Whatever Happened to my Revolution?

Whatever Happened to my Revolution?
The rise and fall of the feminist rocker

By Devan Cook

Donning a purple wig, oversized sunglasses hiding her face and black boots laced up to her thighs, Lady Gaga leans back in a chair looking disinterested—until the interviewer asks her a question that suddenly makes her sit up. With a hint of condescension in her voice, she responds to his question of whether or not her overt sexuality distracts from her music:

“You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music 'cause I love fast cars and fucking girls, you'd call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I'm a female, because I make pop music, you're judgmental, and you say that it is distracting. I'm just a rock star.”

A Borrowed Nostalgia

This is a piece I wrote that was featured on the Oregonian's website and NPR's 'This I Believe.'


I’m looking at a milk crate full of vinyl records. There are probably about 30 LPs in this worn, baby blue crate. While many of these records are over 40 years old, they are my newest musical purchases, most having been acquired in the past few months.

I worked at Music Millennium Northwest until it went out of business two years ago. It had been around since 1969. It survived transitions from records to 8-tracks to tapes to CD's, but it finally met its match with the MP3.