Greetings,
readers, and thank ya for tuning in!
Since I
geeked out pretty hard about Kim Gordon in my last post, I figured I'd stay in
the same vein, and this vein led me to Hole, one of the must popular grunge bands in
the 1990s, most famous for their album Live Through This. Some people
might try to tell you Hole only received attention because lead
singer/guitarist Courtney Love was the kooky wife of Nirvana
frontman Kurt Cobain, but those people don't know what they're talking about.
I know I
don’t stand alone when I say Hole was a badass and, more importantly, a
monumental band. It was raw as fuck--the lyrics were piercing and
thoughtful, calling our society out on its bullshit attitude toward women. The
musicianship was just as good as Nirvana or Pearl Jam. When bassist Kristen Pfaff
overdosed, the band put things on pause, but recruited Melissa Auf der Maur and
then released some EPs, a compilation album and then their third studio album. They
dealt with all the same bullshit as other bands—switching labels, finding
producers and creating a solid fanbase that worshipped the shit out of them.
I would
give/do quite a few things to be alive in 1994 and see Hole perform at
Lollapalooza. For Love to scream, “FUCK YOU!” to the audience I stood in, to
have her spit on me and cause a ruckus, to roll around on the stage in her
babydoll dresses. All the while rocking the fuck out on guitar and screaming
her piss-sour lyrics, her band playing just as hard, but allowing Love to soak
up all the attention.
The childishly
aggressive demands of “Pay attention to ME!” got a little old, but Hole was an
almost all-female grunge rock band in an industry where dicks are literally
everywhere. If Hole wanted to stick around, things were going to have to get
real.
Not going
to lie, I think a considerable amount of the dramatics was done for press
coverage. The behavior perhaps wasn’t 100% genuine, but it got critics to pay
attention. And now, 20 years after the release of Live Through This,
the album is chilling at spot 460 on Rolling Stone’s list of
the Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Cobain
killed himself right before it was released, which is pretty fuckin’ lame on
his part. Like, you couldn’t even wait for your wife’s album to drop before
checking out? Maybe he did that on purpose, because he knew the material on the
album and knew that if he was dead when it was released, its meaning and lyrics
would have much more impact. Perhaps he sacrificed his own life to see Love
succeed, or hoped she would become successful enough to carry on and provide
for Frances Bean without Cobain around? Too bad that didn’t fuckin’ pan
out. I don’t know if you know this, but Frances Bean Cobain barely talks to her
mother because Courtney Love went a little batshit crazy along her lifeline.
Maybe it’s because of all the shit that happened with Cobain and “losing his
estate” or whatever the fuck Love claims happened.
But I don’t
want to make this whole thing about Cobain and Love. I’m weary of the whole
“debate” about who shot who and who wrote what. Does anyone have anything
interesting to say about the music itself? This past winter break someone tried
to tell me Cobain was killed by the government, and (probably for the better) I
was too baked to smack the shit out of him. But I wanted to. Enough with the
gossip! Hole’s a cool band, dang it, and I want to have an intelligent
conversation about Hole!
But that in
no way means I have intelligent things to say about Hole. I mean, I’ll try, but
that’s really all I can promise.
Live
Through This is
a very beautiful album. The music is just what you want from a grungy rock
band. One thing I have to admit immediately, however, is the enormous
similarity to how Nirvana created music. Love’s style of vocal delivery—her
pacing, the changes in the timbre of her voice, the rough guitar riffs. Other
things. Listen to any Nirvana song, then listen to “Plump” from Live
Through This. “They say I’m plump / But I throw up all the time,” Love
screams. Hole is not imitating Nirvana, but definitely vibing off them.
“Asking For
It” has convinced me that Hole is Nirvana in female form. I have absolutely
zero problems with this. “And if you live with me through this / I swear that I
will die for you.” Big, elaborate pause... “Was she asking for it? / Was she
asking nice? / She was asking for it / Did she ask you twice?”
The songs
are rough and in-your-face, but every track (omit the last two) are packed into
three tight minutes. This is orderly angst--it’s as if there’s a formula that
made Nirvana what it was, and Hole has put its own spin on the recipe. I clap.
I’m clapping.
“She Walks
On Me” is raising the hair on my arms. It’s pretty savage. Hole is a bit of a
savage band. The lyrics are fierce and violent, as well as extremely feminist.
Album
opener "Violet" is a fantastic preview for the band. “They get what
they want / And they never want it again / Go on, take everything / Take
everything / I want you to.” In order to really stand out in a world full of
men, Courtney Love dressed herself up to be ultra feminine, with makeup smeared
all over her face. But her attitude, behavior and demeanor were the perfect
foil for her appearance. The lyrics in the song change just slightly, but
it’s a huge impact.
“I told
you from the start just how this would end / When I get what I want / Well, I
never want it again.” Love takes the power in this situation, asserting herself
over everyone else.
Many of
lyrics stress the socially condoned passivity of women. Love’s stinging, biting
satire and sarcasm sung in her sickly-sweet croon adds a very specific element
to the music. She is furious and impatient.
I did
some researching on the Interwebs and have discovered that this fury and
impatience that possessed the members of Hole is detailed very clearly in the
band’s name. I once saw this VH1 special on Love where she made fun of Nine Inch Nails and
the band name, saying something like, “Fuck off, Trent Reznor, bragging about
your nine inches. You don’t hear me saying ‘Big hole, little hole, tight hole,
whatever.’” Many people assume the name is a reference to the female anatomy,
but that’s not true.
It’s
something Love’s mother once said to her. Love told her mom she
had a terrible childhood (what a surprise, seems to be a trend that continued
for her whole life) and her mom said, “You can’t have a hole running through
you all the time.” So it is about emptiness, about missing something and
knowing that something is absent, but not being able to get that back.
The name is
also a reference to the play Medea (a witchy woman’s husband cheats on
her, so to get revenge Medea kills her own children and her husband’s new wife.
If you wondered when the phrase ‘Hell hath no fury’ is appropriate, Medea would
be that situation). Medea states, “There’s a hole that pierces my soul,” and
it does not surprise me that Love (who was a generally angry person when Hole
was intact) could relate to Medea.
Live
Through This was
an album that proved a mostly female band could be just as successful as male
bands doing the same thing. The musicians in the band performed just as
fiercely as any other musician in the '90s. Hole just had a bit more spunk and
therefore gained more controversy. I don't know why some people had such a strongly
negative reaction to Hole and Live Through This--maybe because they were
forced to face the idea that women had voices just as loud as men, and they
were going to make them heard. But I can hardly imagine a world where men get
angry at women for speaking their minds.
Anyone who
doubts Hole’s legitimacy as a creative unit needs to direct their attention to “Doll
Parts,” one of the most moving tracks on the album. Really listen to it, and
then try to stay Hole didn’t know what was up.
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