Hole at Terminal 5, 4/27
As the lights dimmed and we waited for Courtney Love to take the stage last night, I thought about the day I bought Live Through This as a 13-year-old. It was the perfect pairing to a period of life that was bitter, scornful, defiant. There was depression. Hiding under headphones at school. Lots of eyeliner; trying too hard. Not brushing my hair and wearing ripped tights. Then there was slowly growing out of angst into apathy. And from there, eventual well-being, giving way to a content girl—hardly punk rock. But I’m still just as transfixed by it as I’ve ever been.
Unbridled wrath isn’t ladylike, but Hole gave angry music its own brand of girlishness. Their grotesquely feminine imagery—the freakish pageant queen, the mutilated baby dolls, and most recently a shattered, bloodied glass slipper—indulges the fucked-up woman in all of us. For this, Courtney will always have a place in (the slightly bitter section of) my heart.
