Elana Levin

emotional truth is plenty! I just frame it as his own rather than "her's". thank you for your vote!

3/6, 1st Round: (4) The Black Crowes vs (13) Kristin Hersh — March Sadness 90s Edition

My Black Crowes essay is live @marchxness.bsky.social and hits on some of these topics of vocals, gender performance and audiences from my personal narrative (as well as from rock history research). I'd appreciate your read and your votes!

Love a matchup — here, @levin.bsky.social and @anniezaleski.bsky.social — where I learn several liner notes’ worth of detail. Read and vote!

3/6, 1st Round: (4) The Black Crowes vs (13) Kristin Hersh — March Sadness 90s Edition

Thank you!

3/6, 1st Round: (4) The Black Crowes vs (13) Kristin Hersh — March Sadness 90s Edition

The REAL TRUTH behind The Black Crowes breakout 1990’s hit She Talk to Angels revealed in my essay @marchxness.bsky.social! Why She Talks to Angels was always goth (I even recorded a goth cover).
We also revisit my 1st rock concert—the Crowes in 1992.
Vote for my essay!

I hear he wrote a musical? I appreciate the ambitiousness of that. It’s never been my genre really

Yes antivax set the stage for that too but with Covid we see even normie democrats downplay the risk and signing on to endless reinfections.
Virus minimizing has gone mainstream to even people who think they believe in science. If you don’t mask you don’t believe in science.

Truly this was inevitable as soon as we let people downplay the dangers of COVID and the need to continue steps to protect ourselves from it.

I mean I think it may have lead to fewer guys who can’t sing deciding they were qualified to be lead singers. Something I talk about in my essay (& how sexism kept me out of bands). Grunge gave bad singers license to make us endure them…
But yes to the broader point.

Great example! personally I think RATT is better but that’s just me and not the law. It’s also possible I feel that way because of acculturation! I was quite young in the 80s and by the 90s it felt like all rock fans were pushed out of admitting to liking those earlier styles. & fewer girls around.

Oooo I don’t know them!
But I always appreciate a good lead on something in a genre I love. My own essay is up for a vote in 30 minutes! I’ll post the link shortly

The singer of the song my essay is about is VERY good—Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes. He’s shifted his sound from the very early days (you’ll get to hear it in my #MarchSadness essay which goes live 11am ET & I want your votes)

I know there can be physical issues. I realize in retrospect that my problems playing barre chords on guitar are because I’m hypermoble & my fingers even bend back & lockup on bass. But I do encourage people to think of singing as a trainable skill just like an instrument.

“One of the highest-demand jobs requires little education but pays about as much as fast food work: home health aides. Medicaid and Medicare pay most of their salaries, but rates are low, and could get lower after President Trump signed legislation last year that restricted federal health spending”

He’s so good!

I could train to access my head-voice better but I find it somewhat dysphoric as the tone I get up there doesn’t sound like the largely male singers I like to sound like do when they are up high. I don’t have the T for that. But my chest voice and I are friends. If you want to sing you probably can.

Before I took lessons as a kid my range was very small, low & limited (& raspy which I like but wasn’t sustainable to maintain as techniques to do it safely weren’t taught in the 80s/90s). Lessons expanded my range to a normal size. I can usually sing most of what I feel like. I miss the tone tho

If you’d like to sing better and not destroy your voice there’s more free online vocal instruction than ever available. I guess it’s hard without a live person on the end to offer feedback especially on the physical aspects of what you’re doing with your body. But like guitar: you can learn things.

She Talks to Angels (for March Sadness) YouTube video by Elana Levin

I’ve written a bit (& podcasted more) about the marketing and media decisions that lead to this. My song in today’s #MarchSadness marks a transition out of hair metal and into the 90s. It also works well for my tenor vocal range. So I recorded a cover. My essay makes the case that it’s also goth.

My take? The music we now call hair metal had a ton of female fans. The vocal range to sing along to it works for most of them. If you’re a dude it’s harder. In the 90s the style with more male fans is taken seriously & female fans are read as unserious & uncool.
Btw my essay & song are up @ 11

I’ll be posting mine soon as it’s live at least!

I mean… I can. But I also made the effort to 1. Make effort and 2. Took lessons. But ah well. I get the sense that a lot of boys thought that learning how to sing well was effeminate (& therefore bad) where as guitar lessons made them cool.
Now we’re here. Bleh.

Let me be clear: I’m glad Kristi Noem was fired. But we still have to abolish ICE.

Love your column! St Patrick’s Day is a vital opportunity to get white Americans to think about why certain ethnic groups get to embrace their heritage & be valorized for it while others are told not to wave a foreign flag. I’ve seen some Irish politicians call out the US hypocrisy around St Pats.

Perry: This St. Patrick’s Day, don’t forget Irish music’s anti-fascist roots Dropkick Murphys, the iconic Irish American punk band, are headlining a free block party March 6 near where Alex Pretti was killed by immigration agents, contributing columnist David M. Perry writes.

NEW “We’re celebrating a tradition that is at its core about resisting occupation and maintaining community in the face of horrors. You can’t keep politics out of Irish music. No one should try, for two reasons. First, it’s ahistorical. Second, Minnesotans are ready for a big anti-fascist party.”

He sells oysters to his mom and, on the most fundamental level, that’s just not a real job.

He’s just some guy who doesn’t use moisturizer.

damn rich kid who told me all about the working class

Having grown up with an authentic white blue collar dad (acknowledging there are many nonwhite working class guys who get ignored) who grew up on a farm and ended his career working on literal launch pads I have very little interest in hearing about how we need to understand Platner. He’s every

Jason Isbell acknowledges that the concert is being streamed on The Current and there are some words he's been advised not to say, and immediately a "FUCK ICE" chant breaks out in the crowd, lmao

Des’ree is racking up votes & may upset Goo in this @marchxness.bsky.social round! Both essays are great: don’t miss @moirajo.bsky.social’s astute queer reading of “Iris” OR Emily’s smart look at “Kissing” in & out of R+J.