Anwen Crawford - Holes Live Through This

For L and for Eor, more especially, for the girls they once were.

My reputation, yet again! It goes before me like a curse.

Euripides, Medea

LIVE THROUGH THIS

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch The series is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration

The New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enough

Rolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet Bookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds.

Vice

A brilliant series each one a work of real love NME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smart Nylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithful Boldtype

[A] consistently excellent series Uncut (UK)

We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.

Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com and our website at http://www.bloomsbury.com/musicandsoundstudies

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For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Forthcoming in the series:

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Mike Foley

Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy

Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann

and many more

Thanks to David Barker, who commissioned this book, and to all at Bloomsbury.

Thanks to Cyndi Elliott for posting me a large pile of archival press clippings from the States. Thanks to Vanessa Berry, Elena Gomez, Ben Gook and Michael Lucy, who all advised me on various drafts. Thanks to Simon Reynolds for emailing me his Young Marble Giants liner notes when I realised that Id lost my CD, and for his friendship and encouragement over several years.

With thanks most especially to my interviewees: Maranda Elizabeth, Mins McCauley, Amy Phillips, Mariel Reyes, Nicole Solomon, Riki Taniwha, Lorelei Vashti, Dana Kletter, Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade. All quotes from these individuals are taken from author interviews conducted between January and May 2013.

1. Violet (3:24)

2. Miss World (3:00)

3. Plump (2:34)

4. Asking for It (3:29)

5. Jennifers Body (3:42)

6. Doll Parts (3:31)

7. Credit in the Straight World (3:11)

8. Softer, Softest (3:28)

9. She Walks on Me (3:24)

10. I Think That I Would Die (3:36)

11. Gutless (2:15)

12. Rock Star (2:42)

I told you from the start just how this would end

Hole , Violet

And so to put aside everything else for a moment.

Three clean chords in the left stereo channel. (Here are three chordsnow, go and form a band.)

A womans voice breaks in on And . Were late and shes already speaking; singing, arguing, screaming, declaring. What came before the And ? What kind of history, what wisdom, what trouble?

(Hippy communes and juvenile remand. Portland and Liverpool and Tokyo. Minneapolis, Alaska and Los Angeles. Sugar Babydoll, Pagan Babies, Babes in Toyland. One album, one drummer and at least three bass players. Two marriages. One daughter.)

And the sky was made of amethyst . Lucy in the sky with diamonds. A beforehand of male stars and besotted female fans. Girl as idolater, not as idol; girl as object, not as agent. And yet:

The Beatles were the objects; the girls were their pursuers. The Beatles were sexy; the girls were the ones who perceived them as sexy and acknowledged the force of an ungovernable, if somewhat disembodied, lust.

We invented rock n roll so that we could sexualise men, so that we could go and scream over these unattainable football captains, said Courtney Love in an early television interview. And then: Do not hurt yourself, destroy yourself, mangle yourself, to get the football captain. BE the football captain. Take the lust somewhere, the rage, the intelligence. Shine, outshine, flash and dazzle.

And all the stars were just like little fish . Did you know that amethyst is the birthstone for February? And Kurt Cobain was born on February 20. Pisces, Jesus man: the punk-rock messiah crucified upon his own fame. Yeah, yeah. This is for Kurt, and Kristen, and River, and Joe, and Rob and, today, Joni Abbott, began Courtney, introducing a performance of Violet at the MTV Music Video Awards on September 7, 1995. A litany of the dead. And all the stars were just like little fists , she sang. Fish/fist. Violet/violence. Violet the colour of injuries. Bruise violet.

And one of the eventual B-sides to Violet, a cover of The Crystals He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), was recorded during Holes set for MTV Unplugged on Valentines Day, 1995. This is a really sick song, Courtney said. Its one of those Phil Spector songs, and it was written by Carole King, whichyou have to think. She wore a thigh-length black dress with long, black lace sleeves, her blonde hair unkempt, her skin doll perfect, and I dreamt of looking that fierce, that untouchable.

Violet (or lilac, or pansy, or mauve), the colour of half-mourning. Permitted to a Victorian widow, along with grey, after at least two years dressed in the black of full mourning clothes. In 1865, the English social reformer and journalist Henry Mayhew described a half-mourning gown that caught his eye as a certain delicate robe of the palest violet tint fairly frosted with crystal spots. Live through this. And Courtney lived. Born July 9, 1964 (or was it 1965?), named Love Michelle Harrison (or was it Courtney Michelle Harrison?), then Courtney Michelle Rodriguez, then, finally, Courtney Love.

Hole formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The first time I came down here I said it was the ugliest place Id ever seen and I would never ever fucking live here, Courtney told L.A.-based punk zine Flipside in 1990. And now Im here. Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson were the bands founding members. Were a real group where everybody affects the band, its not just one person, said Erlandson during the same interview. Courtney resented him at first for not being a girl, but the patient, stalwart Erlandsonuniversity graduate, practising Buddhist, son of a college deanwas the ballast Courtney didnt know she was looking for. He was also the only band member with a drivers licence, no small qualification in L.A.

In 1990, Hole released Retard Girl and Dicknail through Sympathy For The Record Industry and the Sub Pop Singles Club, respectively. Jill Emery on bass and Caroline Rue on drums. Pretty on the Inside came in 1991, released on Caroline Records, produced by Don Fleming and Kim Gordon and dedicated to Rob Ritter, guitarist in L.A. punk band Bags (then The Gun Club, then 45 Grave) and dead of a heroin overdose the same year.

(Bags formed when Alice Armendariz and Patricia Morrison met at an audition for Venus and the Razorblades, manager Kim Fowlers pet project following The Runaways. Courtney Love, in an interview with MOJO in 2010, remembered stealing a copy of The Runaways Cherry Bomb from a record store in Eugene, Oregon, when she was about 10 years old. I love pop. Sugar pop, she said, and, All I know is that Buffalo Springfield was possibly the greatest live band of all time. Buffalo Springfield, Fleetwood Mac, The Runaways, X, The Gun Club: the ancestry of Hole was in Los Angeles. Also, Venus and the Razorblades is the perfect name for a band starring Courtney Love in a parallel universe where its permanently 1979.)