This is another cover song, this time of Joan Armatrading’s What Do You Want? It was recorded long, long ago (1983, I think) on that infamous boombox, and the sound quality, sadly, leave a vast great deal to be desired. (If you use iTunes, crank up the pre-amp; it helps.) Enjoy.
http://www.nicolagriffith.com/audio/player.swf
(direct link)
Jane, the guitarist, really liked this song, so I agreed to do a version. I’m not sure why I chose to avoid the melody so hard. I wasn’t in love with the song but I don’t remember feeling resentful. Perhaps I was experimenting, I just don’t recall.
I couldn’t find “What Do You Want?” on either IMEEM or YouTube, but I did find this version of “Willow,” a very fine song.
I had lunch, in 1981 I think, with a friend of Joan Armatrading’s brother–who swore up down and sideways that he said his sister wasn’t a dyke. But if Joan Armatrading hasn’t had sex with girls I’ll eat my sofa.
If you don’t know who Joan Armatrading is run, don’t walk, to your nearest iTunes and buy anything and everything from her first four albums from the 1970s:
* Show Some Emotion – 1977
* Joan Armatrading – 1976
* Back to the Night – 1974
* Whatever’s for Us – 1972
She’s one of a kind.
Nicola Griffith 
I love Joan Armatrading, and have been playing “Less Than Zero” since the mid 1970s.I’m certainly inclined to agree that she’s a dyke, if only because she’s so coy and playful about gender and pronouns in her lyrics. The trouble with denials like those attributed to her brother is that people lie. Rock Hudson denied he was gay till the day he died, if I’m not mistaken. So maybe her brother is telling the truth, maybe he’s lying, maybe he’s simply … misinformed. But thanks to homophobia / heterosexism, no one with any sense will take such denials at face value.
Oops. “<>Down<> to Zero.” I’m not really awake yet.
promiscuous, I think there was a lot of homophobia in the Afro-Caribbean community of the time. I think even if Armatrading’s brother knew she was a dyke he would lie to ‘protect’ her. But of course there’s no way to know. Just thinking aloud…
I love your idea of “singing against the melody”. You have your own voice, and it is a powerful one.Willow blew me away. How could I have missed her? Probably because in the seventies I was singing and listening to folk music. I’ll make up for what I missed as soon as I can.
Well, maybe she is bi… or maybe her brother is a jerk, and she doesn’t discuss it with him. Attitudes have changed, but she’s never ‘come out’ publicly. She’s very private apparently. At any rate, I would have to agree, about the sleeping with women thing – it’s in her lyrics. So I don’t expect to hear of you eating that sofa anytime soon. :)I have always enjoyed her music, and I had a great time seeing her in a small club a long time ago. She has several songs that I really love. Some of my favorites are the classics – The Weakness in Me,Love and Affection, Willow, the list goes on.Barbara – here’s the best deal going for you on Amazon — it’s a < HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Hits/dp/B000VZO5D2/ref=dm_ap_alb1" REL="nofollow">Greatest Hits<>. (if you will settle for a greatest hits thing) But NIcola — I don’t remember <>that<> song – so it’s hard to know exactly what you mean about avoiding the melody. Maybe I had the album once, but it never made my CD collection. You surprise me with these covers. I like them, and I like this one. Thanks.
My girlfriend put “Willow” on the first mixed tape (ha!) she ever made for me. I have no idea what her orientation is, but I will always associate her with queerness.
Six years ago I was introduced to Joan Armatrading’s music. Willow has always been a favorite…thanks for sharing the video.
I have a question about Jane’s guitar in this one. Was she playing a 12 string? It sounds very rich and I was just wondering about it. With life came OA and I can no longer manage the 12 string but have always loved the resonance.
I enjoyed this cover. I thought that it was good-regardless of melody. Don’t singers work to make their version of the music their own when they do it? I mean I’ve got at least four different versions of Along the Watchtower and each one is different.I was wondering how different your perspective is on the music you did and how you did it when you are looking back on it. duff
<>jennifer<>, I was mostly singing the part I’d sing in harmony with the melody, rather than the more obvious melody itself.<>jill<>, oh, so is so totally queer. You can tell. Just like listening to Tracy Chapman or Dusty Springfield or early Melissa Etheridge and Janis Ian. Or reading Daphne Du Maurier. I could go on. Queerness just shimmers from the art.<>linda<>, no, I don’t think she played 12-string. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember ever seeing her with anything but a 6-string. Sorry about your arthritis.<>duff<>, this song never felt like mine. Now ‘Wild Thing,’ another cover Janes Plane did, *that* felt like me. Oh, I enjoyed that one…
As far as I know, Nicola, there’s still a lot of homophobia in the Afro-Caribbean community. (Though I just got this book from the library I need to read — if the pile of unread books next the bed doesn’t fall over in the night and crush me — called Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. But first I have to get to Richard Seymour’s The Liberal Defence of Murder, Walter L. Hixson’s The Myth of American Diplomacy, David Theo Goldberg’s The Threat of Race, Charles Ramirez Berg’s Cinema of Solitude [on Mexican cinema], and Hood and Williamson’s Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition. Piece of cake. I figure to get to Our Caribbean sometime next month.)But then, there’s still a lot of homophobia and racism and sexism around everywhere. I just got a request to supply a couple of gay male speakers to a panel discussing the Vagina Dialogues, and I’m a bit nervous about it. Our gay boys here at IU have a tendency to freak out over women — several of them once threw a hissyfit during a screening of If These Walls Could Talk, 2. So, I don’t mean to single out Afro-Caribbeans.Another example: have you ever read Alexander Doty’s paper in which he does a lesbian reading of The Wizard of Oz? He got a lot of flak from straight feminists who accused him of appropriating the film from “a woman-centered film to a lesbian film” — as though lesbians aren’t women. The visceral fury directed at Doty was revealing.
I haven’t read Doty’s paper. I assume it’s the one in < HREF="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415923441?ie=UTF8&tag=theofficialnicol&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0415923441" REL="nofollow">Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon<>? But anything that pisses off people trying to hoard and leverage their own oppression must be worth taking a look at :) Thanks for pointing it out.
Maybe you have answered this before and I missed it. What happened to Jane? Where is she and what is she doing now?
Sadly, I don’t know where Jane is or what she’s doing.
Uh, speaking of Joan Armitrading… I have a newer version of this song by JA. It just popped up in my 2500 song shuffle list, and I wanted to share it. I think I downloaded it from Amazon. My version is off the “Songs for Tibet” album. < HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgJLS8y-nnc" REL="nofollow">In These Times.<>