December 2008 Archives

Brilliant idea.

(NSFW after the jump.)

If even the NY Times is admitting that “lesbians have been, over the last 25 years, on the cutting edge of just about every cultural trend in this country” … well, shit.  They’re finally onto us.

And if this catches on, it will throw off my entire gaydar.

There’s a special sort of heartbreak to snow around here.  It might snow for an afternoon, enough that all the stores are sold out of sleds and a few snowmen appear.  But within a day or two, it’s always gone- brief taste of real winter returns to rain rain rain.

And that is why I am totally thrilled about our current meteorological anomaly.  The snow isn’t going away.  In fact, every time it starts to get depressingly brown and slushy, we get even more, returning us to pristine winter wonderland.  I went to Alison’s for dinner last night, staying for two and a half hours.  When I left her house, my earlier footprints had already filled with snow and the sky was the same pink as the streetlights.

We’ve had long cold snaps before; we’ve accumulated more snow before.  But never both at once!  Outside my window at work, a snowshoer is making his way up the hill.

When I’m record shopping, there are certain albums I’m always looking for.  Rifling through the overflow shelves and bargain bins until my fingers are dusty and I’ve seen every Kris & Rita album ever released.  The point is the quest; it’s cheating if I go buy it on Amazon or from some collector on a listserv who did all the leg-work for me.  No, the point is to look through the used LPs myself, meticulously, for months and maybe even years until I find what I’m searching for.

The album I’m looking for is Alix Dobkin’s Living with Lesbians , released in 1975 on Women’s Wax Works.  Actually, it’s not just Alix Dobkin on the album; it’s Alix Dobkin with the Lesbian Power Authority.

In a nutshell: Dobkin came out in the early seventies, released some lesbionic tunes that basically laid the groundwork for the genre known as "women’s music," and Living with Lesbians regularly appears on "worst/most hilarious album covers of all time" lists.

I saw it, over a year ago, at Everyday Music.  I remember pulling it out and giggling about it with Coty or Cory or whoever was with me- over-earnest folk songs about utopian womyn-loving-womyn communities.

Oh, the folly of youth!  If only I had it now, Living with Lesbians would surely be the jewel of my collection!

I’m not gonna lie- women’s music still leaves me lukewarm.  But what began as me laughing at an album cover has transformed into deep admiration for the creative output of lesbian-feminists of the 70’s and early 80’s.  I’ve dived deep into second-wave culture and artifacts, I can’t get enough.  At the WACK! exhibit on Saturday, I enjoyed the visual art, for sure.  But the part that had me jumping up and down?  It was the texts they had assembled in glass cases: old pamplets from women’s collectives and original editions of Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture. This is the same stuff I collect, prowling used book stores (and now record stores) for second wave artifacts, learning about our collective history.

My eyes are peeled.  I will carefully examine the vinyl selection at every record store I enter, until I again come across Living with Lesbians. I’ll fish it out of the folk section, next to multiple copies of Joan Baez and Judy Collins albums.  I’ll take it home and put it in the new crate I’ll be getting to house all of my women’s music finds.

And in the meantime, I will hang out with some of the other prizes I’ve found.

Does one ever grow out of thinking that rainbows are totally magical?  I looked up from my desk and saw one arching brightly over the buildings; it’s fading even as I type this.