I Know How My Amp Works by Alyse Ross
EDITORS NOTE: Numbers inside brackets indicate a footnote, footnotes can be found at the end of the piece.
I Know How My Amp Works
All musicians are insufferable (1)
So this guy says that touching his American Fender Strat is like touching a virgin and I don’t understand what he means. I force a smile in hope he won’t elaborate and continue walking slightly faster to TAFE.
Maybe he means because it’s never been fucked before? I notice he bumps into me occasionally, not enough for it to be obvious but I still wonder if it’s deliberate. I keep making more space between us but he gradually nudges me to the edge of the footpath. Does that mean that he’s going to fuck it?
He doesn’t let me get a word in, just talks straight at me, I only have to fill in few silences but it still feels like too much.
Later I tell my boyfriend what the guy said about the touching-of-the-guitar-being-like-a-virgin-thing and he quips, he’s obviously never touched a virgin before.
This time the air escapes from my gritted teeth.
He says, you should have asked him how exactly.
•
I’ve been volunteering for two years at a Girls Rock! Camp where I teach guitar to girls aged ten to seventeen.
One lesson a student asks me to play something on guitar and I say, ok sure–
I think for a second. I play a song I play all the time; a song I wrote before I moved to Melbourne. It’s an ascension of notes, a dissonant progression. It feels jarring and nostalgic (2)
In hindsight, her understanding of these thoughts might have led to a better impression. She touched her face and kind of didn’t say anything and I wondered if I should’ve just played Smoke on the Water (3).
Surely there were some riffs by female rock musicians they would recognise, I was at a Girls Rock! Camp, what was I going to teach them?
The next morning, I panicked because I realised, I couldn’t give them what I had always wanted. An archive of females playing rock music and being known for it; doing what they wanted to do and succeeding in the canon. Yes, there was I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett but I only knew about it because Britney Spears covered it in ‘01 (4). And upon further research I found Joan Jett’s version was actually a cover too.
So I started a mission to find something; something original, definitely in the genre of rock, something made by women and something young women would recognise, something from Guitar Hero or School of Rock. I was at a loss
If you prevent women from seeing any examples of them achieving, then it prevents them from believing they can achieve it. (5)
I was finding less women everywhere I looked. In the spaces where I needed to be to succeed there were just men. Soundies, bassists, guitarists, drummers, bookers, bands, just a lot of men. In my music diploma I was the only female guitarist out of 7. I wondered where all the other women were.
•
I’m setting up what I need to play the gig.
I step on each of my guitar pedals checking
they’ve got power when he jumps up on stage
Hey! Need a hand with that?
he barges past me to the amp. He starts
fiddling with the levels. He stares back
occasionally looking me up and down.
What kind of music do you play?
Hm well I guess you could call it like
grunge or sort of alternative rock, I say.
Cool he says staring at the pedals at my
feet. Yeah see, you wanna turn the gain
right up – he waves me over to the amp –
because even though you’re running a
distortion-overdrive you want the amp to
do most of the work
And no is what I should have said.
Too much gain on the amp with my
pedal is going to create shrill feedback,
is what I should have said.
Go ahead, he says as he jumps off and faces the
stage with crossed arms. Flexing so his biceps
look larger. I click on each pedal and watch as
everyone in the bar writhes in pain.
I remember someone once said you’ve
either got to draw the audience in, or
completely blow them away.
Well I’d stunned them, I was planning to
do it a different way but this would be
what they remembered me for.
I say sorry into the microphone.
It looks like I don't know what I'm doing.
•
We punch dart after dart on the balcony, I listen as you talk trash about the punk scene.
You know Lydia Lunch hates punk I say between drags,
you say, who’s she?
Well I started listening
to an interview where she says
I have nothing to do with punk, I never did, I thought it was boring and ridiculous
And that her art was
psychosis brought to the stage
and that it has the
ability to both batter you and baby you, or at least address the baby in you that has been battered
She sounds pretty tough you say as you stub your cigarette into the ashtray. Yeah I thought she was too, I’ve been going through the Women in Rock Oral History Project and finding these women who I had no idea about, who have been in bands and toured the world.
The dream, you say,
but I’ve been finding some of them a little underwhelming. One woman said her husband’s job was more important than her music career and she’s going to sing into diapers from now on,
Damn, you say as you roll another cigarette,
I mean it’s fine, she probably loves her family and wants to raise kids but I don’t think I would ever give it up if I got that far.
•
Last year Fender posted findings that half of new guitarists were women. I remember being young, in a guitar shop and a man referred to the guitar as a phallic instrument. I’d never thought about it like that, or that you could see how the guitar’s body mimics the waist and curves of a woman (6) when it’s not a living thing.
Fender also found that 42% of new buyers, both men and women started learning guitar because it felt like part of their identity. After playing for more than half of my life, I felt I knew what that felt like (7).
•
After the gig people say things like
“great show” and (8)
“you killed it” (9)
I want them to say
“the other bands sounded better” (10)
I guess it didn't feel great because we’d rehearsed once in the past month, I’d commuted over an hour to get there and our drummer was high on speed. He did offer me some afterwards as I was nursing a pint of beer I’d got free from the rider.
I declined politely saying, I really just want to go to bed. And I don't think there’s a possibility of that happening if I have some
Fair enough and it will just make you really horny too, he says laughing into his beer.
Cool, I say, though I don't think it is very cool.
•
As I started listening through the Women of Rock Oral History Project, I started making connections. Tracy Bonham’s single ‘Mother, Mother’ I remember from The Veronicas first album in which they covered the song from 1996. Back when I was just shy of 2-years-old. It made me think of how important it was that these artist’s revive history and dig up gems for a younger audience.
Donita Sparks of L7 says that with the arrival of the internet (after most of their success) the archive of everything her band ever did was lost. She also says that,
Women artists who were drawn to rock n roll knew that what they were doing was inherently feminist.
And I start thinking why are women are so unenthused about rock music. And as a female rock musician, I wonder if I’m only going to gain popularity by catering to the male gaze.
Often when I tell people I’m writing a memoir about females in the music industry they say, women are popular! And I say, but not in the genre of rock. They are killing it in the pop scene, the punk scene, indie, and folk but what about rock? Do they not like the energy? The aggression? Could it be that they don’t want to be a part of a male dominated scene? That they don’t want to be seen or associated as one-of-the-boys, that toxic masculinity, the sweaty shreddy guitar bro types?
•
I didn’t end up returning to the Girls Rock! Camp that summer. I made excuses like it was too hot and I was feeling dizzy. And actually those things were true but I knew deeper down it was the anxiety that kept me back. Of not knowing if I could live up to what I would’ve wanted growing up, learning guitar.
Footnotes:
(1) My boyfriend, a musician
(2) I’ll play it for you sometime.
(3) I remember that was the song I was most impressed with at the time I took up lessons, you can play it on one string, it's very satisfying
(4) I sung it for a singing competition at school that I rigged with my best friend at the time. We won each heat and battled it out on the basketball field at recess
(5) A quote from Laura Marling I found
(6) An article I found by Helen Brown in which she compares the guitar to a woman
(7) Why am I writing this? I should be practising
(8) The sound guy who insisted I take his card and proceeded to add me on Facebook
(9) The guitarist of the other band who was noticeably sweaty before he even played, it was summer
(10) My inner critic that always wants to put me down and be the best
Executive Producers
Daniel Henson
Sue White
