strange little girls vs. exile in guyville

lupidog · 08-15-2001, 03:59 PM

someone posted a thread called something to the effect of "does tori know this has been done?" a while ago... i tried to dig it up but got lost in the endless miasma of posts.... . but i remember what i thought when i read it, so I wanted to comment, because Tori is my favorite artist and I highly respect and enjoy Liz Phair as well. It was pointed out that Liz Phair's first album, Exile in Guyville is a song by song response to the Rolling Stones' album Exile on Mainstreet, and was supposed to give the female perspective. This was the FIRST thing I thought of when I heard the concept for Strange Little Girls, but I soon realized they are fairly different projects, both with strengths and weaknesses.

Basically, Liz limited herself by using the structure of one album from one band... not exactly a wide survey of male feelings towards women or even other issues. Just one take. However, she gave herself so much leeway by writing original material in response to this one album.

On the other hand, Tori has given herself limitations by restricting the project to covers.... yet in a way it is LESS limited because she picked a BROAD spectrum of songs, (stylistically and subject matter wise) which represent a male point of view (not necessarily negative OR positive, there is a mix) on a variety of issues, including women.

Oh well, I know this isn't very important, but I wasn't signed up at the time of the original thread, and my response has stayed with me since then... So i just wanted to toss in this bit of spare change.

^_^
germaine

blackest ocean · 08-15-2001, 04:09 PM

hm. i didnt know that about exile in guyville. it's kinda interesting. but what i do know is that fuck and run. is the best.

Antigone · 08-15-2001, 04:14 PM

Liz wrote many of the songs that appeared on Exile before she came up with the concept - they were Girlysound demos first. I think it was almost a coincidence, and that she didn't write each song as a deliberate response, but when she laid it all out she saw that the songs fit like that.

anyway, I see no similarity between Exile and SLG because one is covers and one is not.

Antigone

DoughnutEater · 08-15-2001, 04:41 PM

I'm a big Liz Phair fan. Exile in Guyville is one of my Top Ten favorites.

When news of SLG came out, EIG did not cross my mind. Liz has said that it wasn't meant to be an outright response to every track on that record . She's said that it was like an outline, because she didn't know how to set up an album. Something like that. And like Antigone said, a good number of those songs were included on Girlysounds. I really think all the hype about EIG's concept is overblown. Its just a really good album.

Just my opinion...
Allison

purplemystic · 08-15-2001, 04:45 PM

As a longtime Liz fan, I have to weigh in with this . . .

Most of the songs on EIG were available on the Girlysounds apes first. The lyrics were changed around somewhat on a lot of the songs. In fact, the Girlysounds version on Stratford-On-Guy has a very crucial difference than the one on th album - the extra verse on the demo basically make it clear that the song is told from the POV of somone hijacking a plane, not just a mere passenger.

To come up with the structure of EIG, Liz basically handpicked an album she hadn't heard of before and chose which of her songs which would be "responses" to the songs on her album. This is not to say that Liz didn't write a lot of those songs in response to cerain situations she was in and the current mindset of the indie scene sh was a part of, responding to th mal POV in that way, cuz she did. But she did not sit down and say "this is what I am going to do to prove so-and-so". She was basically just trying to come up with a structure for her album.

There also is amjor dfference in that Liz wrote te sngs n EIG and Tori did not for SLG. Liz was writing things that were quite shocking and brilliant at thetime isntead of just covering other people's songs in an interesting way.