Introducing Torch Macabre

I was born and bred in theatre; I was in classes for as long as I can remember. But I was rather blasé about it, I think I desperately wanted people to relate to me as opposed to a character I was playing. I have always had a deep need to feel understood.

It was rather late in my life relative to others that I started in with music. I was working at the Jazz Festival at the time and another woman at work was interested in starting a Riot Grrl band, so we did.

I remember the first gig looking out at the audience and being totally freaked to see most of the Jazz Festival employees there. These people worked with real musicians, we did 3-cord rock and swore, ranted and raved. Funnily enough it went over pretty well.

That summer ‘Kit McClure and the Big Band’ played at the festival. I remember standing out in the audience just gaping and I breathed out the words…

“I wanna be a Torch Singer when I grow up.”

To sing like that in front of a big band, wow. It seemed to me to be the pinnacle of success. Also a Torch Singer is usually an older, classy woman who has a lifetime of experience to express. She is attractive, confident in her skin and moves like silk. Something that only maturity can express. I keep waiting to grow up.

I was always a creepy little kid, the one your mother told you to avoid as a child. I was interested in horror stories, vampires and sinister magic’s. As I got older the morbidity was still there, hidden a little better but still a note of discordance in my personality nonetheless.

Today I say I’m a pessimist dying to be proved wrong. I really could beg you to prove me wrong. The sadness and pain always seem predictable, I wish for monsters to be true at least it would be more interesting that what people do to themselves and others.

So I grow up wailing, lamenting and sometimes joyfully singing with just a hint of the macabre.

When I grow up I wanna be a creepy jazz singer.

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Rock and Roll Bitch

Even to this day I am surprised at the cruelty of some people. They will use anything, race, religion, ones sexuality or sex to take another human being down. I can’t really say if it’s worse in the music industry because my strong reaction may be based on the belief that I think these people should somehow know better.

Among musicians and various online musical groups I have heard the word ‘BITCH’ used. It is often the worst insult you can say to a man. Removing the jail element and the obvious homophobia, bitch implies a person that makes a lot of noise but ultimately submissive.

A bitch has power using sexuality to gain favor; they are weaker because they are penetrated. What they say is irrelevant and noise, until they are made to submit again.

A man once went online and masqueraded as a female artist posting music. He confided in me that he was shocked and amazed by the behavior of his peers. He told me that even when there wasn’t a sexual overtone, they treated him differently. They would say things to him that they would never say to him as a man.

I never had the chance to thank him for that and I still don’t think he knows what he did for me, telling me about it.

I don’t really say or do much about it these days. If I did I would never have any time to sleep, eat, work and create music. So I stay silent or blankly nod and smile.

But…

This bitch is for from over, far from submissive, far from being beaten and being penetrated doesn’t make me weaker it makes me stronger. And this bitch remembers every slight and injury and waits for the right time to strike.

‘Never relent, never retreat, never apologize.

Get the job done and let them howl’.

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