Golden Jirl

Classic Albums – Tori Amos.

When I think about Tori Amos, two particular albums always come to mind. One of them is, ‘Little Earthquakes’ and the other is ‘From the Choirgirl Hotel’. I see both of these as being classics, but they are incredibly different in their styles.

‘Little Earthquakes’ is, of course, the one that started it all. With this album, Tori Amos suddenly became a household name. Not since Kate Bush, had the ‘girl with a piano’ thing been so popular and here was a pretty, young, flame-haired reincarnation of her. Right from the start, critics likened her to Mrs. Bush and it was something which would haunt her right through her career.

However, in Tori’s defence, ‘Little Earthquakes’ did break some new ground as well. Yeah, you half expected ‘Babooshka’ to kick in on side two, but she sang about her subjects on a far more personal level than Kate Bush ever had. The best example of this is, ‘Me and a Gun’ which tells of Tori’s own horrendous experience of rape. It is an amazing album and was an incredibly powerful start for a new female singer/songwriter.

The quality of her music stayed consistently high, but for me, the next pinnacle came along in the form of ‘From the Choirgirl Hotel’ in 1998. This album couldn’t have sounded any more different to her other work if she had tried. It moves us a thousand miles from the ‘bedsit poet’ sound of ‘Little Earthquakes’ and deposits us in a place of Electronica, sassiness, Jazz and Dance. It is a phenomenal piece of work and is rich with complexity and musical ingenuity.

Try listening to this album and not being suitably impressed… With this release, a large number of her critics were finally silenced. She had proven beyond doubt she had far more about her and that the ‘clone of Kate Bush’ image was an insufficient and ill-fitting one.

Tori is still making some great music today and has recorded an impressive total of eleven studio albums; she also produced nine of these herself.

One last thing, I have spent the remaining part of my weekend going through HIPS with my sister. Last week her place in the South was broken into and it was kind of the last straw for her, so she decided it was finally time to find a new place. I am really looking forward to her finding a new flat, I mean I love Hannah, but sometimes I find it a little tiresome listening to her ranting about this

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When To Worry

A wise man once said that for every person in the world who has something great to say, there are others (he didn’t specify how many) who will say unsettling things—or maybe that’s my imagination. It’s hard to hear what a wise man is saying when you’re sitting on the bus, but I’m sure that’s what he was getting at. (Thinking about it, how wise is using the bus actually?)

I stumbled across a person saying something unsettling at this forum.

It concerns the TV show ‘A Town Called Eureka’—a show with a rather worrying concept: a town full of geniuses!

Now, as we all know, geniuses are not the best kind of people to all bung together. They tend to get over-excited easily–look at Stephen Hawking for proof–and over-look basic things such as health and safety, besotted by the idea that their tiny weapon can blow up a whole country: great! History has a long and nasty history of many things going wrong when clever people are situated in the same place and have a bit too much to drink. And indeed, some of the greatest inventions were not made by geniuses, no, they were made by people of average intelligence who had a great and creative mind; people who were willing and able to stumble, because they weren’t clever enough not to! Surely this would make a better concept for a TV show?

Another thing which is troubling me about a town full of geniuses is this: rage. Surely after a while one of them will try to out-genius another genius and then the world will pay for it, no? But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe their species will see fit to disband and the human race as we know it will be saved.

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Gender roles in the household

One thing that I have to try really hard not to get upset about is the whole notion of the super-mom-career-woman. Anti-feminists are using this as a way of bringing down women who choose both to have a job, and to have a family. It’s too much, they tell us. How can anyone manage such a thing? The expectations are unrealistic!
This is not the case. After all, men have been managing to have a career and have a family all at once for many, many years now. And this is where the issue lies. In any household, the woman is generally expected to be the primary caregiver, and the primary housekeeper. So, if she works full-time, she not only has her work to juggle, but also her kids and the home in a way that a man doesn’t. However, finding this a difficult thing to do is not in any way the fault of the women. Rather, it points to a continued problem with the gender roles we have in our society.
In our society, it’s fine for a man to work full-time, and come home to give the kids a hug and then sit in front of the TV for the rest of the night. If the house is messy, it’s not considered his fault–the woman will get the blame for letting the house get into such a state. It’s the woman who has to worry about dinner, and about whether the kids have done their homework.
What needs to happen is a reworking of the gender roles in a fundamental way so that they are more even. If women are now working and running the household, and looking after the kids, so should men. Men should be able to contribute in an equitable way to make sure that all of this is possible. There should be no such thing as super-mom. There should just be an equality of roles and an equal sharing of duties.

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