I used a Michelle Shocked lyric for the last post. I wanted to listen to a bit of her music, and I searched YouTube Music (not YouTube, it’s Google’s name for their music service) as well as Spotify. None of her albums are on either platform, though you can stream some albums on her website.
She got herself in a bunch of trouble ten-ish years ago for some homophobic comments. After that, she seemed to disappear.
Michelle is the kind of artist who could probably make a living on touring and royalties, even if it’s just the pennies artists get on streaming services, but I see no evidence that she’s doing either. Instead, she’s selling her CDs on her website for $250 each. I couldn’t find much from her on YouTube other than one performance fronted by a preacher.
I don’t have a bigger point here, other than a mix of religious fanaticism and/or mental illness is pretty powerful.
Open thread.
cintibud
As I recall, she took the last name of Shocked! since she underwent ECG treatment as a teen or young adult. I had the impression it was against her will. So there is a mental illness history there.
Her first album has a picture of her being dragged off screaming by a SF police officer at what looked to be a protest. That and some of the songs gives the impression that she was quite a leftist those days
Nicole
Speaking of someone who managed to find her way through both (and some pretty bad abuse on top of it all), the entry for today’s The Number Ones’ (Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” is a great read: https://www.stereogum.com/2160540/the-number-ones-sinead-oconnors-nothing-compares-2-u/columns/the-number-ones
(I don’t mean to imply O’Connor was ever a religious fanatic, just that the particular Irish Catholic environment she was raised in was not what I’d call healthy)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Some might say synonymous
hells littlest angel
Uh, she makes it up in low volume?
Gin & Tonic
Somebody needs to buy the Murdoch spawn, or whoever runs the NY Post, an atlas.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t even get what they are trying to say.
Yutsano
Speaking of prodigal daughters…the latest Minna update!
AM in NC
@cintibud: I remembered reading that she said she was so completely shocked by the Reagan years she changed her name. I hadn’t heard anything about her homophobia or religiosity or mental illness, but then I hadn’t heard anything about her in many, many years before this post. Short Sharp Shocked was a hell of an album.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nicole: I know it’s brilliant. That voice of hers. A Prince song. A stripped down arrangement. But it’s my least favorite song on that album. My inner hipster reacting to its popularity? “You Cause As Much Trouble…” is the one I truly love.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Yippee!
Mary G
@Yutsano: Oh, what wonderful news! Thank you for posting it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: As I said on Twitter. There is no such thing as Canada; it was made up by cartographers just like Belgium and Lesotho.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Apparently you can’t immigrate to America from Canada since NAFTA made us all Ameros.
MattF
I’m conflicted. I despise Alex Jones, but this sweet parody of his ranting is pretty funny.
dr. bloor
@Baud:
AOC’s message is null and void because her dress came from the People’s Republic of Canada would be my guess.
cintibud
@AM in NC:
The overt homophobia seems to be more recent. I heard an interview on World Cafe maybe 15+ years ago in which she mentioned that she was not religious but somehow was invited into a Christian church were she felt very welcome and she became a participant (if not a member). Maybe that’s what caused the change?
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic:
Love this buried deep in the replies:
Benw
@Omnes Omnibus: North Dakota isn’t real. They just put a box on the map and were like, “fuck it, we’ll check back later if there’s anything there.”
rm
Michelle Shocked’s music isn’t absent from the web because of blacklisting, it’s because she fought to remove it. It seems like paranoid thinking to me, but she has a point that artists are screwed by the way the music is distributed. Her first experience with the business was “The Campfire Tapes,” where she played demos at a music festival campground for a producer (a truck driving by interrupts one of the songs), and he released the demos as an album without her permission. And streaming is a ripoff. The paranoia comes in when the response to that is to utterly remove oneself from the market.
The homophobia is also disappointing from someone who presented as very butch and talked a bit about being gay when she first got big. Even though it’s obviously the result of lifelong toxic religious abuse, she has kept it up. And one incident on stage is all it takes to turn off many listeners for good, no matter what mental health issues may explain it.
different-church-lady
@Benw:
And as it turns out, nope.
Omnes Omnibus
@Benw: I’ve been to Fargo a couple of times. You are thinking of Nebraska.
MattF
@Benw: Years ago my mother told me she was listening to an AM radio call-in show (in NYC) where the host was maintaining that there was no such place as South Dakota— and he’d managed to persuade some of his callers. It was funny until momma realized that one of the people he was arguing with was her sister (my aunt) Ann.
Sure Lurkalot
@Yutsano: wonderful news about Miracle Minna and I hope you’ve been well too.
Jane2
@Yutsano: Great news!
Steve in the ATL
@hells littlest angel: a hell of a deal compared to a Wu-Tang album!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: So is an Aston Martin DB4 GT.
Hungry Joe
Michelle Shocked was raised in an ultra-religious family in (I believe) east Texas. She broke away, but apparently slipped back. I met her about 15 years ago when she performed (for free) at a protest organized by the progressive non-profit Ms. Joe was working for at the time. Michelle was warm, friendly, sincere, delightful. Not long after that I read that she’d started going to a church. She didn’t participate or sing there for a number of years … and then she really got into it. Her homophobic comments — it may have been just one incident — really shook me up.
jeffreyw
@Yutsano: Every so often Flickr sends me an email about activity around one of the photos I have in there, a locked account that can be accessed but I can’t add new photos. I got one today so I clicked on over and there in the comments to a 12 year old submission was a comment from Minna. She liked my cooking.
daize
@Nicole:
Thank you for introducing me to that site a bit back. This review was particularly moving.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
protesting Dems while Raygoon was in office – brilliant!
ChuckInAustin
Pretty sure I was born on the same day in the same hospital as Michelle Shocked.
Ken J.
Ack…. I used to adore Michelle Shocked’s early work, so I followed on Twitter the aftermath from that 2013 show at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and her subsequent self-immolation, for months. Complete with one-woman protests at clubs which had cancelled her tour, attempts to dox her Twitter critics, and rants about how “Big Gay” was out to get her.
Her fans, when this went down, were largely gay women and people who identified as gay-friendly, so she pretty much nuked her fan base. My rumor-ish understanding is that her campaign against the venues which had cancelled her led to a consensus that booking her wouldn’t be worth the trouble, again given that she alienated so many fans.
I saw Ms. Shocked at The Ark around 2003. At some point she commented something along the lines of “Bet you never saw so many lesbians at a gospel show” and the crowd cheered. In retrospect, the tension between where her career started and where she was going was already building.
I can’t listen to SHORT SHARP SHOCKED any more. Used to be one of my favorite albums. It wasn’t just the on stage comments; it was the vicious online behavior I saw from her in the aftermath.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve been to Fargo. The most amazing thing is flying from Minneapolis and realizing that you not only don’t see people or animals you don’t even see structures. For hundreds of miles.
Starfish
@jeffreyw: If I were to reply to your Twitter posts, it would all be “Why was I not invited to this meal?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: I’ve driven there. It’s even more so.
Kent
Weird. I had no idea of any of this. I think I have one of her CDs but I was never any sort of hard-core fan.
Yet one more in an endless list of examples of how religion is just a toxic stain on our world. Not just Christianity, religion.
Lyrebird
@Ken J.: Yes, I had heard about the vitriol. Such a strong swing from left to hard right, combined with all those attacks, sure sounded like mental health crisis to me. Which does not take away her responsibility. Just awful all around. “Graffiti Limbo” was my first lesson about police brutality, so it was hard for me to believe.
I had already started to back away from her work with Arkansas Traveler. Back then she showed a little more recognition of others’ feelings I guess. From a review:
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus:
Alas, Nebraska’s real. My middle sister is a
barracudalawyer there.Miss Bianca
@Ken J.: I seem to recall a big CO festival that I was at – might have been Telluride Bluegrass Festival – where she started in on some rant from the stage. I’ve kind of blanked out what happened after that, but needless to say the crowd wasn’t best pleased
ETA: Oh, The Ark! In Ann Arbor? So it was still going in 2003? That’s awesome. I have so many fond memories of that place, and how many of my musical heroes played there.
raven
Her version of the “l&n don’t stop here anymore” is jam but it’s nowhere to be found. Reminds me of Zevon, he was a fucking scumbag but his music is awesome.
rm
@Ken J.: I didn’t know those details. Definitely sounds like mental health crisis including paranoia, but also behavior that forces everyone to put up a hard boundary. When the onstage thing first happened, it seemed like she had recently fallen in with a church that made her feel like she had to condemn her fans and deny any hint of queerness in herself. Y’know, for God.
JCNZ
“Ah, New York City – imagine that.” That line sneaks up on me all the time. Keep on rockin’, girl.
rm
@raven: I’m glad I have CDs from 30 years ago I can rip from.
You can’t depend on online content to be there. I hate streaming music.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@raven: I wasn’t aware of that, how was he a scumbag?
raven
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Pick up “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” by his wife Crystal. He told her to tell the truth and she did.’
raven
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
J R in WV
We have quite a few Michelle Shocked albums on the big hard drive… had not heard about her turn-about from progressive demonstrator to — whatever she may be now. Have been listening to her for years now.
So Sad!
Won’t wipe the drive, but also won’t be reading those files any more.
So Sad!
Another Scott
@J R in WV: Repost:
https://socialjusticeleaguenet.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things/
Cheers,
Scott.
captnkurt
@Miss Bianca: The Ark’s still going strong! Upcoming shows are here
Brachiator
@raven:
He wrote some great songs, too.
The list of great artists who were also good people is extremely short.
Ken J.
@Miss Bianca: The Ark, the folk and acoustic venue in Ann Arbor, is still going in 2021. https://theark.org/about/history
I’ll guess that you knew the old house on Hill St., where most of the audience sat on the floor. The house was vacated in 1984; since 1996 The Ark is located in the second floor of a remodeled department store on Main St. It’s a much more polished, or corporate, atmosphere, with big-business donors and sky-high prices for the biggest names Still a steady supply of shows around $20 though.
There’s been a generational shift in the artists booked at The Ark, and as a card-carrying Old, I have to complain that many of the new-era folk performers are not for me. But when Covid fears recede, I hope to get back to seeing a show every month or so.
The Ark has been programming streaming concerts since the pandemic started, but I haven’t been able to get into online concerts at all. The venue is trying to restart live shows now.
cleek
i just love love love her Texas Campfire Sessions album. it was one of those records i found at exactly the right place and time, and it really grabbed me.
if she’d like to buy it back, for $200, i’d be happy to let her. i ripped the CD a long time ago.
Original Pronunciation
Michelle Shocked has been a self-centered wackaloon jerk for a long time.
My wife and I went to see her at the Chautauqua auditorium in Boulder nearly 25 years ago. We expected to hear her and her band, since that was how it was billed. Nope, just her, alone on a chair.
Someone shouted “Where’s your band?” She said something like they had decided to do other things. We were thinking WTF?
Then it got weird. She played maybe 2 songs, but mostly she just sat there and talked about all her personal problems. Wow. After something like 45 minutes of this bizarre stream of TMI we finally got up and left. Quite a bit of her audience had already left.
We were so broke in those years. She had used us (and the rest of her fans) for her own personal therapy session. The cost of the tickets was salt in the wound.
Original Pronunciation
@rm:
QFT
Hob
@Original Pronunciation: I have almost the opposite story. About 20 years ago, I saw her do a show in NYC which I had thought would be more of a solo thing, but she showed up with a large band and had also invited a lot of gospel singers from the church that she had just started going to (this was before she got so hardcore about that – she only said something “I just went to visit and found myself going up to the altar, not sure what to say about that, hope you’ll bear with me”). It was a great show, the crowd was into it and they did about 5 encores – one of the more generous live shows I’ve ever seen. I always did get a sense that she was pretty troubled, so I’m more sad than surprised now, but it’s usually oversimplifying to sum up a person as just “self-centered”, etc. – it’s hard to know what’s going on with someone, and she sure wasn’t self-centered on this other occasion.