The.
Whole.
Thing.
For 4 shows and 7 albums, the privilege was mine.Burnside is the main strip bisecting Portland into South and North, and runs the length of the city. It's lined with cheap Indian and Mexican restaurants, strip joints (of which Portland has more per capita than anywhere in the U.S.), the famous union bookstore Powell's City of Books, and, of course, the Crystal Ballroom, which sits on Burnside's left flank just above I-5, where the city erected tall iron fencing to keep jumpers from ending it on the freeway. It is representative of an ethos that pervades the entire Pacific Northwest: a social democracy (in theory if not practice), diverse in class and interests, with an emphasis on localized economy and deliberate community.
Sleater-Kinney embodied that mindset, in theory and in practice. They wore clothes made by Portland designers (Holly Stalder, Seaplane, where the photos for One Beat were shot). They attended local shows in clubs and in converted art-warehouses. They volunteer-instructed at the Rock & Roll Camp for Girls, a Portland day-camp dedicated to teaching young girls instruments and self-esteem. They eschewed the pedestal and fetishization that's written in the rock star script, which made them unique beyond their extraordinary talents-- they seemed accessible, in the tradition of indie rockers, yet they retained the notoriety and respect of the 1970s style rock and rollers, before voracious commercialism mandated image-fame and reality-show photogenicity. That's why this show felt like a real ending, not a Jay-Z retirement: Like the economy of notes in many of their songs, they were never ones for pomp. Goodbye felt like goodbye.
[...]
The perspective counted: the openness of new motherhood, of actual creation, tore open their music and exposed their hearts; the songs "One Beat" and "Oh" thumped with the sound of invention, charged and organic like the kinetic energy of lightning. At the same time, "Faraway" and "Combat Rock" illustrated the conundrum of giving life just as the ash of death has permeated the world: profound rage, and a mother's instinct to protect her child from threat. It contains some of most hopeful and important rock songs ever written on war, 9/11 and the fragility of life, and it ends with a prayer: "Sympathy", humanity in the blues, the equalizing forces of humility and need.
***
Sleater-Kinney's best video, the Miranda July-directed "Get Up," is a black-and-white motif of women walking through a field, the evergreens of Oregon piercing the sky behind them. They are holding hands; as they walk through the grass, they pick Weiss, Tucker and Brownstein off the ground, as their warm notes and high-hat hits seem to cloak the specks of light in the lens. Shots of meteors flash in and out. The images are an evocative metaphor for Sleater-Kinney's career: leg-ups for downtrodden women; hope, promise, and humor through ingenuity and virtuosity; a coalition of ideas without bounds. The video ends with a hot pink cartoon supernova. Brownstein looks up in awe. Their impact fans out.
Though onstage banter was rare that last day at the Crystal Ballroom, Carrie Brownstein punctuated their final show by telling the audience, "It's such a privilege to play for you tonight." Time will tell the impact and longevity, but for over a decade, the privilege was ours.
I make one promise, my children, and especially my daughter will know who Sleater-Kinney was. The 3 passionate and brilliant women of Sleater-Kinney provide a source of courage, inspiration, empowerment, esteem and hope in a world that tends to objectify, label, demean, and brutalize women.
Thank you, one last time, Sleater-Kinney. I will miss you. You will always be in heavy rotation on my iPod.
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