Proudly Pro Noun

Album: Melissa Etheridge, Melissa Etheridge, 1988

Best Track: "Bring Me Some Water"

Lasting Memory: There is a quiet, happy, warm, sunny, breezy place in the back of my mind. It's the place I let my thoughts drift to when the world is too much with me. I don't know if I could ever find this place again in the world outside my reverie. I can't even be sure whether I was ever actually there, or if the place even really exists. But I am absolutely certain that in this place I do not know -- and never will learn -- that Melissa Etheridge is gay, that her long-former partner conceived a baby using sperm donated by David Crosby, or that Ms. Etheridge is now keeping company with the ex-wife of Lou Diamond Phillips.

I do, of course, know in this place that David Crosby is the Walrus, coo coo a choo.

But back to my main point, and to quote Edwardian actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, "Does it really matter what these affectionate people do--so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!" Which is as much to say, S-H-U-T U-P and ROCK!

Etheridge does a decent amount of rocking on her epnymous major label debut. It would be difficult to find better electrified blues boogie than "Bring Me Some Water" or "Chrome Plated Heart." She also does a more-than creditable Tunnel of Love-era Bruce Springsteen impersonation on songs like "Occassionally' (a.k.a., "Ain't Got You") and "Like the Way I Do" (a.k.a., "Tougher Than the Rest").

Her follow-up album, Brave and Crazy, was pretty good, too. I can't blog it because a friend stole it going on 16 years ago, but I remember B&C being a decent listen. And then Etheridge had to open up her boudoir for all the world to gawk at.

Coming out didn't ruin Etheridge's career. By all measures, she continues to be a major recording artist, but I will argue that coming ruined Etheridge's art and her fan's experience. Every song she has recorded or performed since 1992 or whenever that Rolling Stone came out has been self-conciously IMPORTANT. Etheridge never lets anyone forget that fact long enough to allow anyone just enjoy the music, (wo)man.

The real shame of this is that aside from gay-rights advocates and behind-closed-doors-only gay bigots who feel the need to act more tolerant than thou in public, nobody gives two (or three) fingers about Etheridge's sex life. Sure, there's a school boy's red-faced giggle worth of purience in playing the pronoun game with lyrics like

Tell me does she love you like the way I love you?
Does she stimulate you, attract and captivate you?
Tell me does she miss you, existing just to kiss you like the way I do?
Tell me does she want you, infatuate and haunt you
Does she know just how to shock you, electrify and rock you
Does she inject you, seduce you and affect you like the way I do?

but that doesn't in any way reward the chore that listening to Etheridge's post-outing music has become. Treat Her Right had more than apoint when they observed, " Aw models, critics, wimpy art-school punks/ Gettin' on my nerves/ They're killing all the fun in rock 'n roll." When the rock artists themselves go out of their way to remove the enjoyment from music, what chance do listeners have?

Up Next: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1985