Swans: Classic or Dud?

For all the people like Wimmels who are incapable of walking away from a conversation to which they have so little to contribute: it is my sincere hope that your stubborn persistence here attests to a nagging kernel of doubt, buried far beneath the glib surface of your rhetoric & the arrogant confidence you place in a manifestly untrue & self-serving worldview; and that this seed may yet grow into a flourishing beanstalk of earth-shattering revelations & beckon you to undertake a journey of self-discovery that someday, in a few years, leads you to reread the things you wrote here & shake your head sadly in disbelief.

OK now we can lock the thread

you've gone from blind to cruel to petty

this reads like an Elvis Costello lyric

also why is this thread still a thing

Oh wimmelpaws

"a conversation to which they have so little to contribute"

Just a thought -- Wimmel's contributions are just as valid as anyone else's here. Whether you happen to agree with him or not is entirely incidental. It's a public forum, fer cyrin' out loud.

They can be valid and still worthless. And they are.

give em enough rope

Btw, how long are people willing to wait for this 'proof'? Gira said this wasn't a 'he said / she said' thing, so talking of it like that is already saying that he's lying.

I honestly, at the beginning, thought that Gira probably didn't do it, because otherwise why would he bother talking about 'proof'? That would backfire in a major way. But no.

there's a little bit of that worthlessness

Xp to alexNYC -- admittedly I may have been conflating Wimmels with dlp (of the thousand & one "this conversation is stupid & pointless!" posts); but given that Wimmels' last two posts itt were 1. Calling another poster idiotic (no elaboration), and 2. Attempting to discredit an alleged rape survivor's story based on typos, I would argue that those contributions not worth the keyboard they're typed on

A good keyboard can set you back

Responding to Alex in NYC's question about listening to Swans going forward. I can say this. I always thought Kim Fowley was an untrustworthy creep and some sort of half-formed musical genius, but after the Jackie story (which immediately did ring true and was backed by witnesses) I consigned him to the dustbin. He probably died the way he deserved to, and I can live without relistening to his albums. Done. It's safe to guess that the Beatles all committed statutory rape, but we'll never know so we'll keep on having lovely Beatles threads.

I could also live without listening to Swans again. It's not a band that's central to my life, though I do think that one of their live albums (Feel Good Now) is the best example in rock history of a live album improving on the original version. I'm not sure how important that is in the grand scheme of things. I've never felt that liking Gira had any particular relationship to liking his music given what it is, but at the same time Boyd Rice apparently has some decent albums that I'm not planning to buy. Ever.

To be brutally honest, I've thought for a long time that Gira's obsession with sex/power dynamics comes from the fact that something probably did happen to him in prison that he's been skirting around for decades.

As far as other stuff, Larkin's comments about why she threw the white guy under the bus aren't encouraging. She had eight years to make this known, and for at least four of them has been completely outside of his influence in terms of her career, but decides to go public right after being kicked out of a band that includes her ex-husband, and after accusing its leader of sexual impropriety also. Which story seems to have vanished from the internet entirely. I really don't know much except for two things:

1. Nobody other than Larkin and Gira knows what happened the night they got drunk and ended up in bed together.
2. The hand wringing, "Oh, everyone who disagrees with me is a sensless monster who didn't take the same women's studies classes that I did" is sad.

Sleeve asked for the thread to be locked. I agree. If more reasonably credible accusations against Gira come out, I'd say he's toast.

wrong on nearly every count, thread should have been locked after bernard's post, primarily to prevent you and wimmels from continuing to post horrific garbage, now you've fucked it up again.

We wouldn't want to listen to people who disagree with us. I think that might have been a Smiths' song.

fucking hell mods fucking lock this fucking thread

http://www.standbyformindcontrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/phantom-zone.jpg

Stevie I thought we both agreed life is better when one avoids these threads cmon we should be posting in a djp thread about German toilets like it's 2009 life was good then

We wouldn't want to listen to people who disagree with us

Since you apparently don't understand anything, I'll spell it out:

- No one here has a problem listening to people who "disagree" with us
- We have a problem listening to people you use a false 'even-handedness' as a figleaf for treating confessed abuse victims with sneering condescension and thinly-disguised contempt.

There really hasn't been any sneering condescension or thinly disguised contempt. I'm sorry you see it that way.

There have been a ton of "you just don't get it" or "For the love of god stop it" posts. I said above that this wasn't going to be a productive thread, and I still think that's the case, and I think everyone agrees at this point.

The only person who claims to have taken women's studies classes is wimmelpaws! But he also claims to have been raised in an all-women family.

I won't have any thinly disguised contempt on this thread.

You're right, it's mostly open contempt.

too easy, sure, but how could you not?

not even paws. just nubs.

wimmelnubs.

Public Castration is a Good Idea
Feel Good Now
Anonymous Bodies In An Empty Room

Just thought some titles might be worth listing. I was at a couple of those gigs too.

Maybe we should all just back off until there's a definitive develop in the story. Sorry for reviving.

developMENT.

I believe I will stay off the internet for a few days until this whole thing blows over

― Wimmels, Thursday, February 25, 2016 9:01 PM (1 week ago)

I would sooner stay out of it entirely than align myself with an idiotic lynch mob of starstruck dudes blaming the victim. If it happened, it's fucked up and MG should suffer the consequences. But what if it didn't?

― Wimmels, Friday, February 26, 2016 8:14 AM (6 days ago)

I too am withdrawing from this conversation (here and elsewhere), and hope it gets resolved, one way or another.

― Wimmels, Friday, February 26, 2016 8:33 AM (6 days)

i think YOUR opinions are invalid bc you are clearly a big fat LIAR!

do consider myself a feminist and an advocate and want to better understand why the rules don't apply here.
― Wimmels, Friday, February 26, 2016 9:29 AM (6 days ago)

many ppl tried explaining why, but you refused to engage in any real discussion about rape culture

I grew up with sisters and a strong mother, took women's studies courses in college, worked in venues that sponsored women's self defense classes, and generally consider myself a strong supporter of women's rights.

then you have even less of an excuse than ppl like dlp for being so ignorant of issues surrounding sexual assault victims telling their stories.

I've seen some vicious, terrible things said about Gira these past few days, despite the fact that two (credible) women have already come out in his defense
― Wimmels, Tuesday, March 1, 2016 11:28 AM (2 days ago)

what makes these two women more credible than larkin? they weren't present when she was raped.

I think some of us are merely trotting out the old "we don't know, and neither do you" chestnut, which is a logical and reasonable and grown-up reaction to this situation.
"See? I'm accusing a white guy now" stuff, as well as her response in that--what are we calling it?--"puff piece" in which she seems to suggest that the split with the label was amicable. These two things alone make her far less "reliable" imo than some very reactionary and sanctimonious people here are willing to admit.
― Wimmels, Wednesday, March 2, 2016 6:42 PM (Yesterday)

why is that so grown-up? i think being aware of bigger issues around abuse of women/power/sex is pretty grown-up.

maybe - just maybe - when larkin gave that interview she wasn't exactly ready to be all "oh well he raped me, sexually harassed me, and then when i tried to confront him, he dropped me". not being willing to tell your story on demand does not make you unreliable. as for the racism stuff - she realized in her own mind that by not telling the gira story, she was unconsciously being racist, so she decided to talk about both. she was at a point in her life where she wouldn't take this shit from TSE, so she was ready to tell the gira story. i don't know why that's so hard to understand.

maybe I was just referring to the 'there / their' confusion, which my ten year old niece seems to have licked but not the person arguing to discredit a man forever despite the testimony of three credible women and no further accusations against the accused

― Wimmels, Thursday, March 3, 2016 8:07 AM (4 hours ago)

duuuuude, really?? this is pretty desparate trolling, at best. how can any of those 3 women provide testimony when they weren't present at the rape? if anything, i find jarboe's 'testimony' unreliable and not credible, given that interview that i think ned quoted - she talks about all this horrible stuff gira does, but how the band just has to put up with bc gira's musical genius is more important than anyone else's hurt egos. sounds like an apologist to me.

walk away

being pedantic about common typos is even more annoying now because most of the time we're all swype typing with autocorrect on phones anyway

Idk why they don't just skip the boring evidence stuff in trials and just move on to the English test everybody is waiting for

I know I said I was leaving this alone, but I'm sort of bemused by the fact that Siobhan Duffy's statement is being somewhat blithely written off here. As Michael's ex, she has nothing really to gain by sticking up for him at this stage of the proceedings. Moreover, having lived under the same roof with Ms. Grimm for a period of time, she has greater insight than most. Why isn't her account being taken at the same face value as Ms. Grimm's?

because she wasn't there?

because she keeps talking about all this "proof" and doesn't produce it?

alex honestly if this was like the dude from nickelback & duffy was avril lavigne are you even in the thread asking these questions?

... because she wasn't there.

xp hah

ffs, just because someone has "nothing to gain" -- which is always debatable, but w/e -- that doesn't automatically mean that they're closer to the truth of the matter!

Pretty sure Michael Gira is still father of her children (not to mention fact that he may be supporting her financially, who knows really) so I'm not sure where this concept that his ex is a dispassionate observer is coming from. Not to mention fact that her post reads like a CARBON COPY of the one from his current wife (which was posted a week ago and alleged incontrovertible proof which has thus far not materialized).

"because she keeps talking about all this "proof" and doesn't produce it?"

To be fair, that was Gira's current wife who first invoked the oft-cited "proof." Siobhan only mentioned it once.

And Robbie, if it were regarding Nickelback guy and Avril, I'd have never clicked on the link to begin with. As a longtime SWANS fan, I am, of course, bothered by this whole story. By that same token, I want to underscore that that does not immediately render me a hashtag-stamping Gira apologist. I don't know what happened. As is routinely trotted out, NONE OF US WERE THERE.

By Siobhan Duffy was the closest to being there, and certainly as invested in the proceedings as Gira and Grimm. More so than the current Mrs. Gira (whose note was pointedly more aggressive). Ms. Duffy has a history with Ms. Grimm, certainly one more intimate than anyone here. I'm just curious as to why her perspective isn't being taken more seriously, while Ms. Grimm's seems to be taken as gospel.

just...stop

I'm not suggesting that Duffy is a dispassionate observer. For all anyone knows, she could secretly thrill to seeing her ex taken down. But, she's not taking that road.

In 2013 Larkin wrote me on Facebook messenger (not a public post) which starts... "Dear Siobhan, I'm Sorry, I'm sorry,i'm so, so sorry for being an immature manipulative untrustworthy whore,losing my way,being constantly high, and not follwoing my conscience when you welcomed me into your home." She goes on to tell me about the drunken night of fooling around that never included coitus.

idk, maybe Gira's all lawyered up or otherwise disinclined to release the "proof" that would exonerate him, but I am kinda skeptical of "Oh yeah, she sent me this ~crazy message~, here you can read the first sentence of it & I will summarize the rest for you"

She goes on to tell me about the drunken night of fooling around that never included coitus = She told me "Michael and I had a drunken night of fooling around that never included coitus", OR, She told me "Michael and I did stuff" and related a story from which coitus was notably absent, OR, She told me that something happened, but her account was incoherent & hard to follow, so I asked Michael & he said coitus did not occur, OR She made vague references to "that night" which I filled in with my own secondhand knowledge etc etc

More so than the current Mrs. Gira (whose note was pointedly more aggressive).

I'd say both notes are pretty aggressive.

xp ... and that really is the last post I'll make here on the subject, because this thread has obviously turned toxic

Also, a note that begins Dear Siobhan, I'm Sorry, I'm sorry,i'm so, so sorry for being an immature manipulative untrustworthy whore,losing my way,being constantly high, and not follwoing my conscience when you welcomed me into your home." could well be meant in a very sarcastic tone (throwing accusations back at someone who made them), and without seeing the rest of the message quoted it certainly seems to read that way.

jesus christ, are yall really this fucking stupid?

never lock this thread

lock rape apologists' abilities to post

pay every woman and survivor of assault who read this thread $1000