So I’m talking to my buddy Lisa about criticism, about rejection, about how at some point you just have to (as poet Bill Corbett once told me) write your own damn book. And she started telling me about when she sang in a band and got some of the wierder critiques I’ve ever heard. Now, if you listen to the tracks on the linked MySpace page, you’ll hear she has a lovely voice, truly, but some critic (male) heard the band and said she “sang like she had an angry vagina.” WTF?!?
To which, I can only respond with the words of the immortal and wonderful Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas:
Put a hump in your back
and jam right on.
Let the people know
you got it going on…
(Oh yeah, the entire song is also available on Rhapsody)
Well put— Though I always like to answer detractors with the uimmortal words (from some long-forgotten song I heard in New Orleans once): “If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?”
That or the ever-quotable “So you think my singing’s out of time, well it makes me money! And I don’t know whyyyyy…”
Hey Clea — Most of us have made sacrifices FOR our art, so sacrificing the art itself is unthinkable.
You’re absolutely right — stay true to the writing.
never underestimate the damage done by an insecure male rock critic
Well, the damage intended – I think that Lisa is strong enough to have stood up and brushed herself off after THAT particular low blow (which certainly said more about the critic than about her voice).
I still remember a review I got years ago which began, “More psychopathology masquerading as fiction. Leavitt has no one else but herself to blame..etc. etc.” I cried for weeks, but you know what? Now that I review, I realize it’s all one person’s opinion, and some people just have agendas and there is no way you can please them.
We do all have to “write our own damn books” because otherwise you end up not pleasing yourself and then the art rings false.
Lines like that and the angry vagina comment are just so unprofessional, they reveal more about the critic than the book! But I’m sorry you had to deal with that CRAP!
be strong, all of us!