Women who rock are extinct, as evidenced by the zero nominations for female rockers this year at the Grammys and the all-male (and rather geriatric) headliners at the 12-12-12 Sandy Relief concert last December (Bonnie Raitt, Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde must have been home knitting grandbaby booties). Instead, we have pop girlies who sing in delicate, auto-tuned daisy voices about how giving out their cell numbers and making boys love them are tenets of the new femme power—and this is where Courtney Love explodes into lunatic fury and sprays their pink princess pushups with regurgitated whiskey and disease. Love has always been so much more than the wife of a revered dead guy, and the fact that she’s been praised as a genius from Rolling Stone to Time and still has to prove herself only means she was right all along about misogyny, conformity, elitism and bodyshaming. She taught young women of the '90s to say FUCK YOU to it all and that being scary, not sexy, was the power—and it’s abundantly clear we need her now, more than ever.
Sat., July 27, 8 p.m., 2013
