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New Bloods

Ok, a band that I’m obsessed with at the moment, but am too broke to buy the 7“s right now, and therefore have heard the same myspace songs over and over is…The New Bloods www.myspace.com/the newbloods...who are (in my mind anyway) a kind of Raincoats-esque band, comprised of mostly women of colour (a term which I hate – being “one” myself, but unfortunately have not come up with a universally understood term that isn’t that… yet).

Anyway, part of what drew my interest in the first place is the fact that it’s an indie/riotgrrrl/postpunkesque band featuring non-white women, and I’m not ashamed to say it! Our entire lives revolve around white women singing about “our “ experiences, and while I totally love S-K, Raincoats, Bikini Kill, Malaria!, Frumpies, Hole…and whoever else, when there is a woman or women who are NOT white in a band playing that kind of music, I will ALWAYS be more interested, even if they’re not singing about that particular experience, but just for the sake of seeing yourself (even at the superficial level of skin colour) represented. I think that’s important and underrated. I don’t think “women” have the same, universal experiences, or “queer women” or “women of colour” for that matter, but I think if you ARE a “woman of colour” (urgh) it actually makes a difference seeing a non-white woman onstage playing punk etc, cos you can more easily imagine yourself in her place, than you can, say, watching Corin Tucker or Kaia Wilson etc (and this is just an assumption on my part based on my uninformed superficial judgement of their skin colour that they are not non-white – very very problematic in itself, but maybe we’ll talk about that later).

Anyway, I have totally diverged on a tangent which doesn’t actually necessarily have a whole lot to do with my loving the New Bloods…but now I’ve kinda run out of steam, so you should probably just check out their myspace and see for yourself. I feel excited by this band, they are reinventing music many of us have liked for years, but which was mainly done by now-defunct bands, and have made that music current and relevant for today. I WISH I could see them play…and I almost know for certain, given that we live at the “bottom of the world” that I won’t….in that case I’ll have to scrape up some pennies and buy all their releases!

If you know of other punk/riot grrrl bands featuring “women of colour” (fuck, can we PLEASE come up with a different term? It makes me think of colouring in books, where if you’re a little brown girl you might pick up the brown felt pen and colour Barbie in a different colour to the recommended “flesh tone” or whatever), anyway, if you know of more bands, email or comment here and tell us!!! We are highly interested!

X-Ray Spex – Identity

Posted Jan 5, 09:43 PM | By Melissa |
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