Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Innocent people do not delay justice.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

This fight is for everything.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

In my day, never was longer.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

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An almost top 10,000 blog!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Prodigal Daughter

Prodigal Daughter

by | 55 Comments

This post is in: 

I used a Michelle Shocked lyric for the last post. I wanted to listen to a bit of her music, and I searched YouTube Music (not YouTube, it’s Google’s name for their music service) as well as Spotify. None of her albums are on either platform, though you can stream some albums on her website.

She got herself in a bunch of trouble ten-ish years ago for some homophobic comments. After that, she seemed to disappear.

Michelle is the kind of artist who could probably make a living on touring and royalties, even if it’s just the pennies artists get on streaming services, but I see no evidence that she’s doing either. Instead, she’s selling her CDs on her website for $250 each. I couldn’t find much from her on YouTube other than one performance fronted by a preacher.

I don’t have a bigger point here, other than a mix of religious fanaticism and/or mental illness is pretty powerful.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    cintibud

    As I recall, she took the last name of Shocked! since she underwent ECG treatment as a teen or young adult. I had the impression it was against her will. So there is a mental illness history there.

    Her first album has a picture of her being dragged off screaming by a SF police officer at what looked to be a protest. That and some of the songs gives the impression that she was quite a leftist those days

  2. 2.

    Nicole

    I don’t have a bigger point here, other than a mix of religious fanaticism and/or mental illness is pretty powerful

    Speaking of someone who managed to find her way through both (and some pretty bad abuse on top of it all), the entry for today’s The Number Ones’ (Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” is a great read: stereogum.com/2160540/the-number-ones-sinead-oconnors-nothing-compares-2-u/columns/the-number-ones

    (I don’t mean to imply O’Connor was ever a religious fanatic, just that the particular Irish Catholic environment she was raised in was not what I’d call healthy)

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    Speaking of prodigal daughters…the latest Minna update!

    I visited her at 2pm today and she is now able to walk down the hall and back, along with sitting in a chair most of the day. She is so much better, and most of the synesthesia is gone. But she still has trouble with fonts being a little jumbled. This makes it hard for her to use a cell phone as of right now.

    They are predicting that she’ll be discharged from the hospital either Thursday or Friday, directly to the home, with no rehab center work needed. She’ll have some rehab technician visit her at home though, for the first several days.

    This is all good news, and the doctors and nurses are still amazed by her recovery. They did not expect it to be so quick and so thorough. I don’t know what to say, except it is an amazing recovery! Way to go Minna!

    Also today, zoom called with Ian and Kathleen. I also ordered some medical equipment for her transition home, such as shower grab bars, shower chair, walker, and a commode.

  8. 8.

    AM in NC

    @cintibud:  I remembered reading that she said she was so completely shocked by the Reagan years she changed her name. I hadn’t heard anything about her homophobia or religiosity or mental illness, but then I hadn’t heard anything about her in many, many years before this post. Short Sharp Shocked was a hell of an album.

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Nicole: I know it’s brilliant.  That voice of hers.  A Prince song.  A stripped down arrangement.  But it’s my least favorite song on that album.  My inner hipster reacting to its popularity?  “You Cause As Much Trouble…” is the one I truly love.

  15. 15.

    dr. bloor

    @Baud: ​
     

    AOC’s message is null and void because her dress came from the People’s Republic of Canada would be my guess.

  16. 16.

    cintibud

    @AM in NC:

    I remembered reading that she said she was so completely shocked by the Reagan years she changed her name. I hadn’t heard anything about her homophobia or religiosity or mental illness, but then I hadn’t heard anything about her in many, many years before this post. Short Sharp Shocked was a hell of an album

    The overt homophobia seems to be more recent. I heard an interview on World Cafe maybe 15+ years ago in which she mentioned that she was not religious but somehow was invited into a Christian church were she felt very welcome and she became a participant (if not a member). Maybe that’s what caused the change?

  17. 17.

    different-church-lady

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
      Love this buried deep in the replies:

    Replying to
    @nypost
    I love that you don’t think your readers know that Canada is a different country.

    Replying to
    @CheapyD
    and
    @nypost
    They have major league baseball, fer Christ’s sake…jeez.

  19. 19.

    rm

    Michelle Shocked’s music isn’t absent from the web because of blacklisting, it’s because she fought to remove it. It seems like paranoid thinking to me, but she has a point that artists are screwed by the way the music is distributed. Her first experience with the business was “The Campfire Tapes,” where she played demos at a music festival campground for a producer (a truck driving by interrupts one of the songs), and he released the demos as an album without her permission. And streaming  is a ripoff. The paranoia comes in when the response to that is to utterly remove oneself from the market.

    The homophobia is also disappointing from someone who presented as very butch and talked a bit about being gay when she first got big. Even though it’s obviously the result of lifelong toxic religious abuse, she has kept it up. And one incident on stage is all it takes to turn off many listeners for good, no matter what mental health issues may explain it.

  22. 22.

    MattF

    @Benw: Years ago my mother told me she was listening to an AM radio call-in show (in NYC) where the host was maintaining that there was no such place as South Dakota— and he’d managed to persuade some of his callers. It was funny until momma realized that one of the people he was arguing with was her sister (my aunt) Ann.

  27. 27.

    Hungry Joe

    Michelle Shocked was raised in an ultra-religious family in (I believe) east Texas. She broke away, but apparently slipped back. I met her about 15 years ago when she performed (for free) at a protest organized by the progressive non-profit Ms. Joe was working for at the time. Michelle was warm, friendly, sincere, delightful. Not long after that I read that she’d started going to a church. She didn’t participate or sing there for a number of years … and then she really got into it. Her homophobic comments — it may have been just one incident — really shook me up.

  28. 28.

    jeffreyw

    @Yutsano: Every so often Flickr sends me an email about activity around one of the photos I have in there, a locked account that can be accessed but I can’t add new photos.  I got one today so I clicked on over and there in the comments to a 12 year old submission was a comment from Minna.  She liked my cooking.

  30. 30.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

     A photograph of Shocked being detained during a protest that appears on the cover of her 1988 album Short Sharp Shocked was taken by Chris Hardy of the San Francisco Examiner at a protest in San Francisco during the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

    protesting Dems while Raygoon was in office – brilliant!

  32. 32.

    Ken J.

    Ack…. I used to adore Michelle Shocked’s early work, so I followed on Twitter the aftermath from that 2013 show at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and her subsequent self-immolation, for months.    Complete with one-woman protests at clubs which had cancelled her tour, attempts to dox her Twitter critics, and rants about how “Big Gay” was out to get her.

    Her fans, when this went down, were largely gay women and people who identified as gay-friendly, so she pretty much nuked her fan base.   My rumor-ish understanding is that her campaign against the venues which had cancelled her led to a consensus that booking her wouldn’t be worth the trouble, again given that she alienated so many fans.

    I saw Ms. Shocked at The Ark around 2003.   At some point she commented something along the lines of “Bet you never saw so many lesbians at a gospel show” and the crowd cheered.   In retrospect, the tension between where her career started and where she was going was already building.

    I can’t listen to SHORT SHARP SHOCKED any more.   Used to be one of my favorite albums.   It wasn’t just the on stage comments; it was the vicious online behavior I saw from her in the aftermath.

  33. 33.

    Barbara

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​I’ve been to Fargo. The most amazing thing is flying from Minneapolis and realizing that you not only don’t see people or animals you don’t even see structures. For hundreds of miles.

  36. 36.

    Kent

    Weird.  I had no idea of any of this.  I think I have one of her CDs but I was never any sort of hard-core fan.

    Yet one more in an endless list of examples of how religion is just a toxic stain on our world.  Not just Christianity, religion.

  37. 37.

    Lyrebird

    @Ken J.: Yes, I had heard about the vitriol.  Such a strong swing from left to hard right, combined with all those attacks, sure sounded like mental health crisis to me.  Which does not take away her responsibility.  Just awful all around.  “Graffiti Limbo” was my first lesson about police brutality, so it was hard for me to believe.

    I had already started to back away from her work with Arkansas Traveler.  Back then she showed a little more recognition of others’ feelings I guess.  From a review:

    She is using the album (Arkansas Traveler) to argue that blacks and whites who performed in blackface in the 1800s, imitating what they believed to be authentic black culture, are the founders of today`s popular music. Musicians who do not acknowledge this tradition are exploiting it, she says….

    Shocked courted controversy by considering wearing blackface for the cover of ”Arkansas Traveler” and put herself in the position of being accused of the same thing she has accused others of: exploitation.

  39. 39.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ken J.: I seem to recall a big CO festival that I was at – might have been Telluride Bluegrass Festival – where she started in on some rant from the stage. I’ve kind of blanked out what happened after that, but needless to say the crowd wasn’t best pleased

    ETA: Oh, The Ark! In Ann Arbor? So it was still going in 2003? That’s awesome. I have so many fond memories of that place, and how many of my musical heroes played there.

  40. 40.

    raven

    Her version of the “l&n don’t stop here anymore” is jam but it’s nowhere to be found. Reminds me of Zevon, he was a fucking scumbag but his music is awesome.

  41. 41.

    rm

    @Ken J.:  I didn’t know those details. Definitely sounds like mental health crisis including paranoia, but also behavior that forces everyone to put up a hard boundary. When the onstage thing first happened, it seemed like she had recently fallen in with a church that made her feel like she had to condemn her fans and deny any hint of queerness in herself. Y’know, for God.

  42. 42.

    JCNZ

    “Ah, New York City – imagine that.” That line sneaks up on me all the time. Keep on rockin’, girl.

  43. 43.

    rm

    @raven: I’m glad I have CDs from 30 years ago I can rip from.

    You can’t depend on online content to be there. I hate streaming music.

  45. 45.

    raven

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Pick up “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” by his wife Crystal. He told her to tell the truth and she did.’

     

     

    “In one of the most unflinching examinations of the rock & roll life ever, Warren Zevon’s ex-wife Crystal paints a harrowing picture of a brilliant mind ravaged by alcohol ― using excerpts from the late singer-songwriter’s journals and interviews with friends including Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen.” — Rolling Stone, The Best of Rock Issue

  46. 46.

    raven

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    I had the idea that Zevon was this wise-ass sage with a heart of gold and a dark sense of humour. He was a narcissistic, alcoholic wife-beater who treated people like dirt when it suited him. How am I going to listen to his albums after this? Almost wish I hadn’t read it.

  47. 47.

    J R in WV

    We have quite a few Michelle Shocked albums on the big hard drive… had not heard about her turn-about from progressive demonstrator to — whatever she may be now. Have been listening to her for years now.

    So Sad!

    Won’t wipe the drive, but also won’t be reading those files any more.

    So Sad!

  50. 50.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    I had the idea that Zevon was this wise-ass sage with a heart of gold and a dark sense of humour. He was a narcissistic, alcoholic wife-beater who treated people like dirt when it suited him.

    He wrote some great songs, too.

    The list of great artists who were also good people is extremely short.

  51. 51.

    Ken J.

    @Miss Bianca: The Ark, the folk and acoustic venue in Ann Arbor, is still going in 2021.   theark.org/about/history

    I’ll guess that you knew the old house on Hill St., where most of the audience sat on the floor.   The house was vacated in 1984; since 1996 The Ark is located in the second floor of a remodeled department store on Main St.     It’s a much more polished, or corporate, atmosphere, with big-business donors and sky-high prices for the biggest names    Still a steady supply of shows around $20 though.

    There’s been a generational shift in the artists booked at The Ark, and as a card-carrying Old, I have to complain that many of the new-era folk performers are not for me.   But when Covid fears recede, I hope to get back to seeing a show every month or so.

    The Ark has been programming streaming concerts since the pandemic started, but I haven’t been able to get into online concerts at all.   The venue is trying to restart live shows now.

  52. 52.

    cleek

    i just love love love her Texas Campfire Sessions album. it was one of those records i found at exactly the right place and time, and it really grabbed me.

    if she’d like to buy it back, for $200, i’d be happy to let her. i ripped the CD a long time ago.

  53. 53.

    Original Pronunciation

    Michelle Shocked has been a self-centered wackaloon jerk for a long time.

    My wife and I went to see her at the Chautauqua auditorium in Boulder nearly 25 years ago. We expected to hear her and her band, since that was how it was billed. Nope, just her, alone on a chair.

    Someone shouted “Where’s your band?” She said something like they had decided to do other things. We were thinking WTF?

    Then it got weird. She played maybe 2 songs, but mostly she just sat there and talked about all her personal problems. Wow. After something like 45 minutes of this bizarre stream of TMI we finally got up and left. Quite a bit of her audience had already left.

    We were so broke in those years. She had used us (and the rest of her fans) for her own personal therapy session. The cost of the tickets was salt in the wound.

  54. 54.

    Original Pronunciation

    @rm:

    one incident on stage is all it takes to turn off many listeners for good, no matter what mental health issues may explain it.

    QFT

  55. 55.

    Hob

    @Original Pronunciation: I have almost the opposite story. About 20 years ago, I saw her do a show in NYC which I had thought would be more of a solo thing, but she showed up with a large band and had also invited a lot of gospel singers from the church that she had just started going to (this was before she got so hardcore about that – she only said something “I just went to visit and found myself going up to the altar, not sure what to say about that, hope you’ll bear with me”). It was a great show, the crowd was into it and they did about 5 encores – one of the more generous live shows I’ve ever seen. I always did get a sense that she was pretty troubled, so I’m more sad than surprised now, but it’s usually oversimplifying to sum up a person as just “self-centered”, etc. – it’s hard to know what’s going on with someone, and she sure wasn’t self-centered on this other occasion.

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