Maggie Estep (Spoken Grunge)

Maggie Estep was a poet from New Jersey (1963 – 2014). The story began when MTV filmed one of her public readings. Faced with that success, Maggie joined the Lollapalooza lineup in 1994. Two albums were born of that experience, No More Mr. Nice Girl (1994) and Love Is a Dog From Hell (1997). Her first novel, Diary of an Emotional Idiot, came out the same year. Five others would follow.I have often referred to the Beat Generation in Still in Rock articles, a mix of obsession and real influence. With Maggie Estep, this literary and artistic movement had found a new incarnation. Maggie was deeply attached to Neal Cassady’s group, which comes through in every one of her lines, in the manner of Steven Jesse Bernstein. She thus appears on the excellent Kicks Joy Darkness: A Tribute to Jack Kerouac, released in 1997. It must be said that having had William S. Burroughs as a literature teacher must have helped develop a certain addiction to this movement.

“Hey Baby“, the first track on No More Mr. Nice Girl, illustrates Maggie Estep’s feminist ideal. We see her strolling through a city, defying thugs with unshakeable nerve.

And then, let’s not forget that Maggie Estep was close to grunge, which comes through on “My Life of Gardening“. But of course, one of the flagship tracks of Maggie Estep’s whole discography is “Fuck Me“, which will remain one of the symbols of what Maggie Estep stood for: a committed, cutting, provocative artist, proud of her art. Here is a verse:

Sado Masochism’s relationship

to classical philosophy

tell me how this stimulates

the fabric of most human relationships,

I love that kind of pointless intellectualism

so do it again and

Fuck Me.

“Sex Goddess of the Western Hemisphere” belongs to a similar vein. This track deals with each person’s relationship with their sexuality, and once again, Maggie finds a political meaning in it.

“The Stupid Jerk I’m Obsessed With” is also meant as an attack on her own desires.

“I Swear“, a track barely 30 seconds long, deserves a closer look. Try it. Finally, “Bad Day At The Beauty Salon“, the last one, is also one of the best songs on this album. The story of the little Susee sandwich drags us into the depths of a strip club. Madonna takes a hit along the way. This track is in fact (partly) autobiographical, coming from a time when Maggie was a stripper and, incidentally, addicted to heroin.

In the end, No More Mr. Nice Girl often tells of Maggie Estep’s life experience in New York, where we meet weirdos, drifters and other ‘bad boys’.

Love Is a Dog from Hell, the title of a Charles Bukowski book and Maggie Estep’s second LP, is often described as better, wrongly I think. It does, however, contain several excellent songs. Less grunge overall, it still leaves room for a few raw moments, like “I’m an Emotional Idiot“. And then, this LP features an excellent cover of the Lou Reed song “Vicious“. Maggie turns it into an even more sensual track, a kind of porn chic not to be missed. While some other tracks show Maggie Estep’s new sound, as “Fireater” does, we very quickly go back to the most rock’n’roll sounds.More than for her music, a kind of pretext for reciting her texts, Maggie Estep will remain one of the main icons of Gen-X. She helped popularise slam, accompanied the rise of artists such as Henry Rollins (Black Flag), brought to life Manhattan’s East Village, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, those streets of a generation of artists driven by social struggle. Her fascination with dark and dangerous streets comes up often, in her novels, her writings on Legs Diamond, her constant attraction to subjects that referenced decline. Yes, Maggie had fallen in love with New York in 1971, the day she “I saw dozens of people blithely stepping over a dead body on a sidewalk“.

Maggie embodied the symbol of that lost generation, the first of the 20th century not to know what its destiny was. That generation ultimately gave birth to Generation Y. Maggie is one of its fathers.

Her post-punk will remain in everyone’s memory. The same goes for her texts, which you will find in several anthologies, including The Best American Erotica and Brooklyn Noir 2. And her blog is still online, with the text published a few days before her death, “Strippers, Sluts & Umlauts“. These were her last words: “and that is the story of the Great Umlaut Cake of slutdom and three ex-strippers sitting at a table“.

Related links:

Anachronique article on the band Further

Link to all the anachronique articles