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Ditto: from cool to snobbery in a few short months
There's a little of the "what exactly did you expect" when Beth Ditto starts complaining about the audience for their Scissor Sisters support dates:
"I love the Sisters and think we've a lot of common ground, but supporting their tour was a soul-sucking experience. It wasn't gigs, it was 'concerts'.
"Like when you're nine and New Kids On The Block come to town and you camp outside the mall all day to get a ticket.
"The audience were moms wanting chart hits. They've never seen a John Waters movie or heard The Ramones."
But what was she expecting at a big, showy chart band's tour? And isn't there something a little sneery about the "they've never seen a John Waters movie or heard the Ramones" - never mind the "moms" bit, a curious term of abuse for someone who claims to be a feminist. How does she know that the audience didn't contain a large number of Ramones fans? Perhaps they all love Rockaway Beach but went to see a Top 40 group knowing what to expect of such a gig. Pity The Gossip didn't.
5 comments:
I suspect that the soul sucking bit was the realisation that the UK general public isn't quite as fawning as Guardian or NME journalists- did you read the piece on Ditto in the Guardian before Christmas?
Oh, and for the record, my mum is owns at least one Ramones 7", enjoyed both Hairspray and Cry Baby but has never heard of the Gossip.
I know who the Ramones are. Who the hell is Beth Ditto? And why should I care?
Was she expecting people to be shouting for Blitzkrieg Bop?
If Beth Ditto sees it as normal for people to go to see one band, while vociferously showing their approval for another band, that probably says more about the gossip than it does about the scissor sisters, no?
The Gossip's next single was supposed to be Jealous Girls (Feb 5th, I got the promo last week) but they've just announced that they are to drop that in favour of re-releasing Standing In The Way Of Control, with a new video. Most recently released at the end of October, I bet Beth wished she'd kept quiet before shucking and jiving on the back of Channel 4's latest 'controversial' drama. - E(lvis)
OK so she's making huge generalisations about Scissor Sisters fans, which highlights the indie snobbery of too many bands who somehow believe that music fans can be divided up into distinct groups, but the problem here to me is that I'm not quite sure she actually knows her own audience... Does she seriously believe that the average The Gossip fan likes to spend evenings relaxing whilst watching Pink Flamingos? Something tells me that they are too busy trying to be "trendy" to find time to know which films Ditto says they should be watching
Also the "mums" who came to see the Scissor Sisters are quite possibly the same people who went out and bought The Ramones' "Baby, I Love You" when they were younger and got that into the top 10... or does Ditto also believe that people don't change?
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