Flower Power: Liz Phair Fans Take Over Chop Suey - Tonight!
When Liz Phair released Exile in Guyville back in 1993, music was, well, pretty much where it is now: A boys' playground of aggressive, booze- and drug-addled hyper-aggressive music, a scene that women fit into either by imitating the boys or by settling for the marginal spaces reserved for women, whether that was soul-searching singer-songwriter strumming an acoustic guitar, or tramped-out pop vixen delivering sugary three-minute radio singles. Into this toxic mix of misogyny, Liz Phair dumped an epic, brilliant 18-song LP that, even it hasn't changed the world, stands the test of time as having expanded the language in which a woman could communicate.
Musically, Phair dodged both the Riot Grrl sound, which aimed for the same flat-out aggressiveness as hardcore punk, and the over-wrought singer-songwriter track, settling in the middle for a sound reminiscent of other indie rockers, like Pavement or Galaxie 500, who went lo-fi and sloppy. Her guitar-work will never inspire Zeppelin-like attention, but for all that it's distinctive and relatively hard to mimic. Lyrically, she rejected the feminist rage or lovelorn yearning and managed to shock by doing nothing more than be frank, sexually and emotionally.
Exile in Guyville remains one of our proverbial "10 records to take to a desert island," and we were stoked to learn that it's been reissued (why did it ever go out of print?) in something less than a deluxe edition (unless you count the DVD). But even cooler, tonight, Three Imaginary Girls presents an exclusive tribute: local bands, including perennial fave Visqueen, will perform the album in its entirety, song by song, in a show at Chop Suey hosted by David Schmader.
Exile in {Imaginary} Guyville // Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison // $8 // 8 p.m., 21+
