For what I’m about to delve into, for the sake of argument, let’s say that if you are reading this blog you actually like the Heroine Sheiks. Ever wonder why a band you like ceases to exist? Stay with me….
A grizzly bear is a magnificent wild animal. It weighs a thousand pounds, its sense of smell is ten times better than a blood hound’s; it can outrun a horse and take down a moose. But if you cut down the forest where it lives and build houses it cannot survive. It needs a certain habitat to live, civilization kills it.
Is that bad? Inside those houses are living human beings, people raising children and becoming doctors and falling in love. No, that isn’t bad. It is what it is.
Coyotes and pumas are wild animals too. They have learned how to survive on the outskirts of civilization. Are they “better” than grizzlies? Whether your answer is “yes” or “no” doesn’t change anything for the grizzly at all. It needs what it needs.
The patches of habitat, like San Francisco or New York where the Heroine Sheiks can survive have become so isolated and widely spaced that we can no longer make a go of it. We need crowds of a certain size and type in order to feed properly. Today’s musical environment, based on internet hype, striving to be “famous”, and just generally playing ball with the press isn’t “bad”, it’s just not an environment that fulfills our basic needs. Some species simply cannot breed in captivity or live in civilization. This applies to the Cows too—even more so (I suppose that makes Tom Hazelmyer a forest ranger of sorts).
People stop me every day and say “Shannon, you gotta keep doing it”. That’s great, and they mean well. I sincerely appreciate it. However, it ultimately does me no good. For ten years the public has voted with it’s time and its pocketbook. They have skipped the shows and not bought the CDs. The press, the life blood of a band, has ignored us. Again, this isn’t good or bad, it just is.
To me, living as a person day to day, it seems that people like the idea that there is still a Cows, or a Heroine Sheiks, or a Shannon Selberg (whatever that is) out there, somewhere, like a grizzly, still living in the wild. I appreciate that too, but again, it does me no good. The wild is gone. And if a grizzly survives purely by eating from garbage dumps or only in a few zoos, is it still a grizzly? I don’t think so. I know, because I tried—you have no idea...
Having said all this, there is something in nature called “the island effect”. That’s when a species lives on an island or other reduced habitat and “shrinks” in order to survive. The island effect produced elephants and mammoths the size of ponies! Maybe I could be a little “dwarf grizzly”? Ha ha.
So, let’s wrap this up. As far as the Heroine Sheiks go, with all of the member changes: Everyone I played with was great, and they all worked their asses off for very little reward. I owe them a lot. Alas, life in the wild is short, brutish and nasty.
Cows? When the Cows wrote Sorry in Pig Minor, we already knew that we were doomed. Sales were off and the crowds were shrinking. Most of the songs are about being doomed. “Death in the Tall Weeds”, in particular, was meant to be our epitaph (Finished Again, lyrically, was my personal epitaph). The “we” in Death in the Tall Weeds wasn’t a couple; it was the Cows and their fans.
If all of the above sounds like a lot of bullshit to you, listen to that song—it’s all in there.
That’s it. If none of this moved ya, then fuck ya. Now that’s an epitaph.
Remember, it’s all Chow.
Love,
Shannon Scott Selberg
PS
There’s plenty of "Journey.." still for sale, nature lovers...