love music, hate sexism

I like bands; proper bands. The actual Misfits rather than them three off X-Factor. But I also like being a girl.

I remember quite vividly the first time it occurred to me that these two things could be incompatible. I was fourteen, we'd just got the internet, and a whole new world of fandom was opening before me. And then there it was; a scan of Kerrang magazine, Davey Havok and Dexter Holland sharing the cover with the headline, "ROCK IN THE DOCK: is rock music sexist?" I never did track down the article, but I even neverer forgot its title.

Those words have come back to me a lot over the years, most times I've read about Courtney Love or Brody Dalle, and every time I've flicked past yet another male-targeted advert in a music magazine. (Yes, I sometimes read the NME; no, that does not mean I aspire to style my manly hair into so improbable a quiff that women will dance on tables in its honour thus allowing me to look up their skirts, Shockwaves haircare). But this week really took the balls-up biscuit. Shipped out to Marylebone because Euston thought it might perhaps possibly be on fire and with a four-hour train journey ahead of me, I trudged into WHSmiths for something to read. Oh look, a new Q! But oh wait, it's shrink-wrapped to FHM.

Er, what the fuck? I stared at it for a moment, processed the fact that one of my favourite magazines had just turned to shit before my very eyes, and walked out of the shop.

I don't care how much it comes down to publishers' alliances, I don't care what snivelling little marketing strategy is behind it, I don't care if some girl whose face has started popping up in the London Lite has taken her "hippy chic" clothes off, but I am fucking livid that a magazine I really respected precisely because it was so much more interesting, well-written, and generally grown-up than its peers has done that for which every successful band risks crucifixion in the music media; sold out.

Well, I'm not buying it. I'm not sure what I'll buy instead (the NME's too flimsy, no-one at Artrocker can spell... maybe Clash will fill the gap) but Q can stick it; I'm sure FHM can tell them where.

what

If the pen is mightier than the sword, I well deserved my teenage moniker of Xena (Warrior Princess™) cooked up by my best friend for reasons best forgotten. I have Written with a capital "w" ever since I could write with a small one; no primary school book corner was safe from my hand-made offerings, the creativity of my writing second only to the creativity of my spelling. I have always known I have something to say, if not always what. Daisy Steiner 2.0, I don't quite live in Tuffnel Park or own a typewriter, but I know I'm a good writer - all I need is a place to prove it. (I'd quite like a Brian renting downstairs as well, but I digress).

Awkwardly enough, I have never seriously wanted to be a journalist in any more than an I-could-do-better-than-that sort of way. My pubescent love affair with J-17 ended shortly after they featured an article (I use the term loosely) by a young Peaches Geldof about wearing yellow wellies to school on a no-uniform day, and Orla Guerin generally frightened me more than the tragedy she invariably reported. The older I got, the less I liked about the media, especially as a young woman; I laughed at The Devil Wears Prada, but only because it confirmed what I already knew - that I would never want to work anywhere like that anyway.

Anyone who knows about bands and can write (or thinks they do and can, at any rate) probably considers music journalism. Anyone who reads the NME and frequents any "scene" long enough probably also decides it might not be all they had who's-got-the-cracked it up to be; I certainly did. I like listening to music and I like writing about some of it (especially when it means free gig tickets) but I don't like the idea of pretending my opinon is the be-all and end-all just because I've got the right kind of bona fide fringe. I like being able to get drunk and not having to worry about remembering how to write it up. I like being able to giggle about it all instead of trying to be it. I like being able to write, however unprofessionally or languishingly, about everything else that matters to me as well.

To whit; life. Friendship, feminism, family, fear, fate, fashion... other things that don't start with the letter "f". This will not be a particularly political blog, however much the personal always is, but it will be about things I can muster the passion to write well about. I think, therefore I write; I write, therefore I think; I write to find out what I think, to quote Joan Didion. I won't pretend it wouldn't be nice to find out what other people think of my writing too - but nor will I pretend to care if no-one ever reads it.