S12 E3: Lizzie No

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I met up with my old friend John Robb over the UK May bank holiday weekend. He was in London talking about his birthday, sorry life and career (!).

For those who don’t know John, he formed The Membranes in the early 80’s and he’s an author whose writing about music and the future I admire hugely – and his talk was called “Do You Believe In The Power of Rock N Roll?”.

So, do I? 

Well, in a lot of ways, yes. 

Music, art, poetry and dance remain the number one threats to the establishment and the elite. 

But sadly, in my opinion, the music establishment is just as big a threat to music and artists. 

I’m not talking about the entirely fucked capitalist model – although no, fuck that, actually I am when I heard that UMG are proposing to make a performance related payout to their CEO Lucian Grainge of £119million – capitalism is at the very core of everything that is evil in the world – but I’m also talking more overtly about some of the less talked about things like genres (and yes, I know, I myself talk about genre a lot). 

Putting a band in a genre has been happening forever and we could talk about it being a lazy way for the industry to market music – which it is – but I think there are much more malignant effects of using genre as a way to compartmentalise playlists and market big label artists. 

With categorisation comes all sorts of social constructs – and sometimes the subtle ones are the most harmful - that are essentially used as an anti-freedom power tool to keep people in their lanes – I’m thinking ways to dress, subjects to speak about, instruments to play, and the worst of all….who they deem allowable to actually play the music. 

For example, whatever you think musically of Beyonce’s album Cowboy Carter, it seems clear to me that the gatekeeping that, back in the day, excluded black musicians from a ‘genre’ that they created ,still exists – and there ain’t anything subtle about that, it’s rooted in racism. 

I don’t remember Kid Rock for being subjected to any such gatekeeping when he went “country”.


Lizzie No has written, sung, played on and produced three world class records, her latest being Halfsies which fucks off those genres and is just a fabulous piece of work.

She's also an activist - the subjects above are close to her heart -  and fabulous human.

https://www.iwannajumplikedeedee.com


I Wanna Jump Like Dee Dee is the music podcast that does music interviews differently.

Giles Sibbald talks to musicians, DJ’s and producers about how they use an experimental mindset in every part of their lives.

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