2003-10-03

Oh, its festival time in Newcastle again! This year I have nothing to do with it, except speaking on one panel and having my band play a magazine launch. That is cool...I am gonna actually get to hang out with people this year: Mona, Wilton, Alex, Al...

Last night, Bitchcraft played at the Cambridge, for Conations CD launch (except they had no CDs...yet). It was new bassplayer, Gilli's first show. Earlier in the week we (or was it just me?) decided on the theme of blood, cunts and stuff. There were pads stuck on everything: my amp, the microphones, drum kit and to Simone. Onstage, cocky as fuck as usual, we just launched into being a raw selves. I introduced the theme and mentioned I was the only band member on the rag at the time. All seemed to be going well until...

There was a young lass, who we didn't recognise (Nardia picked her as being from Melbourne...) fruggin' hard to the band before us. But when I spoke about my bleeding and pads she just yelled out how disgusting we were. I got quite a fright, and couldn't really react (I hope no one in the crowd noticed how scared I looked). Simi did, of course, and said "Don't you have rags?" to which our antgonist replied "Yeh, but I don't advertise it!!", to which Nardia replied "Yeh, but you're not in Bitchcraft" and I piped in "Yeh, you're not as up yourself as we are...."

I was pretty shocked to have elicited this reaction, erspecially from a young girl who, by all appearances (wearing semi-raver type clothes) would be an opne minded, arty, fun type. I was talking to someone about it later in the night, and they postulated that maybe she had feminist issues. But that is really, really strange to me, as I though feminism was abut bringing that kind of stuff out from hushed tones and taboo of blood. I mean, that had been MY intention, to demystify that we bleed and make people look at pads. Fuck, half of us wear them! I will be thinking about this stuff for a few days, as it really did shock me, the reaction we got. I liked another boy's reaction, which was to stubb his cigarette out n a pad. Niiiice...Then, when the show was complete, the sound guy had to pack down the mics and stuff, I saw hime either flicking or very carefully (like with just thumb and pointer finger) picking the pads of the gear, like they were gonna infect him. Simi threw one into the crowd, lord love her....

But hey, the band played on. We were pretty good, J-lo had sore arms from working for 12 hours blow drying and so on in her hairdressing gig, so we missed one song. Gilli played pretty well, I saw her rockin' out a little bit, but only a little, as she earnestly concentrated on her bass licks. Sold a few tshirts and stuff...went home...stayed in awe of a girl yelling that I was disgusting for talking about periods...