Wednesday, September 17, 2008

ESSENTIAL LOGIC

Somebody wrote in with a link to a 2003 Lora Logic interview which I read with a mixture of minor discomfort and wistful curiosity. Her answers don't seem all that forthcoming so I've added a few notes for your post-punk delectation.

'the manager for X-Ray Spex liked the idea of having another woman in the band...'
OK, so he's a manager that liked the idea of having a rebellious 15-year-old girl in the band. Enough said.

'I grew up really fast. I was extremely naïve at first and was exploited by the management'
'they even used all the sax parts I worked out for the album (Germ Free Adolescents) with a new player...'
She certainly learned about the machinations of the music industry fast because when I joined the band, the previous guitarist who'd written most of the repertoire (other than the sax parts and lyrics) had his work misappropriated, and then the two songs that I wrote the music for on the Beat Rhythm News album suffered the same fate.

'it transcended labels and boundaries: that was really part of the punk spirit...'
'Punk' must be about the most untranscendental label of all time.

'I always saw that as my service to Krishna and share that but nothing really came out...'
I'm not sure if Hinduism works like that.

'I had an arranged marriage from the temple around '84 and we've been together ever since then...'
Wow.

By the way, don't be fooled by my sarcasm as it's not intended to be bitchy - I always liked Lora, and I'm genuinely happy for her if things have worked out well with her family; there's just so much Alice In Wonderland irony in that whole Rough Trade feminism/politics thing of which she was a part. And to a lesser extent I was too. How the business was run and how that would evolve, the relationships there, the nature of some of their employees, and of course the super-prudish Talibanesque censorship. I mean let's not forget the origin of the place's fucking name. And there's a kind of charm in it all that I, for my naïve part at that time, didn't really appreciate fully. Many of her simple answers in this interview neatly encapsulate those wild contradictions.

4 comments:

A Festering Gesture said...

William, do you still play guitar at all? I read something Steve Albini wrote once where he said that you could play any Yes song on spanish guitar. I don't whether he was being facetious or not.

William Bennett said...

Well, there was a time when I could, ahem, play quite a few things - only rarely pick one up these days however.

Odile Lee said...

Oh god, feminists.

Im a anti-feminist.

fervently. for too many reasons to list and the its is growing daily.
I wish I was kidding.

Odile Lee said...

I had a brief interest in the Krishnas ( very brief, you'll read why ) at a loose lonely point of my late teens.

She has a arranged marriage, in the Krishna temple. You ever watched a temple Krishna meeting, before the food? A very happy bunch of guys making music, and some bedraggled, exhausted women in the background, with children clinging like marsupials.
Because they are not allowed to make music. Are expected to cook, clean and serve the men-so the men can do the religious stuff( fair enough, thats no difference from any other patriarchal based, female subservient religion, based on codes to keep the women from getting into trouble so to speak. )Lots of bad stories, from women who left Krisha consciousness.( Food was good though. I scrubbed a few floors. Had a crush on the main religious speaker. He looked pretty spiffing, bald. They wanted me to join up. I found out about the subservience, and the 4 am wake up call ( to dress the bloody dollies, no reason to wake anyone in their right mind.)At least being a degenerate meant I'd avoid scrubbing floors, breeding some bloke I barely knows children and wishing I was dead every dawn.
Speaking of children, whats with hers?They look possessed.

-If you ask me, she has a definite talent, for being taken advantage of. As in, liking it. As in using it for pity points.