Favorite Music of 2022

It's been three years since I've compiled a year-end-music list. Hmm, guess a few things have happened since the end of 2019...

Here it is, without much ado, a list of my favorite albums of 2022 

And favorite singles of 2022

Taking it to the streets: the marathon of stopping fascism

I ran my first marathon in 2014 to help me make sense of the process of writing my first book. I like physical practices that help me work though other parts of my life. Marathon running, to me, is a durational public performance practice that involves putting my body on the line. Each time I run a marathon, I'm never sure how it's going to turn out. It seems like an impossible task, foolish even, but I set out to do it anyway. I train for it. Along the way, I develop hopes (and fears) about how it will turn out. But I know in the end the only thing to do is to keep moving, to stay in it. In most marathons, there are thousands of other runners in it with you, a crowd cheering you all on, and volunteers making sure you stay on course, hydrated, and safe. I'll be running the Virtual 2020 TCS New York City Marathon Saturday physically alone, but knowing that 25,000 other runners around the world are running with me.

This marathon, though, is not about a personal project for me. It's about the collective struggle to push back fascism and imagine into being the world we want to live in. We're in truly crucial and frightening political times that require all of us to put ourselves on the line, to risk more than we've been willing to risk before, to do things we are not sure we are capable of (from each according to their ability, as it were), and to trust that there are others doing the work alongside us even if we can't always see them. Honestly it's going to take a lot more than voting. It's going to take a mass movement of people in the streets. And it's not going to be over November 4, no matter who wins. I'm conceiving my run Saturday as a performative gesture of taking to the streets. Since there are no number bibs in virtual races, I've made my own bibs to wear that declare #StopTrump and #TrumpPenceOutNow.

I invite you to join me in the streets as you're able. Before the election AND after the election. We have to keep moving, even if it seems we'll never make it.

#neveragainisnow

Favorite Musical Artists of the 2010s

Looking over my lists of favorite music from the past decade, a number of artists stand out. This is a list of musicians whose work has, over a number of albums, and in some cases over a number of projects, remained significant to me. In alphabetical order:

Alabama Shakes (see also Brittany Howard, Thunderbitch)
Angel Olsen
Anna Calvi
Chastity Belt (see also Childbirth)
Courtney Barnett
EMA
First Aid Kit
Hurray for the Riff Raff
Janelle Monaé
Jason Isbell
Jenny Hval
Jesca Hoop
José González (see also Junip)
Julia Holter
Kamasi Washington
Laura Marling
Laura Mvula
Low
Paul Simon
Perfume Genius
Rhiannon Giddens
Spiritualized
St. Vincent
Superchunk
Tanya Tagaq
Wilco
Y La Bamba
Zola Jesus

Listen to a sampling of their music here:

Favorite Music of 2019

I had a hard time coming up with a list this year, I suppose because I was traveling so much and didn't have the time for my usual podcast listening. Nonetheless, here is the music that stood out to me this year, in no particular order (except that it seems to flow this way).

Holly Herndon Proto
Jenny Hval The Practice of Love
Angel Olsen All Mirrors
Y La Bamba Mujeres (and also their EP, Entre los Dos)
Esperanza Spalding 12 Little Spells (ok, this is a bit of a cheat because it was also on my 2018 list; it was released on Spotify in 2018, but as an album with added songs in 2019, so...)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Jesca Hoop STONECHILD
The Highwomen The Highwomen
Stef Chura Midnight
Sunn O))) Life Metal

Favorite music videos of 2018

This year I had to add a new category to my year-end music lists: music videos. 

Really I had to create the category so I could talk about Childish Gambino's "This is America," which really is not only the song of the year, but I dare say artistic statement of the year.



This conversation between Theresa Ruth Howard and Camille A. Brown on the Dance Magazine blog is really worth reading, especially in terms of seeing the dance as essential to the video, rather than as a distraction, as many critics did.

Since I'm at it, I also want to mention Janelle Monae's "Pynk." Largely because: vagina pants.



I mean, come on: those vagina pants are amazing! And bonus points for nuancing the crass pinkification of anyone with a vagina, by focusing on the vagina itself (and vulva, and tongues, and...well you get the picture) as Pynk. But also, Monae did make one of the albums of the year, and she is certainly someone working transdisciplinarily. A force to be reckoned with!

Favorite Songs of 2018

As you will know from past years' lists, my favorite songs each year are often dominated by covers. This year is no exception.

It almost seems wrong to choose just one song from Kamasi Washington, and from his EP The Choice, at that, not even from Heaven and Earth, the follow up to The Epic, that critics called "masterful." Coming in at one album shorter than 2015's The Epic (double, rather than triple), Heaven and Earth is still epic-like, and I just haven't been able to settle into it properly yet. The Choice, which came out a week after the double album, with its 5 songs, 2 of them stunning covers, is easier to get one's arms around. That doesn't mean it's not still ambitious, though. The gorgeous "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" comes in at almost 10 minutes, and the vocals don't even drift in until over 2 minutes in. Languorous and sprawling, vulnerable and insistent, the song feels like it's breathlessly tangled up in the bed sheets.

It's been hard for me to listen to Chris Cornell's voice since he took his own life in May 2017. I was truly devastated when he died. For almost 3 decades songs like "Outshined" and "Fell on Black Days" reflected my own dark feelings, let me immerse myself in them ("down on my knees," as it were), and yet offered me hope that I could and indeed would get back "up on my feet again." Even in songs that did not explicitly address these issues, his voice howled and  growled and soared and soothed like no other. He really could "reach down and pick the crowd up." That he ultimately could not do this for himself was really hard to accept. So I haven't yet done a deep dive into the Chris Cornell compilation, but his cover of Prince/Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" has been a tender surprise, perhaps more so for its restraint. As he sings, he seems to once again be voicing my deepest feelings, only about his own absence from the world. "Like a bird without a song," indeed.


Tanya Tagaq is a Righteous Bad Ass whose voice has the power to rain down Retribution (incidentally one of my favorite albums of 2016). The vibrations of her growls, breaths, and wails carry both healing and destructive properties, and easily transmit everything from rage to orgiastic ecstasy. Above all, she cannot be ignored. She demands that we listen, see, feel, and ultimately act differently. In addition to her stunningly original music, her cover songs utterly transform The Pixies "Caribou" (on the 2014 album Animism) and Nirvana's "Rape Me" (on Retribution), which from her mouth become incantatory cries protesting the systematic oppression of Inuit culture and mourning violence against First Nations women. Her 2018 cover of Iron Maiden's metal epic about the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, "Run to the Hills," with Fucked Up's Damian Abraham, brings an urgent immediacy to what she calls Maiden's "colonization saga." As her website ominously states: "Just don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s all in the past."

Favorite albums of 2018

I have to admit that this was not a great year in music for me. For much of the year I didn't really connect to a lot of the new music coming out. Frankly I spent a lot of time this year listening to Prince, and then Aretha after she passed. I can't quite identify what it is in their music that was giving me something I needed that I wasn't getting from most new music this year. Nonetheless, I was able to cobble together a list of 11 albums that are still drawing me in as 2018 comes to a close.

An early standout of the year was Superchunk's What a Time to Be Alive. Last year I called Kevin Morby's "1234" an "ebullient downer;" those are appropriate words to describe Superchunk's solid-from-start-to-finish offering. Or maybe "celebratory truth-telling" would be more accurate, with lyrics like this chorus to the eponymous song:

To see the rot in no disguise
Oh what a time to be alive
The scum, the shame, the fucking lies
Oh what a time to be alive
Oh what a time to be alive

The album I'm most embarrassed to admit that I liked - and listened to quite a bit - came out around the same time: Andrew W.K.'s You're Not Alone. (I know, I can't believe I'm writing this, either!) Unabashedly positive, this album is like a cheesetastic anthemic self-help book-on-tape. I can attest that songs like "Music is Worth Living For" and "Keep on Going" are particularly uplifting after one has run 19 miles and doesn't feel like one more step is possible.  

The only other album that I listened to in the first 2/3 of the year that stayed with me is Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats' Tearing at the Seams. Here's another band I felt weird about liking - as if it was something I shouldn't like (too bar-band-y?), but finally admitted that I do. I may like their debut album even better, but there's something soothing about this album, too, even though many of the songs actually point to cracks and hidden trouble.

Things started to pick up with projects from long-time favorites Laura Marling and Anna Calvi towards the end of the summer. LUMP, Marling's electronic project with Mike Lindsay, feels like a natural extension of Marling's more folky, singer-songwriter work. On LUMP the quality and tone of the music underscores Marling's delicious voice, allowing the lyrics that alternately acknowledge tension and crisis and offer a balm to float and soothe. Anna Calvi, on the other hand, seems to have stepped into her personal, sexual, and above all vocal power in new ways. Hunter finds her in complete control of her voice; whereas in previous recordings she always seemed to take her voice to full extent of her range and stay there, in this album she seems to be modulating her power more, and yet is even more in control of her voice for it.

Prince and Aretha manifest together concretely in Prince's Piano and a Microphone, which among other things includes an exquisite and thoroughly original cover of "Mary Don't You Weep," which Aretha also famously recorded on her 1972 Amazing Grace. One of the things that struck me in all the eulogizing of Aretha was, as rock journalist Ann Powers describes it, how Aretha reminds us that the divine is intimate, and the intimate is spiritual, and that we are always here on earth when we encounter the divine. (Or as another print journalist put it, Aretha could take you from Saturday night to Sunday morning.) Of course Prince himself is the epitome of the sacred and profane in one body. And this album of him by himself at a piano, easily moving between acoustic versions his own songs and even an early cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," which received full treatment on the 2007 tribute album, is riveting listening. 

The year in music started picking up for me in the fall, with the release of albums by 3 previous favorites: Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards (runner up in 2012), My Brightest Diamond (2011), and Spiritualized (2012). Wennerstrom's new album - her solo debut - chronicles her own deep searching and transformation (as one review points out, it's a personal transformation not a musical one). My Brightest Diamond's 2018 offering finds her more electronically focused, but also more sharp and biting in her political critique (and also dancing quite a lot). Spiritualized latest is a gorgeous sonic journey; though Jason Pierce's topics are not novel, his composition and turn of phrase elevate the daily into the sublime.

The year in music was truly redeemed, however, with Julia Holter's Aviary and Esperanza Spalding's 12 Little Spells. In the past I'd been interested in Holter, but never quite connected with her work. Aviary, however, drew me in and immersed me in her vibrant and vibrating "chamber pop" worlds. (Jenn Pelly's review of Aviary on Pitchfork is a must read.) Meanwhile, Spalding's 12 Little Spells doesn't technically come out until March 2019, but Spalding released it track by track in October, and it's available for streaming on Spotify and other services. Each track, or "spell" was written for a particular part of the body. 

“12 Little Spells” — Thoracic Spine
“To Tide Us Over” — Mouth
“Til the Next Full” — Eyes
“Thang” — Hips
“Touch in Mine” — Fingers
“The Longing Deep Down” — Abdominal Portal
“You Have to Dance” — Feet
“Now Know” — Solar Portal
“All Limbs Are” — Arms
“Readying to Rise” — Legs
“Dancing the Animal” — Mind/Brain“With Others” — Ears

Spalding writes of the inspiration for the album: "Can I harness these 12 little sensation-revelations into sounds, words, imagery, and performance that activates this healing, tingling effect in others?  I’m gonna go ahead and assume: yes…"

Holter and Spalding's albums are both transporting and transformative. There's so much to dig into, I'm sure I'll still be discovering new things in both of them for months to come.

Favorite Albums of 2017

This list is not a "top ten" per se, but rather a discussion of my favorite albums this year, grouped for their sonic affinities.

Zola Jesus's Conatus made my favorite album list back in 2011, the first year I compiled such a list. 2017's Okovi is an existential cry, a declaration of life determined to live, and sometimes determined to die. It's completely visceral. Nicole Hummel's voice speeds though your veins and resonates in your fascia and marrow. Completely intense, and definitely not an everyday listen. When you go there, be prepared to go there.

Ifriqiyya Electrique describe themselves as "post-industrial ritual" in which the ritual songs of the Banga community of southern Tunisia meet European electronics and amps. Rûwâhîne records Banga musicians performing songs from the annual Sidi Marzûq festival, adding on guitars, bass, and electronics. The music, "adorcist" rather than exorcist in nature, induces possession and trance in its practitioners, and having felt it's influence on my own body, I suspect it could do the same for listeners of the album. One reviewer wrote, "To be honest I can’t work out if this is sacrilege or genius." I completely agree. In any case, it's compelling music, unlike anything I've ever heard before. 

I played Boris' Dear in its entirety for a butoh workshop I gave at Alfred University this fall. At the end of the workshop, a couple of students asked in wonder, "what was that?" That, my friends, was the sludgy sounds of the amazing Boris. Like swimming through sound, dancing through distortion, listening to Boris is a full-bodied experience. That they are still producing such urgent and relevant - and revelatory - sounds 25 years in is something to be celebrated.

EMA's Exile in the Outer Ring is her third album, and her third album to make my end of year music lists. Each album she records (and each song on each album) builds a world - both futurist and firmly in the now, fantastic and based in experience - that feels both real and otherworldly. The world she builds on Exile is one of middle American discontent and alienation ("the Outer Ring") singer Erika M. Anderson knows all too well from growing up in South Dakota. It's a frightening dystopia, but one that EMA doesn't just portray; rather she actively engages it, though quite frankly her prognosis is not good. Really just read this excellent review on Pitchfork by Judy Berman; I can't say it any better than her.

Jesca Hoop's Memories are Now grabbed me the first time I heard it and hasn't let go. Her sound has been described as experimental folk, and Tom Waites was an early mentor (she was his kids' nanny!). She employs delicious and surprising layers of her own voice, guitar, and percussive sounds to produce songs both languid and restless. Deceptively simple, sometime strange, and definitely singular.

Rhiannon Giddens' excellent Freedom Highway, an album of mostly originals that follows up her previous largely covers record, Tomorrow is My Turn (also a year end favorite of mine), takes the listener on a journey of the struggle for black civil rights in the United States. The stakes of the album are starkly illustrated in the liner notes with a reproduction of a slavery sale notice offering a "negro wench" who has a 9 month old child, available "at the purchaser's option." The opening track takes its title from that notice, and ends with the chilling line, "My fingers bleed to make you rich." The album closes with the Pops Staples classic from which the album takes its' name. When Rhiannon Giddens sings - with that voice! - the closing lines to "Freedom Highway," it seems that the 1965 lyrics were written just this year: "The whole wide world is wonderin’/What’s wrong with the United States/Yes, we want peace/If it can be found/We’re marching the freedom highway/And we’re not gonna turn around."

Valerie June's voice, in a completely different way than Rhiannon Giddens, is what first attracted me to her. I loved "Someone to Love" off of her previous album, Pushing a Stone (2013), but I hadn't listened to a full album of hers until this year's The Order of Time, which has a timeless yet unique feel. It's lush, a bit fuzzed out on the edges, "ethereal" according to a number of music critics. A gorgeous and transformative listen.

Miss Eaves' Feminasty is fearlessly feminist, sex positive, body positive, even food positive. She's sharp and witty as she handily takes down internet trolls and street harassers, dancing the whole time. Most of all she's a woman who's fully in control: of her music, her image, her body, her orgasms (and there's a lot on this album!). Audre Lorde would be proud. Who says feminism isn't fun?

I discovered Priests last year via their 2014 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power. I loved their combination of Selene Vigil-esque vocals over complex DC punk melodies. I eagerly awaited Nothing Feels Natural, and was not disappointed. Though it's their first proper album, Nothing Feels Natural is not just a response to the (Trump) times. Rather, it's a reflection of what the band has been singing about since its' founding in 2012. The times just mean that people are more willing to hear what they have to say.

I admit it. I first hear Downtown Boys' Cost of Living on an episode of Intercepted. I'd heard a track or two from their 2015 release Full Communism, but they weren't fully on my radar until I heard singer Victoria Ruiz talk about how her lyrics on this new album were influenced by Assata Shakur and Nina Simone (via Hair). The album is a bilingual Chicana punk manual for how to survive white supremacy, neo-imperialism, and toxic masculinity. Oh, and it fucking rocks. What more do you need?

***

Of course lists like this are completely subjective and partial. My perennial favorites Laura Marling (Semper Femina) and Colin Stetson (All This I Did for Glory) didn't make the list, but easily could have. I also loved the following albums this year, but apparently not quite enough to make the cut off: Hurray for the Riff Raff's ambitious The Navigator ("Palante" is a must listen if you haven't heard it yet), St. Vincent's more electronic yet more vulnerable Masseduction, Margo Price's sophomore success All American Made, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's The Nashville Sound, Robert Plant's Carry Fire, Systema Solar's very fun (and environmentally conscious) Rumbo a Tierra, and The Black Angels' Death Song. And what about that Sleater-Kinney live album?! And then there's Juana Molina's Halo and Perfume Genius' No Shape, neither of which I gave a proper chance. Ultimately, I guess that's a good thing, to a have a year in which there was no end to good music.

Favorite Songs of 2017

For me, "favorite songs" is truly a separate category from "favorite albums." My favorite songs each year tend to be fluffy-ish one-offs, things I hear and enjoy completely separate from an album listening experience. These songs can and do stand alone. That said, covers often end up on my favorite song lists, and this year is no exception. 

If I had to pick just one song this year, it would be Mac McCaughan's "Happy New Year (Prince Can't Die Again)." The song was recorded at the end of 2016 and released on inauguration day 2017 on Battle Hymns, a compilation ("it is a protest record!") assembled by Quasi with all proceeds split between Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and 350.org. McCaughan's song is the perfect combination of a "fuck you!" to the shitty year that was 2016 ("Oh, it was a year when everybody died/And it was a year when the adults and children cried/For the loss of their hope, for the loss of their youth") and a call to gather,  celebrate what we can (even if it's only that we can't lose beloved artists a second time), and organize. True, the song's dire predictions for 2017 didn't all yet come true (the sun has not yet turned us all to sand, after all), but a year later, it still feels like a bittersweet balm.

Kevin Morby's "1234" is an original song that manages to cite The Ramones' entire oeuvre  as well as The Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died." Like McCaughan's song, Morby's is an ebullient downer, but all the more profound for that combination. 

Kris Kristofferson's "Turpentine," the stand out track on the excellent Cover Stories: Brandi Carlile Celebrates 10 Years of The Story, is quite simply crushing. Like Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt," Kristofferson takes a younger person's song about the loss of a relationship and imbues it with the profundity of age and experience. When he sings, "But I'm warning you we're growing up," your heart just cracks open.

Mountain Man's cover of "Love Hurts" on the Our First 100 Days compilation (released on Bandcamp as "One hundred songs that inspire progress and benefit a cause for change") is not terribly profound. But it does what a cover song can do best - offer a new way in to a familiar song, and open up new possibilities for it. (Grandaddy also released a "Love Hurts" cover on the solid Resistance Radio: The Man in the High Castle Album.)

In her surprise release, "I'm Better," Missy Elliot asserts in her signature flow the joy of having come through something - a physical illness? a depression? - and out the other side. When collaborator Lamb intones, "It's another day, another chance/I wake up, I wanna dance/So as long as I got my friends/I'm better, I'm better, I'm better," it's a reminder, not unlike McCaughan's, that reaching out to friends and not isolating is key to getting through whatever it is that ails you (or the country, as it were). Of course the rest of the song is full of braggadocio of the sexual and material success kind (the remix featuring Lil' Kim, Eve, and Trina elevates this even further), but ultimately the song celebrates having survived, a hope I could certainly use this year.

Mitski's "Fireproof," like Mountain Man's "Love Hurts," is on the Our First 100 Days compilation. When I first heard it, I thought it was a good pop song, and then when I heard it was a One Direction cover, I was even more intrigued. In an oft-quoted Billboard interview, the indie rocker said, “We seem to de-legitimize music that has a majority of young girl fans and think of it as having less cultural value.” Her cover mines the song for its pop gold and turns it into 1:49 minutes of fuzzy, pop bliss.

We Must Do More Than Survive

As we enter this new era of the unknown today, we must do more than survive.

We must resist, certainly. We must refuse to capitulate. And of course we must organize, continue organizing. 

But it is also urgent in this time that we live. We must laugh and make art and good food and share it with others. We must grow things, and teach and learn. We must nurture one another. We must function as much as possible in alternative economies. We must analyze our histories so we can imagine new futures. We must resist the impulse to isolate, and challenge ourselves to connect even when it is hard; especially when it is hard. We must train for strength and endurance and find joy in our bodies as we do so. We must insist on our ideals. And we must love. And turn up the volume. And write. And dance.*

Let's get to work.

*Even though Emma Goldman never actually said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution," what she did say is almost better.

2016 Albums to Help Us Navigate and Survive the Coming Times

This is not a year for the typical Top 10 music list. Rather these are the albums that I think have something we need as we head into the unknown: a way to mark our path ("Lay the breadcrumbs down so we can find our way"), a promise ("Little bird grew big wings"), and solidarity in our despairing, "What will become of us?" Here is the co-existence of our destruction and our hope, our retribution and our dreaming, our medicine and yes our lemonade, our guide to creating new and just formations.
Listen here or find these via your favorite listening channels:
Tanya Tagaq "Sulfur" from Retribution PJ Harvey "River Anacostia" from Hope Six Demolition Project ANOHNI "Hopelessness" from Hopelessness Courtney Marie Andrews "Rookie Dreaming" from An Honest Life Solange "Rise" from A Seat at the Table Y La Bamba "Ojos del Sol" from Ojos del Sol Laura Mvula "Bread" from The Dreaming Room Angelica Garcia "Little Bird" from Medicine for Birds The Julie Ruin "Hello Trust No One" from Hit Reset Fea "Feminazi" from Fea Beyonce "Formation" from Lemonade Tanya Tagaq "Retribution" from Retribution

The Power of Prince

Recently I listened to an All Songs Considered podcast about Bob Boilen's book Your Song Changed My Life. Afterwards, I started thinking about the music that has been significant in my life - and there's been a lot. If I had to write a chapter for that book, what would it be about? After much deliberation I finally settled on Prince's album 1999. I distinctly remember using a $10 gift certificate I'd gotten for my 12th birthday to buy the cassette at Dillon Music in Kalamazoo, MI. I remember feeling nervous as I reached for the cassette on one of those rotating cassette towers; it felt a little naughty, and I knew I was probably too young to buy it. But I did it anyway, feeling almost as if I'd won a dare. Honestly, the first thing that drew me to Prince was the line, "Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?" Ever the activist, I was drawn to his matter-of-fact questioning of the arms race, even if it did inexplicably come at the end of a pretty funky song that to me was about partying despite - or perhaps because of - the impending apocalypse. Soon my friends and I were dissecting the lyrics as we sang along at the back of the bus, playing the cassette on one of those portable Panasonic tape recorders. One of my more precocious friends explained all the sex stuff the rest of us didn't understand. I loved that Prince was profound and dirty, sacred and profane, political and passionate. His was the first music I remember having an in depth conversation about, as I tried to make an argument to my friend in support of his complexity. He was himself, unapologetically and uncompromisingly so, a model I desperately needed as a painfully shy preteen. And he could DANCE! And he sang about dancing! Two years later, Purple Rain was the soundtrack of my first relationship, and first breakup. My purple vinyl Purple Rain 45 is still one of my prized possessions. He definitely helped me get through this thing called life. All of this has been rolling around in my head for the past week, so when my colleague told me today that Prince was dead, it just didn't seem real. Party in Purple, dear one.

Won’t Back Down! A Brief History of the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers

When the Refuse & Resist! Reproductive Freedom Taskforce organized the first National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers twenty years ago in fall 1996, clinics and clinic staff were under constant physical attack. Two doctors and a clinic escort had been murdered; clinics were being blockaded, invaded, and bombed; doctors had their homes protested and their children followed to school; and some doctors were even being targeted by law enforcement for prosecution. Just going to work in the morning meant crossing a picket line and being called vile names, or worse being told that they know where you live. Unlisted phone numbers, and in Massachusettes where I lived at the time unlisted license plates, were necessary security precautions. Judicially, the Webster and Casey Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1992 had chipped away at the constitutional protections granted by Roe v. Wade. Many had thought that having a democrat in the White House would result in a more favorable climate for abortion after twelve years of a republican presidency, but instead violent attacks on clinics had only escalated. In this context, a small group of activists who themselves had been on the front lines of the abortion battle determined that it was essential to launch a campaign of public support. Declaring “Abortion providers are heroes for saving women’s lives!” the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers was created with two aims: 1) to hearten providers with positive public support and 2) to strengthen the movement by forging stronger links between activists and providers.

Though the first NDAAP was small, the feedback from providers was overwhelmingly positive. As we moved towards the 25th anniversary of Roe on January 22, 1998, we determined to make the Day of Appreciation a major annual event. When just one week after the Roe anniversary a clinic in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed, killing the security guard and seriously injuring a nurse, standing with providers and publicly thanking them for their work became all the more urgent. With the permission and participation of David Gunn Jr., we marked the fifth anniversary of his father’s death on March 10, 1998 with the second NDAAP, and ever since then March 10 has been a day to honor the work abortion providers do.

It seems hard to imagine now, but for those first five years we organized on the phone and mailed paper organizing kits to participating organizations like the LIST. We also mailed appreciation packets to clinics all over the country with the cooperation of the National Abortion Federation, the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Appreciation packets over the years included poetry written for the occasion by reg e. gaines and Marge Piercy, original artwork, posters for display in clinic waiting rooms and staff rooms, certificates and letters of appreciation, and even a sermon and prayer for clinic workers.

By the early 2000s the Internet was becoming a viable organizing tool, and the Day of Appreciation had caught on enough that we no longer had to convince organizations to participate or call to remind them that March 10 was coming. We made the decision at that point to let the Day have a life of its own. On the one hand it makes me sad that twenty years after that first NDAAP there is still a need for the Day. Many of the situations I described above are still the daily reality providers across the country, but that kind of daily violence is no longer a news story, just the reality of legal abortion in this country. But on the other hand, it makes me incredibly happy that so many individuals and organizations have taken the day up as their own and that abortion providers are so publicly thanked each year.

Back in the early days of NDAAP, David Gunn, Jr. told us that his father’s favorite song had been Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down.”

Well I won't back down, no I won't back down

You could stand me up at the gates of hell

But I won't back down

Gonna stand my ground, won't be turned around

And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down

Gonna stand my ground and I won't back down

The song is still an apt theme for the courageous health care providers and clinic staff whose determination and persistence in the face of unrelenting legislative attacks and daily harassment is nothing short of awe inspiring. It is these workers, sometimes the only ones for hundreds of miles or the only ones in an entire state, who make the constitutional right to abortion a reality. Abortion funds like the TEA Fund help make abortion financially accessible, but as the old saying goes, “without abortion providers there is no choice.” You can read some of their stories here https://prh.org/provider-voices/ndaap/

So today, and everyday, I honor all abortion providers and clinic staff. Having worked at Planned Parenthood myself, I know how hard it can be to go past those protestors on your way into work, or on your way back from lunch. I hold close to my heart all the providers I’ve worked with for the past 25 years, whose courage and strength have sustained me. And I remember with deep sadness and enormous gratitude those who were murdered for doing their part to provide safe, legal abortion.

March 10, 1993: Dr. David Gunn, Pensacola, FL

June 29, 1994: Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, Pensacola, FL

December 30, 1994: Shannon Lowney and Leann Nichols, Brookline, MA

January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, Birmingham, AL

October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian, Rochester, NY

May 31, 2009: Dr. George Tiller, Wichita, KS

You are my heroes.

originally posted March 10, 2016 at http://www.teafund.org/won_t_back_down_a_brief_history_of

Favorite Albums of 2015

1. Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love
My professional career is based on the assertion that not only can we write about things normally considered to exist outside the logic of words (the body, dance), but that we must. So it's hard for me to admit that I just can't talk about what Sleater-Kinney mean to me. The way the kids in this video look like they feel as they dance along to animated versions of Carrie, Corin, and Janet begins to touch the surface of my feelings for this band. I just couldn't be happier that they are back.

2. José González - Vestiges & Claws
There's something about José González's sound--the timbre of his voice? the keys he favors?--with which I deeply resonate. I listened to this album over and over again when it first came out as I was spending a rainy week in Portland. The atmosphere of his songs and the climate seemed a perfect match, and the album transports me still.

3. Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
I have to admit that I wasn't blown away by Alabama Shakes' first album, Boys & Girls. I thought it was a solid offering, and that Brittany Howard's voice was strong, but it just didn't stand out to me musically. Their second album, however, really struck me as a band coming into its own and claiming their unique sound. I particularly love the way Howard morphs her voice from one song to another and even within a song.

And speaking of Brittany Howard, the release of Thunderbitch - Thunderbitch came as a surprise to everyone. Total unapologetic summer fun.

4. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit
In dance there's the idea that repeating something prosaic over and over and over again can imbue the movement with a profundity it might not otherwise have. I find the same quality in Courtney Barnett's songs. One minute you're listening to her singing about a mundane moment in her day, or a thought you yourself have had, and then suddenly you're caught off guard by the deep insight of her observational style.

5. Buffy Sainte-Marie - Power in the Blood
When I was young, Buffy Sainte-Marie's Fire and Fleet and Candlelight was on regular rotation when I had control of the record player (which in retrospect seems like all the time). I admit I hadn't followed her over the years, but when I heard this album I was drawn back in to the power of her voice and her message, which far from fading over the years have only gathered strength.

6. Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow is My Turn
That voice! I have to admit I'd never heard Rhiannon Giddens or Carolina Chocolate Drops until I watched that documentary, Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. I was captivated by her, and this, her debut solo album.

7. Childbirth - Women's Rights
Anytime you combine feminism and snark, I'm there. Add in dance-able tunes and laugh-out-loud lyrics and it's irresistible.

Childbirth is actually a "supergroup" of Seattle alt-rocking women, including Chastity Belt's Julia Shapiro.  Chastity Belt also had a noteworthy 2015 album, Time to Go Home. I will never forget seeing the band in the basement of J&J's Pizza at 35 Denton, and alternating between enjoying the music and worrying that we were all going to be crushed when that low, low ceiling fell in.

The next three bands make me feel like I'm back in the early 90s before the Lilith Fair-ization of music made by women, when the songs and sound could still be fierce and complex and fun.
8. Speedy Ortiz - Foil Deer
I caught Speedy Ortiz at Solid Sound this summer. Bonus: Speedy Ortiz are from Western Mass and "Puffer" references Puffer's Pond, one of my favorite Massachusetts swimming holes.

9. Palehound - Dry Food
I admit I don't know much about Boston-based Palehound, just that I kept being drawn to their sound, which at once seems familiar and surprising. (And ok, the album title makes me think of cats.)

10. Bully - Feels Like
I like the combination of strength and vulnerabilty in Bully's sound and lyrics. Triva: Singer Alicia Bognanno once interned for Steve Albini.

Bonus: Eagles of Death Metal - Zipper Down
I don't want to like this album. It's just so catchy! And I know how bad it looks coming after all the amazing powerful women I've talked above above. Maybe that's what they mean by "Complexity"?

*I have to give credit where credit is due. I learn about a lot of new music, especially all the amazing young women on this list, from NPR's Katie Presley. 

Favorite Songs of 2015

I spend most of my new music listening time focused on albums. I don't do much radio listening any more, so I'm less likely to encounter songs as singles. But occasionally a song or two breaks its way into my consciousness, standing on its own as a lyrical or melodic statement, leaving a visceral experience in its wake.

This year three very different songs worked their way into my ears and life.

Janelle Monae and Wondaland - "Hell You Talmbout"
This sonic litany of African Americans murdered by police in the United States is at once a powerful expression of rage, an urgent call to action, and an insistence upon remembering each individual life.



Rhett Miller - Most in the Summertime
I actually heard this song on the radio driving around on a summer day (though I probably didn't have the windows rolled down - Texas summers are just too hot!). This song perfectly evokes the feeling of skin warmed from the summer sun and new love.

Shovels & Rope - Patience
Let me just start by establishing two things: 1) I love a cover song that makes you discover something new about the original and 2) I never liked GnR's "Patience. Or to be more specific, I never gave it much thought. To have hated it, I would have had to actually listen to it. I find this cover by Shovels & Rope delightful precisely because it made me stop and listen.

List of my favorite albums of 2015 coming soon!

Humanly Reasonable

Public Comments to the Denton City Council, August 4, 2015

Our air and water.

Our health and safety.

Our Denton.

 

This simple slogan was at the heart of our campaign to ban fracking in Denton. Our priorities were—and remain—to make Denton a healthy and sustainable city for all of our residents to live and grow. In other words, we declared that we want Denton to be a place guided by HUMANLY reasonable standards. The majority of Denton voters agreed last November that fracking within the city limits is incompatible with this goal.

 

When HB40 nullified our ban and told us that we had to make decisions based on what is commercially reasonable, they stole from us our best means of protecting the health and safety of all people in Denton. 

In effect this leaves our Gas Well Ordinance as the last line of defense of

Our air and water.

Our health and safety.

Our Denton.

This is in fact what is at stake here tonight: nothing less than the question if Denton will insist upon being humanly reasonable, or merely commercially so. 

I believe that what you on the City Council are here to do is represent and serve the people of Denton, and to do everything in your power to protect the wellbeing of ALL of Denton’s residents, not only the interests of industry or developers or property owners. I’m concerned, however, that the current proposal leaves the people of Denton in a worse position than we were in in 2013.

I join the chorus of other Denton residents calling for no reduction in setbacks from 2013 levels, not even in industrial zones. The City Council owes it to us, your constituents who voted overwhelmingly to ban fracking, to protect as much of the city as possible under HB40. Our 1200 foot setbacks are still less than Dallas and Flower Mound’s 1500 foot setbacks, which had a record of being commercially reasonable, even before that term set the new standard. I also want to reiterate the call for reverse setbacks to not be lower than production site setbacks. How can something that is unsafe at less than 1200 feet suddenly be safe at a distance of 250 feet, just because a developer wants to build there? Again, we must be guided by the principle of what is humanly reasonable, not just what is commercially possible. 

Along these lines, I also ask that the Notice of Activities section of the current proposal be improved so that all residents, and not just surface property owners, be notified prior to Operators filing applications for approval of a Gas Well Development Site Plan. 52.3% of all occupied housing units in Denton are renter occupied. Notifying property owners is not sufficient to inform and protect ALL Denton residents. 

And finally, I echo calls for simple and effective means to monitor the impact “commercially reasonable” fracking has on the air, water, health, and safety of Denton residents:

• Baseline air and water testing paid for by industry, pre- and post-fracking,
• A ban on open surface pits within city limits, and 
• Air quality monitors for our communities; we must be able to confirm that Operators are conducting business within existing state and federal laws.

 

These are all simple but powerful amendments the City Council can make to the proposed Ordinance to ensure that Denton is a reasonable place for humans, not just commercial interests.

#DefendtheBan: Comments presented to the Denton City Council 6/16/15

I am here to urge the City Council to respond to TXOGA's filing for a summary judgment in their lawsuit by filing a motion to dismiss. I know this is not popular advice; many people believe this avenue may open our ban up to being ruled unconstitutional by a judge. This is a risk many people are unwilling to take. I, however, want to use my short time today to talk about why we NEED to take the risk.

In the book Success Without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America, civil rights lawyer Jules Lobel admits that in a utilitarian view of the law, “To succeed means to win concrete results, to change the legal rules, to win damages for your client, or to obtain a court injunction” (3). I believe this is the kind of reasonable, win-based strategy that the city has been urged to take. But Lobel cautions against such a narrow definition of success, particularly when a short-term legal “win” may come at the expense of longer-term political gain. Lobel points out that “Virtually hopeless test cases brought to challenge unjust policies is a recurring thread in the tapestry of American law” (6). And he persuasively argues that “we should view success as the living out of values, persistence in the face of great odds, and the strength to stand up for principle even when defeat seems inevitable” (267).

I believe that we the people of Denton are in a position where we cannot respond to TXOGA and the Texas legislature with reasonable measures. We all know that we are in an unreasonable situation where oil and gas interests effectively govern our state. Where “commercially reasonable” practices are allowed to trump our ability to make choices about our health and safety. We have no hope of stopping fracking in Denton, let alone in the state of Texas, if we agree to continue our fight on their terms.


If by filing a motion to dismiss, we expose the way our whole political system in Texas, including the judiciary, is in the pocket of oil and gas, then all the better. Remember, while our ban passed through a democratic process, so did HB40. It’s just that the legislature and their friends in the industry are telling us that their democracy holds more weight than ours does. TXOGA wants to shove this point home by forcing us to repeal a ban that is already in fact unenforceable. We can’t give in to how they want to play the game. We need to reach for true success, a Denton without fracking, and if we need to lose in the short term, then I say so be it. As we’ve been singing out in front of the the Vantage site for the past few weeks, “Ain’t no frackers gonna break us/Denton love is much too strong.”

Favorite Songs of 2014

Hurray for the Riff Raff "The Body Electric"


Eels "Where I'm From"


Ages and Ages "Divisionary (Do the Right Thing)"


Quilt "Tired and Buttered"


Bruce Springsteen "High Hopes"

Favorite Albums of 2014

Let's make it an even eleven, cuz I'm nice like that

Angel Olsen Burn Your Fire for No Witness


Benjamin Booker Benjamin Booker


Deerhoof La Isla Bonita


EMA The Future's Void


Ex-Hex Rips


Perfect Pussy Say Yes to Love


Perfume Genius Too Bright


Robert Plant lullaby and...The Ceaseless Roar


Sarah Jaffe Don't Disconnect


St. Vincent St. Vincent


Tune-Yards nikki nack

So you want to read a YA dystopian novel with a strong female protagonist

In the same way that the Twilight series spawned a genre called "teen paranormal romance" (see also: Beautiful Creatures and any number of forgettable books and movies), The Hunger Games trilogy has produced a, uh, hunger for dystopian stories helmed by strong but flawed young women.

I am all for this development. I came of age during the height of the early 80s nuclear war fears and love me a good dystopian story. Young women at the center of narratives - especially smart, physically strong young women, or ones who are willing to become that way: great. Bring it.

Let me tell you the bad news right up front: all of the series that I've read feature white 16 year-old girls in relationships with white 16-18 year-old boys. Often, but not always, there is a heterosexual love triangle. Sometimes there are important relationships among females, but typically these relationships take a backseat to the central girl-meets-boy(s) romance. Now, by and large, these offerings are much better than what's in the mainstream. This is no Walking Dead scenario, for example, which my friend Bob has described as demonstrating that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of  the patriarchy and racism. However, it does seem that in the YA-dystopian-girls universe, it's easier to imagine the end of society as we know it than it is to imagine girls and young women loving other girls and young women, or at least being interested in something other than that boy. (Which goes back to my long-standing argument that boys' coming of age stories are about friendship and death and class and sex and lots of other things, while girls' are pretty much about boys. Or occasionally cancer.)*

The other bad news is that the Divergent series, coming in April to the aforementioned cineplexes and anointed the next Hunger Games by those who declare such things, is not terribly good. The first book about a society divided into five factions that each fulfill a particular role in society - Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Candor, Amity - is entertaining. Watching the protagonist, Tris, choose a life of daring and boldness and then learn how to actually be and do those things is exciting, even when things start to royally fall apart around her. Book number two, Insurgent, is fine, though there are almost too many twists and turns and I found myself caring less and less what happened by the end of the book. The series finale, Allegiant, is so badly written and so ludicrously plotted that I can only imagine a movie executive pressured the publisher to skip the editing process and rush a first draft to press. There is no other explanation for the sudden introduction of alternating voices of Tris and her boyfriend (previously Tris is the sole narrator), voices which are in fact indistinguishable and cause a lot of confusion for the reader. (I hate to say it, but it makes Stefanie Myers' introduction of Jacob's voice in Breaking Dawn look really skillful.) And the plot and characters in the third book just have no resonance with what's come before. I was looking forward to the movies (before I read the last book, at least). I've really liked Shailene Woodley's work, and thought she would be able to do justice to Tris' complexities. But now that I've seen the print ads, I'm really disappointed in how they define her only through her relationship to a man. One poster even has her in that back-to-the-viewer pose that has been thoroughly and wittily mocked.

The good news is that there are other series that are actually well-written and engrossing and worth a read. These are probably also the series not likely to be made into movies. They do follow a similar pattern to Hunger Games and Divergent: society got fucked up and people a while ago decided that _______ was the cause of the strife and that order could be restored by _______, which will happen during adolescence, usually age 16, through a public test/selection/procedure. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras) focuses on the role of beauty in society. Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy (including Pandemonium and Requiem) identifies love as the problem. Westerfeld's series is intriguing for its refusal to produce a pat or romantic resolution, while Oliver's particularly well-written accounts of what it feels like to be in love for the first time made me wish she had written the Twilight series. (In a not-so-subtle marketing ploy, the covers of her books bear a remarkable resemblance to Twilight movie posters, from a Kristen Stewart look-alike to the curve of her hair.) Like Divergent, both series take place in (eventually) recognizable US cities (Los Angeles, Portland, ME). They also propose the forests as places where an alternative life is possible.

What are your favorite YA dystopian novels with a strong female lead? Do you disagree with what I've said here? Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments.





*This is not to diminish the fact that when you're a teenager, first love and relationships can and do feel like the entire world. But really, if we're writing speculative fiction, can't we imagine some other scenarios beyond "girl falls for boy"?