Thursday, January 10, 2013

Cause once I blow they know that I'll be the woman

My corner solution song of the moment is 'Hyperactive', by the Dollyrots. Imagine everything you secretly like about Avril Lavigne, but in a group not yet sufficiently popular that listing to it is socially unacceptable. If that isn't a recommendation, I don't know what is.



It also raises a question that I've thought about before in the context of the Ting Tings - it seems vaguely emasculating as a guy to be a backup musician in a band with a female lead singer. This is particularly true in the case of the Ting Tings, since it's very obvious that the guy has all the musical talent out of the two - when the girl isn't actually playing any instruments in a two person group, it's a bit of a giveaway. Maybe he's just found a clever marketing scheme, similar to the way nightclubs hire attractive door girls and bartenders.

Frankly it's emasculating to be a backup musician in general (this isn't just my view, incidentally). But it seems likely that you're going to get even less attention than normal when it's a female front(man). The teenage girls seem more likely to be there because they idolise the girl. Maybe some of that will rub off onto you, but I'm sure it's less than usual. If adoring fans turn up backstage, it seems less likely that they're their for their special musical souvenir than in the case of an all-male group. This goes even more so if the girl is highly obnoxious - if you land the job as the drummer for Courtney Love or Alanis Morissette, you should really consider where you went wrong in life.

Still, as a man of science, I'm always willing to update my views. The comments to the Dollyrots video include a fair number of references to the single guy in the band being attractive. And this is true even though I had to look their names up on Wikipedia to make sure he was actually a guy, as the haircut is not exactly a giveaway. Maybe the lack of internal competition for the groupie love is more valuable than I think. At a minimum, he's certainly getting more tail than if he'd gone to medical school.

No comments:

Post a Comment