Tom Tom Magazine entries on Terry Lynn and Valerie Scroggins

So, while Assholes and Elbows remains an infrequently visited/updated interwebs destination I've done a couple of entries over at the typographically rocking venture, Tom Tom Magazine: A Magazine About Female Drummers. In an age of post-modern and post-gender delineation of cultural, philosophical and political dialogue the fact remains that many of the social institutions radicals got their britches twisted up over are still in full effect, and Foucault-like, the traces are apparent even in "enlightened" circles. Thus, while ideologically we may have moved on from established gender norms of who can do what and where, the imbalance still exists. Thus, in the realm of drummers a specific ongoing documentation of female drummers is a good reminder that the norms, while silly and outdated, exist only because there was a historical/political precedent, not a biological one, and plenty has been done and is being done to level the conversation.
The enterprise itself isn't as heavy handed as the preceding paragraph and is instead focused on being awesome and fun.

I wrote one piece on danceably confrontational Kingston MC Terry Lynn:

"In a pretty great confluence of import importance and shat on toss-offs, Terry Lynn and Swiss-based Canadian production partner Russel Hergert took Daft Punk’s much-maligned Human After All track “technologic” and re-vamped it as a populist anthem for Jamaica’s impoverished, exploited and fed up underclass. By replacing software advert ad-libs with weapon readying directives, the original’s cheap, sony-commercial baiting hooks become a dissatisfied reveler’s checklist for starting a violent revolt."

and another about the intergenerationally gyrational history of Valerie Scroggins from ESG.

 

From my understanding, ESG is a band that gets to you before you get to them. Early in high school, when buzz finally got from New York to my Miami abode via my mom’s NYMag subscription of those found noise pranksters with a mean hankering for a groove, Liars, beats had only begun to mean something. Those 9 tracks on their first album might seem tame now, but my lack of a concern for dancing (aside from my first inebriation in 7th grade at a family function thanks to drinks left unattended) was becoming something to be concerned about in itself. Liars’ stilted high-BPM groove didn’t really help that much but their song Tumbling Walls Buried Me in the Debris w/ ESG was one of many doors. The use of UFO was by then old hat, historically plundered more than almost any other song, but it was my initiation. Being the time of cult experimentalism and whatnot, it’s that song’s ethereal and otherworldly rumblings that lit up my room at night, playing close-lidded REM games in the dark. "