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Throwing musings
Getting a foot in the door
BY EVELYN MCDONNELL

A profile of Throwing Muses was my first-ever professional assignment as a journalist, I always tell people proudly. By "professional," I mean paid — although I didn’t know that for sure when I gratefully accepted the assignment from NewPaper editor Lou Papineau. I was so happy to have gotten a gig the very first time I sent my college newspaper clips to a "real" paper, I didn’t ask if there would be financial compensation. That would prove typical: It’s taken me a couple of decades to finally get ballsy about asking for money.

I was just thrilled to be writing about Throwing Muses. The Newport band led by half-sisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly was just getting known outside of Providence and Boston. I had seen them open for Richard Thompson at Brown University’s Alumnae Hall and I thought they were scary and cool. In person, they impressed me even more: Beautiful and defiant, talented and noisy. I remember I described them as "nobody’s blondes," and they liked that, they said next time I saw them. I would meet up with Kristin and Tanya periodically in our careers — for Musician magazine, for Request — as our successes paralleled each others’. When they were seen as women alt-rock icons in the early ’90s, I would show off the cassette sampler I have from their pre-4AD days, glad Lou had given me that assignment. On eBay, it’s probably worth more than the $40 or $50 check I picked up from The NewPaper the week the article came out.

For two years I had to work about five jobs to supplement that check, but I still considered The NewPaper my main gig. The payoff wasn’t monetary; it was fulfilling in other ways. I was doing what I wanted to be doing: writing about music. I was getting on-the-job training in a field they didn’t offer at Brown, getting bylines and clips too. Plus a paycheck. And free records and admission to shows. Writing about music has been my main ticket ever since.

I have so many fond memories of that time. The Mekons at Lupo’s. The Replacements at the Living Room. Flaming Lips at Rocket. I got to play rock star with the other rock critics in We Be 40, which was embarrassing and fun.

I also sometimes felt conspicuous and isolated as the only woman shooting her mouth off in a world where most females are girlfriends and wives. Still do.

But The NewPaper gave me the chance to hone my craft and satisfy my rock jones like I wouldn’t have if I’d gone to work writing obits for some small-time daily (the other career route). The pay wasn’t much, but it was better than an unpaid internship at some New York magazine. And Providence rents were a lot cheaper than Manhattan’s.

Which reminds me: So Lou, am I getting paid to write this?

Evelyn McDonnell is the pop culture writer at the Miami Herald. She is the former music editor of the Village Voice and SF Weekly. She is author of two books: Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She has co-edited two anthologies: Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop and Rap and Stars Don’t Stand Still In the Sky: Music and Myth.


Issue Date: October 24 - 30, 2003
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