Courtney Love Takes On The Internet, Kind Of Wins

Over the weekend, Courtney Love took to her MySpace page for the purposes of calling out fellow blogger Ryan Adams, thanks to some mysterious American Express bills from 2003 that she believes are evidence that some $858,000 that went into the making of his 2003 album Rock N Roll was funded by Frances Bean Cobain’s inheritance. (I guess that’s why Frances is trying her hand at journalism-type stuff this summer.) Not only is she appalled by the theft, which was apparently part of the identity-theft issues she’s been blogging about and facilitated by her ex-boyfriend/Rock N Roll producer James Barber, she’s irritated that her funds were used to make such a crappy, poorly named album: “Ryan Adams worst record and one of the worst records i can think of in rock and roll history ironically called’Riock and Roll ‘… yeah you listen to this shit im listening to my i tunes on right now who names a record ‘Rock n Roll’ what assholes do that? … with these trebled up guitars my bandmate said sounded like ‘really horrific rem on steroids’ all treble and compresssion and shit wirtten songs – but so what?”

Love’s post concluded with a call for Adams to pay back said $858k and let her know how his heroin habit was holding up. The post was picked up by the likes of Gawker over the weekend, and after deleting it she got into a bit of a back-and-forth with the commenters on that site and others who were so quick to defend Adams’ music (why??) and write her off as drug-addled, crazy, etc. Which, you know, sure she’s kind of nutty–most people who blog even semi-regularly are! But I also think that she has a bit of a point here, at the end of her latest missive:

I’m making a resolution to do a two hour tozo a day, every day somehow and yoga FIVE times this week. I want to be in-flow but the only flow that I know is when I chant and that just makes everything so much better- I perceive things and even receive shocks, like the Ryan one… I get them daily but I don’t care as long as it stops. I just want to move on into the future and forget this financial shit – As Marie Antoinette said, “let them eat (their stale) cake. I cant blog a trial, it’s something only lawyers can work out, so it’s just something that I have to suck up. One thing that DOES enrage me is when urban sophisticates with great breeding and cynical cognition of life make FUN of being robbed blind. I wasn’t raised to understand wealth, or even a fico score , or entities or be a forensic accountant and if I don’t do most of it myself it won’t get done, and so I’ve learned a lot and I share a 100000th of it occasionally, if it can help anyone that’s great. But to make fun of stealing and to imagine that lawyers and cops and loan officers are these fucking saints who don’t steal from uneducated rock musicians rap musicians and athletes is just plain fucking stupid? Got it?

Okay , now I don’t have to mention it again, ignorance will do your ass in , so when the media members who subscribe to my blog revive them they need to think really hard before stating I’m “crazy” or “high” because I didn’t major in English or Medieval History at Brown or Yale. I never said I did, nether do I eat fine food with my fingers or not have my own personalised stationery. I’m rather ….errr…gracious, I guess, in how I like to l.ive, and the people i like to be around. I like to learn from and I like to be ethical and simply not a thief or liar or denier or obstructer. Just let’s all get the fuck on with it, life is too short, i chose to continue working on this record for a lot of complex but very easy reasons, i fell into the luck of being in a truly monstrously great band, for the first time in my life although Hole was great on occasion there’s an innocence to this and a beastliness to this that I’m honoured to have the shamanistic moments o have ive been ripped apart and orgasmic at the things we come up with and I’m far more musical than any other thing. In fact, i care more for music than for anything else except my child. Music is all there is to me when the fire has died and you’ve got a nickel a tin cup and a pencil there’s always music , and that’s all I care about in the end in the beginning in the alpha and the omega, if you want to know me know my music and draw your conclusions from that- the rest is dross. That’s hard to say when I’m not exactly prolific, but i hope when i do rise up with new songs that are sonically the way i want them – then fuck it. judge me on that and that alone, I’m a musician first and foremost and I’m enormously slow but that’s just too bad cause i won’t go through another record that doesn’t t slake me slay me and i know is my voice. i have far too much to say in fact we have 34 songs and i have to [part with some , none are shit, and its l.ike losing a child, ii went for about 5 years without writing a real song and 3 years without writing one at all, the other 2 just struggling to care enough then a gush went off and im like a waterfall of mojo, and thats just the reality of my life given that statement its past midnight and i need to read write and make lyrics that will astound, spin em around and rub em in my skin like cobwebs.

I'm not saying she's not flawed, but that bit about the "urban sophisticates" who were so quick to just write her off without going into the lengthy backstory of what happened really rang true to me. Especially since most of those "sophisticated" comments are basically wordier equivalents of "RYAN ADAMS ROOLS U R A DUM," which, no matter how you might feel about Love or her music, is just wrong.

The raven himself is hoarse [Courtney Love's MySpace Blog]
Dante’s Inferno [Courtney Love's MySpace Blog]
Courtney Love Would Like Her Money Back, Ryan Adams [Gawker]