Do you realize how much Ani Difranco kicks ass? She's awesome. And this doesn't really have to do with Chuck's sig... I've been listening to her stuff for a while now but I find myself discovering more and more of her songs... I've been to one of her concerts. I think my two favorite songs are Fuck You and Oragami.
Ani is so amazing! I'm madly in love with her. She is my favorite musician by far. That's awesome that you've been to a concert, I haven't had the priveledge myself yet. I don't really have a favorite song of hers though, there are just way too many great ones. I guess a few of the are Out of Habit, Both Hands, Anticipate, Done Wrong, Self Evident, She Says, and Not a Pretty Girl. Glad to see that she's adored by others as well!
I love Ani! She kicks major ass! She has a way of making you feel like she's singing every song personally to you. It's incredible. Yeah, it is hard to pick a favorite song -- they're all amazing. But, I really like Origami and Shy.
Ani....fucking rocks...no words can describe it. I just started listening to her recently, and this is the greatest music I've ever listened to. Jim Morrison has no comparison....my favorite songs are Self Evident, Origami, 32 Flavors, Both Hands, Imagine, Untouchable Face(or Fuck You, whatever ya wanna call it), Superhero, Out of Habit(I love this one), Napolean(this one too), I loved You so what, Gravel, As Is, Not A Pretty Girl, Out of Range, and Shy.....lol she kicks ass. I fuckin' love her. I was actually going to start a thread of her myself.
I noticed, its so fucking cool. Get on msn and I'll send you this kickass Ani wallpaper I made. Just ask Staples, it really kicks ass.
Two or three days ago they shut it down for 'cleaning' or whatever the fuck they were doing, and thats when it stopped working. Its workin' now for all your guyses and girlses viewing enjoyment, here is the goddess of music herself, ani!
November 5, 1997 Marcia Ann Gillespie Editor in Chief Ms. Magazine 135 W. 50th Street 16th Floor New York, NY 10020 So I'm poring through the 25th anniversary issue of Ms. (on some airplane going somewhere in the amorphous blur that amounts to my life) and I'm finding it endlessly enlightening and stimulating as always, when, whaddaya know, I come across a little picture of little me. I was flattered to be included in that issue's "21 feminists for the 21st century" thingybob. I think ya'll are runnin the most bold and babe-olishious magazine around, after all. Problem is, I couldn't help but be a little weirded out by the paragraph next to my head that summed up her me-ness and my relationship to the feminist continuum. What got me was that it largely detailed my financial successes and sales statistics. My achievements were represented by the fact that I "make more money per album sold than Hootie and the Blowfish," and that my catalogue sales exceed 3/4 of a million. It was specified that I don't just have my own record company but my own "profitable" record company. Still, the ironic conclusion of the aforementioned blurb is a quote from me insisting "it's not about the money." Why then, I ask myself, must "the money" be the focus of so much of the media that surrounds me? Why can't I escape it, even in the hallowed pages of Ms.? Firstly, this "Hootie and the Blowfish" business was not my doing. The LA Times financial section wrote an article about my record label, Righteous Babe Records, in which they raved about the business savvy of a singer (me) who thwarted the corporate overhead by choosing to remain independent, thereby pocketing $4.25 per unit, as opposed to the $1.25 made by Hootie or the $2.00 made by Michael Jackson. This story was then picked up and reprinted by The New York Times, Forbes magazine, the Financial News Network, and (lo and behold) Ms. So here I am, publicly morphing into some kinda Fortune 500-young-entrepreneur-from-hell, and all along I thought I was just a folksinger ! Ok, it's true. I do make a much larger profit (percentage-wise) than the Hootster. What's even more astounding is that there are thousands of musicians out there who make an even higher profit percentage than me! How many local, musicians are there in your community who play gigs in bars and coffee shops about town? I bet lots of them have made cassettes or CDS which they'll happily sell to you with a personal smile from the edge of the stage or back at the bar after their set. Would you believe these shrewd, profit-minded wheeler-dealers are pocketing a whopping _100%_ of the profits on the sales of those puppies?! Wait till the Financial News Network gets a whiff of _them_! I sell approximately 2.5% of the albums that a Joan Jewelanis Morrisette sells and get about .05% of the airplay royalties, so obviously if it all comes down to dollars and cents, I've led a wholly unremarkable life. Yet I choose relative statistical mediocrity over fame and fortune because I have a bigger purpose in mind. Imagine how strange it must be for a girl who has spent 10 years fighting as hard as she could against the lure of the corporate carrot and the almighty forces of capital, only to be eventually recognized by the power structure as a business pioneer. I have indeed sold enough records to open a small office on the half-abandoned main street in the dilapidated urban center of my hometown, Buffalo, N.Y. I am able to hire 15 or so folks to run and constantly reinvent the place while I drive around and play music for people. I am able to give stimulating business to local printers and manufacturers and to employ the services of independent distributors, promoters, booking agents and publicists. I was able to quit my day job and devote myself to what I love. And yes, we are enjoying modest profits these days, affording us the opportunity to reinvest in innumerable political and artistic endeavors. RBR is no Warner Bros. But it is a going concern, and for me, it is a vehicle for redefining the relationship between art and commerce in my own life. It is a record company which is the product not just of my own imagination, but that of my friend and manager Scot Fisher and of all the people who work there. People who incorporate and coordinate politics, art and media every day into a people-friendly, sub-corporate, woman-informed, queer-happy small business that puts music before rock stardom and ideology before profit. And me. I'm just a folksinger, not an entrepreneur. My hope is that my music and poetry will be enjoyable and/or meaningful to someone, somewhere, not that I maximize my profit margins. It was 15 years and 11 albums getting to this place of notoriety and, if anything, I think I was happier way back when. Not that I regret any of my decisions, mind you. I'm glad I didn't sign on to the corporate army. I mourn the commodification and homogenization of music by the music industry, and I fear the manufacture of consent by the corporately-controlled media. Last thing I want to do is feed the machine. I was recently mortified while waiting in the dressing room before one of my own shows. Some putz suddenly takes the stage to announce me and exclaim excitedly that this was my "largest sold-out crowd to date!" "Oh, really?," I'm thinking to myself, "that's interesting...too bad it's not the point." All of my achievements are artistic, as are all of my failures. That's just the way I see it. Statistical plateau or no. I'll bust ass for 60 people, or 6,000, watch me. I have so much respect for Ms. magazine. If I couldn't pick it up at newsstands my brain probably would've atrophied by now on some trans-Atlantic flight and I would be lying limp and twitchy in a bed of constant travel, staring blankly into the abyss of the gossip magazines. Ms. is a structure of media wherein women are able to define themselves, and articulate for themselves those definitions. We wouldn't point to 21 of the feminists moving into the 21st century and define them in terms of "Here's Becky Ballbuster from Iowa City, she's got a great ass and a cute little button nose..." No ma'am. We've gone beyond the limited perceptions of sexism and so we should move beyond the language and perspective of the corporate patriarchy. The Financial News Network may be ultimately impressed with me now that I've proven to them that there's a life beyond the auspices of papa Sony, but do I really have to prove this to _you_? We have the ability and the opportunity to recognize women not just for the financial successes of their work but for the work itself. We have the facility to judge each other by entirely different criteria than those is imposed upon us by the superstructure of society. We have a view which reaches beyond profit margins into poetry, and a vocabulary to articulate the difference. Thanks for including me, Ms., really. But just promise me one thing; if I drop dead tomorrow, tell me my grave stone won't read: ani d. CEO. Please let it read: songwriter musicmaker storyteller freak. -Ani DiFranco
I didn't know she played bonnaroo either.. Hey, we have the same lyrics in our sig, lol. I love 'the Story', it's a great song.. like most of Ani's songs.
Yeah...she played at Bonnaroo on Friday June 11th. There were just so many people who played there that didn't get the recognition they should have. They had so many stages it was hard to see everyone you wanted to. I was glad to have caught her set though...it was really good.
Not to rain on the glory parade. But I saw her live at the folk fest last year, and I thought she was terrible. All of the songs seem to me to have the same litle tricks in them. Her rythmn on her guitar is consistently similar on many songs and he quality of voice and tone of singing is as well, making or some boring folk music. I tried again once to listen to her on cd and I was still dissapointed. Have fun with her though, you like what you like.
