotion he is
attempting to excise and examine – there is suffering, empathy,
sadness, love, wonder, admiration, envy, bitterness – each present
in varying hues to different degrees. They feel like relics from
another era, and it's true that not everyone will grasp each inside
joke or obscure reference, but that is hardly the point.
Erlandson was handed, by his own
admission, two things by Courtney – one that would kill him and one
that would save him. The latter refers to his own dark
experimentations with drugs, and the former to the Buddhist path he
has followed since becoming clean and staying sober. More than
anything, Letters To Kurt presents us with a portrait not of
the titular muse but of Erlandson himself and the journey he has been
on in the aftermath of rock stardom. The book is evidence of
whatever peace he has reluctantly reached, snapshots taken from the
path he is still on as a means of coming to terms with the past and
meeting the future head-on. He's finally stepped into the spotlight,
however reluctantly, and raised his voice, and the results are
captivating.
Like Erlandson, Auf der Mar and Schemel
have moved on from Hole but have respects to pay to this period of
their lives; Schemel documentary Hit So Hard opens in New York
on April 13th, comprised mostly of material shot while touring in the mid-late nineties, and Auf der Mar has recorded a new solo record and is heavily
involved in the renovation and reopening of arts and performance space Basilica Hudson in Hudson, NY.
For all the time I spent idolizing
Courtney Love, attempting to justify her antics to her detractors and
to myself, emulating her bravado and feeling her pain as though it
were my own, I realized on this night that so much of what really and
truly resonated with me was not her histrionics, but the music
itself. That truth had been obscured by her blazing star, and only
now, long after that comet trail has faded into oblivion, I was able
to see the earnest and authentic people responsible for the true
magic which still captivates me to this day. While the front-woman
who led them to fame and ultimately destroyed the band was trying to
be larger than life, there were always three other band members with
their feet on the ground, diligently playing with skill and grace,
waiting for a time when their own brilliance would become apparent.
I can no longer deny their place in my own journey, but I can thank
them for shaping me, and I can share in the pride of their survivals
and successes.
You can download my full recording of the conversation
HERE.
