We looked at her for a minute.“No,” Jordana said.“Sam might have said that though.” Jordana, with a crisp pass of the buck.
“It really pisses me off when people say that. I mean first of all, we don’t sound anything like the Blues Explosion, and second, why does everyone think that it’s Frank’s band? I mean, why not call it the Tina Cromwell Blues Explosion?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“It really sucks the way women’s contributions to punk rock are ignored. I think that our band puts out a real positive image for girls.”
Jordana and I contemplate the positive messages behind some guy with a guitar jumping up and down with a waif-thin woman in a skin-tight outfit and six-inch heels on either side. Not to worry, though. Tina’s ready to explain: “I think that girls come to see us, and it shows them that, like, even girls with larger bodies can totally get on stage and rock.”
Like the frog in boiling water. I’m just noticing that the water around me has bubbles and steam and like all the best frogs are floating at the top. I wonder when things got this heated. And I’ve just enough left to try to leap out of the pot. I hope the frenchy chef is tending to the snails while I make my escape.
Thanks to: our families, MacGregor Mai, Hannah Tashjian, Kate Fodor, Becky Linn, Matt Clark, Jennie Papenthien, Darry Strickland, Josh MacPhee, Myla, Abby, Dara, Dahlia, Meghanne, Mark, Lizzie, Donna, Rebecca Parker, Susan, Chloe, Mary & Erika, Tim and Anamaria, Irene Chien, Don PunkLife, the Beehive, Ethan, Abe Isaacson, Angela, Damian, Kristen, Nathaniel, Meyer Elementary, Food Not Bombs, Anarchist Black Cross, Los Crudos, Zephyr copies, Epicenter, DC punk rock, 1727 Irving St. (and the next door neighbors), Rain Makes Applesauce and Eternalux and everyone who helped them on tour.
Also: Fugazi, KRS ONE, Bikini Kill, Chester Himes, John Edgar Wideman, Sherman Alexie, Billy Wimsatt, Dirty Three, Mr. Blanding’s Dreamhouse, Johnboy, Spitboy, Jack O Fire, Jonathan Kozol, Big Sandy and the Flyrite Boys, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, GooDie Mob, Emiliano Zapata, Efraín Calderón Lara (Charras), and the hundreds or thousands of people behind bars for doing the right thing. And anybody else who gives enough of a shit to try to make things better.
Jamie Schweser
used to live in Iowa City, where he ran a small media empire, fought the FCC, and rarely slept. He now lives in New Orleans, and still denies that he learned anything as an Oberlin College art major.
Abram Shalom Himelstein
lives in New Orleans. Some years he is a school teacher. He started New Mouth from the Dirty South, a publishing company.
Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing Page 9