An olive branch to the world. Actually, I saw Ari Up play at Don Pedros in Brooklyn three years ago and she was fucking CRAZY like didn't give a fuck, was starting fights with people, her god daughter was there, she was jumping into the audience and walking offstage and being a genuine terror. Like, the show sucked. It was that bad. But you know what? I saw that show in 2007, almost thirty years after she started doing this shit. The stuff she was yelling was about sexism and she was taking issue with entitled boys in the audience. In all honesty, everyone was a polite, boring, most likely liberal educated hipster, the boys included. But she rallied against them anyway. In a way I don't think it would have mattered if the boys in the audience- its a very small club, a bar actually with a stage- had been pigs, Ari Up was pissed, had been pissed most of her life, and really, looking around this world where women are stoned to death, put in cans and then ships to be sold into the sex industry, make not even a quarter of the revenue they help generate from the billion dollar porn industry and still only get two months maternity leave from fucking reputable university's- I'm a nanny, don't get me started- can you really blame her? The world is a giant see saw and a big fat man is sitting on the other side and no matter how many people we get to jump on our end, he just keeps eating and getting fatter and the damn thing never seems to budge. And worst of all he's convinced most people that thats just way it is and always will be. That this is NORMAL. Ari Up knew that was bullshit. And thirty years after The Slits, she, alone, was still on the road rabble rousing and spreading the gospel of rock n roll.
The Slits were awesome, Ari Up was funny, smart and really really, genuinely talented. She was a rock star with a bone to pick with the world. Is there any better kind? Ari Up, you will be missed.
