For Jeremy and anyone else who is interested, I will transcribe the Liz Phair essay in said book -- a paragraph or two daily (to keep the forum lively).


Liz Phair

Liz Phair, whose debut album Exile in Guyville reflected an ambivalent relationship to the neighborhood and its highly male rock ethos, generated both media adulation and local resentment when she burst onto the music scene in 1993. Though she was deeply involved with the thick local scene prior to the release and subsequent success of Guyville, Phair insists that her creative talents were not taken seriously by her male counterparts. Indeed, the local painter Tom Billings remembers her as being an "artslut" rather than an artist prior to the release of Guyville. Wrote Billings in SubNation, "An artslut is someone who works for other artists, preparing canvas, woodburning, basically doing the work that bores the artists." Though many local artists knew Phair as a regular at the Rainbo and other bars, most remembered her as being "no big deal" artistically before Guyville's release; many did not even know she was a musician. Recalls Phair of the male indie rockers in Chicago, "[They] always dominated the stereo like it was their music. They'd talk about it, and I would just sit on the sidelines. Until finally I just thought, 'Fuck it. I'm gonna record my songs and kick their asses.'"


To be continued...

^LOL! Actually I thought you would probably enjoy that book more than anybody, Ken. I think I read that a couple of years ago, but remember it being interesting.

we're waiting, ken.......

hahaha
kidding. take your time. thanks!!!

On the other hand, Phair did manage to enlist the talented local producer Brad Wood to record Guyville (and lay down its drum tracks) in his Idful Studios in Wicker Park, and she used local musicians as backup in live performances. Her first live gig took place at Czar Bar, next door to Phyllis' Musical Inn. So despite her feelings of personal rejection, she still took advantage of local opportunities for collaboration and display. Further, as this case suggests, competition as well as cooperation can be a way that the scene inspires the efforts of some creative aspirants. Phair blasted the ego-driven ethos of the indie rock scene, but interviews following her success demonstrated that she herself had no deficit of self-regard, despite the shyness evidenced by her legendary stage fright.

Taking frequent refuge behind a facade of sexual bravado ("I take full of advantage of every man I meet"), Phair describes her music a world of one-night stands and petty humiliations, as well as her aspirations to show up her antagonists on her own terms.


More to come...

Phair did indeed weave her reflections on "guyville" into fame, although her success hardly endeared her to all of her local peers. The Village Voice, based on a survey of roughly 300 critics, named the then-26-year-old rocker "Artist of the Year". Incredibly, she was the first woman to be designated by the Voice since Joni Mitchell in 1974. In 1994, she graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Perhaps shamed, surely jealous, many Chicago artists continued to regard Phair as a lightweight and a sellout, in contrast to the critical respect afforded to her outside the neighborhood. Indie record producer Steve Albini dismissed Phair as a "rich suburban girl who made a name for herself (by) having an incredibly aggressive marketing campaign come to bear." But Phair, more than anyone else, put the Wicker Park music scene on the national map. Says a local musician, "I think she opened the door, and I'm glad. I'm glad somebody had the balls to do that, even if it was Liz with her balls." This characterization of Phair is especially telling, given that the music press has given her a great deal of credit for providing female rock musicians with more "industry validity", helping to pave the way for a rash of subsequent signings of artists including Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, and the true breakout of the bunch, Alanis Morrisette.


To be continued...

true true...

It is clear that Phair alienated some locals by making her ambitions too plain. For all its critical success, the challenging Guyville was a solid but not huge seller, partly because its sexually explicit lyrics made it difficult to back with radio airplay. After making a six-figure deal with Matador, a nominally independent label distributed by the much larger Atlantic, Phair made an effort to be more commercial, and she was not shy about admitting this, even suggesting in interviews that her "cuteness" could be a selling point: "I'm cute enough that you can photograph me, you can dress me up, and I'll do it, I'll smile and dance around." She may have misrecognized the appropriate pose for an ambitious artist in the "alternative" musical genre popular in the 1990s. Despite Rolling Stone's cover declaration that "a rock & roll star is born", her sophomore effort Whip-Smart never cracked the Billboard top 100, selling in the solid but unspectacular range of about 250,000 copies.

Further, even many of her supporters were disenchanted by its more commercial tone. However, her third album, whitechocolatespaceegg, dealing with adult themes of marriage and parenthood, was better received by critics. Meanwhile, she augmented her income with modeling, appearing on a lower Manhattan billboard for Calvin Klein, and by contributing songs to various popular films (13 Going on 30, How to Deal, She's All That, Chasing Amy) and television shows, including MTV's "The Real World: Chicago". With the song "Shitloads of Money" she responded to critics for her material girl program, arguing that while "most of her friends" espoused conventional bohemian antipathy towards the market, this stance concealed a secret longing for success, including, well, shitloads of money.


More to come...

The conclusion...


Critics were especially rough on her 2003 release, the eponymous Liz Phair, in which she enlisted the help of the production team The Matrix, best known for their work with bubblegum punk purveyor Avril Lavigne. In this case, the consensus seemed to be that Phair had substituted a highly packaged, faux subcultural style for her rawer and therefore authentic earlier efforts. In 2004, I hit San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Theater to watch Phair headline the "Chicks with Attitudes" tour (also featuring veteran Swedish performers The Cardigans and the teen-aged chanteuse Katy Rose). Clad in apparel appropriate to her latest bout of reinvention, if not her age, Phair had shed the awkwardness on stage that characterized her Wicker Park-era outings. Her dancing was energetic and self-assured, and years of voice work since her debut had immensely strengthened her vocal delivery. Still, despite her efforts to court the teen pop audience, the crowd in the all-ages show was heavily populated by patrons who appeared to be, like Liz and me, in their thirties or beyond. Nor did she neglect those in attendance who were attached to her earlier efforts; indeed virtually the entirety of Guyville was included in her set. And it was the songs from her breakout debut that routinely elicited the most enthusiastic response from the audience, including the two teenage girls standing near me on the floor that sang along word for word with "Fuck and Run" and "Flower".

Prior to her success, Phair was already heavily invested in the neighborhood's internal status hierarchy. She confessed in later interviews, "It was important to me to be hanging out with the coolest artists," some of whom she was linked with romantically. But Phair was not herself highly placed in that hierarchy (as Billings' "artslut" characterization indicates), demonstrating the limitations of the local status system as a predictor of future success. And even the massive critical success of Guyville did not lead to a universal reevaluation on the part of locals. Her parting with the neighborhood was not without acrimony: "There's a lot of suspicion and bitterness when someone does make it," Phair told Billboard in 1993. "The standoffishness of the indie scene just screams insecurity to me."


The end.

thank you for all your effort in posting that. that was a very interesting read. i really enjoyed it.

interesting ... thanks for posting