A while ago, Trent Dupuy and I picked up a long-running discussion while chatting online. You see, it has been my standing opinion since my original encounter with him (or rather, with his humongous collection of music that I encountered some hours before I ever met him in person) that Trent Dupuy is, in fact, completely obsessed with girl bands.
Let me explain.
When I first moved into our shared room on the NAU campus, I had no knowledge of who my roommate was slated to be (not even a name). As it happened, Trent arrived at a point when I wasn't around, and quickly departed (for Target, as I remember), thereby upon my return, I was left with two major clues. The first was a name that had been hand-written on one of those 'Hello, my name is . . ' stickers, and was stuck to Trent's CPU. Aptly, this name read 'Trent.'
The second bit of information that I was able to gather on 'Trent's' character was based on the huge (I mean like 500, all with jewel cases, arranged in five of those cd towers) collection of cds that had also been left behind. While there was a sizeable Cure section, the equally impressive amount of girl-band albums led me to the initial conclusion that this 'Trent,' if that indeed was his name, had an abnormal focus on bands headlined by females.
This initial judgement could not have been much closer to the truth.
Throughout the summer, Trent continued to confirm my wildest suspicions. Repeatedly, he shifted discussions on Weezer, Ben Folds, or the like into debates on more obscure bands like Concrete Blonde or Sleater-Kinney. His conflicted obsessions over Cheryl Crow and Jewel came to a head in mid July, when he was forced to choose a Cheryl Crow show in Tuscon over a Jewel show in Phoenix (as well as another show in Las Vegas the next night), all the while cursing the powers that be for allowing such a travesty to befall.
But perhaps the greatest boost to my intuition came in June, when Trent purchased two pairs of tickets to see the Cranberries in concert in L.A., a band that I was unaware still existed at all. To further complicate things, Trent, while arranging a family vacation to the coast in order to get himself to said concert, actually bought round-trip airfare as a 'just in case' measure, in case his parents decided not to come at the last minute.
Time and again, even beyond our time together in Flagstaff, I would pick up hints of Trent's extreme obsession over female groups. And then, in April, Trent dropped this post onto his site, proclaiming he'd found his list of quintessential albums of all time. As you can see, I stayed true to form and taunted Trent for his choice of bands. This renewed the debate off-site, which came to a boiling point where it was finally decided that I should host an official debate between the two of us.
So here it is: Trent, I dare you to prove me wrong, and I will laugh at your futile attempts to do so. You're a girly-man who listens to girly-music. Discuss.
Let me address a few of the concerns I have with your flawed argument.
The case of the Weezer concert is one that would, at first glance, seem to counter my claim that your dominant focus is on live female shows. But let's consider your overall show-going statistics.
When I was around you, I know of two major concerts that you went way out of your way to see: the Cranberries, and Cheryl Crow. The one other show that was an 'almost' situation (as often happens with you it seems - i.e. 'I almost went to the Nelly (Furtado) concert in St. Louis last night') was the Jewel concert in Vegas the night after Cheryl Crow was in Tuscon.
Given this small example, I can begin to illuminate a greater trend, showing that, while there may be isolated cases where you find yourself a boy-band fan-boy, the greater trend is toward the female artists.
Which brings me to my next point: that the current trend you seem to be following is that of the new, underground female scene.
Certainly, credit must be given to you for the fact that Led Zepplin, Nirvana, and The Rentals probably won't be touring anytime soon. But that still doesn't account for the fact that the majority of 'new' music you listen to is of the female persuasion.
This point further hits on what I said in response to your post: that while you do name male bands, these bands are less 'questionnable' in the eyes of 'mainstream' or 'popular' culture than the female bands you list. Basically, that the female bands, for the most part, are obscure.
Now, on it's own, this fact doesn't prove much, but given that the presence of truly obscure male bands (Sun Kil Moon, The Decembrists, etc) is severely lacking, I'd say that leads us to a sole conclusion: that when looking for currently produced music, you seek out the female bands far more consistently and you are far more willing to go out on a limb to give a 'first-time' listen to a band when said band is of the opposite sex.
Posted by: andy at August 2, 2004 2:19 PMThere's an all-girl punk band from Japan called "Thug Murder".
Best all female live band I've ever seen.
Posted by: jankowski at August 2, 2004 5:57 PMI'm going to totally abuse the comments system by posting an unrelated response in your comments section. Sorry. I've actually never met my artist. I found him online at the forums at digitalwebbing.com , which is home to a host of really talented artists. As I found the hard way, some of them will want you to pay them up front. That was out of the question for me, because I'm poor. So after a few misses I conacted Mike, my penciler, and asked him if he'd be willing to take a look at the script. I didn't tell him who I was up front, because I didn't want my pseudo-industry recongnition (I'm banking on the fact here that I have pseudo-industry recognition. This has not been scientifically proven as of yet - check back after the Chicago convention next week) coloring his opinion of the project. He really liked the script and I liked his sequentials (make SURE to check out their sequentials, not just their pin-ups) so we started working together. And it is a long, long process. It took us nearly 2 months just to get all the character designs done. Anyway, at the moment the book isn't coming out in any means, but I'm hoping that next week I'll be able to pitch it to Image and they'll say yes. If not I'm going to be pimping my pitch (5 sequential pages and a cover) around Chicago. Even if it does get picked up, it won't come out until 2005 because my artist is slow. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me. I have a basic understanding of this industry, and I'd be happy to share.
Posted by: Justin at August 3, 2004 7:36 AMFor God's sake...it's Sheryl Crow! And the Cranberries are not a female band. Their lead singer is a female...the rest are male. Those points aside, Trent is a girly man.
Posted by: Lara at August 13, 2004 8:51 AM
I cannot speak to Trent Dupuy the person or as to whether he is a girly-man. I can tell you this though -- having reviewed that list of bands, I am ready to fully support your accusation that he listens to girly-music.
Posted by: jankowski at July 28, 2004 2:22 PM