For her fans, Courtney Love is more than just another pretty rock star--she's a way of life. She's an inspiration to us, a shrew who refuses to be tamed. She does everything girls are not supposed to do, and she gets away with it. The message boards devoted to Hole are some of the most active online and, even virtually, we've experienced a Courtney who says what she wants and lets her resentments and jealousies flow freely. Until now, this was the kind of boy-behavior that supposedly was keeping girls out of cyberspace, but Courtney flames with the best of them. For the hordes of us on and off-line, going to a Hole show is more than a concert: it's an event.

As I passed through the doors of Roseland on Thursday night, I felt like I had entered the girly vision of Utopia. After all, what could be better than a concert that's also a mall?! I joined the gobs of girly-girls snatching up Hole hats, Hole barrettes, and a wide assortment of Hole T-shirts at the frenzied merchandise counter. After my shopping spree, I eagerly waited for Courtney and the gang to take the stage. It seemed to be Girl's Night Out in New York City, and I wondered how many barrettes would be strewn across the floor by the end of the show. I pictured all the abandoned pink-wallpapered bedrooms in the tri-state area, empty but for lonely teddy bears propped against pillows, waiting for their mistresses to return from the Hole show.

Soon an Oz-like green haze of stage lights and smoke appeared and Courtney surrendered the pink. Resplendent in a black negligee with a large red rose at the collar, she made a perfect Valentine. Eric Erlandson, bent over his guitar, looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. "Hi, we're Boss Hogg," her Hole-iness cracked before launching into "Plump." Her voice was scratchy, and I wondered if she'd strained it at the previous night's MTV Unplugged taping.

Hole's songs are about girl anger, girl frustrations, and girl desires. Sure, they've got male fans, but the audience was packed to the gills with girls, and that's no coincidence. When the band did "Miss World," Hole's anthem to a pill-popping popularity queen, I noticed some boys doing an absent-minded pogo. For them, this could have been a Green Day concert. But for the girls in the audience...well, we were worshipping in the girls-only, no-boys-allowed Temple of Courtney. Except for the clueless girl next to me who was actually slow dancing with her boyfriend, this was a pocket-book-strap-across-the-body-free zone.

Courtney gives great quote, and to see her live is to hang onto her every word. She changes her lyrics as often as she changes her dresses, and if you listen you can get a glimpse into where she is, and where she's been since the pre-suicide release of Live Through This. But for supporters and detractors alike, the real draw at a Hole show is Courtney's between-song antics. She's a diva who deserves every ounce of the cult of personality she's created, and she never fails to surprise an audience.

Her credo seems to be that "Girls Rule." To that end, she challenged a boy who had yelled to "play the good shit" to an on-stage fight ("with my guitar on and one hand behind my back and you'll still be on the floor!" she promised him), insisting that he define "the good shit." The audience stood rapt and silent during the brief tumble: Courtney emerged unharmed, her opponent humiliated. "She can play whatever she wants. Whatever she wants to play, that's the good shit," he stammered before he stage-dived back into the safety of the pit.

Pulling another Courtney, she turned the tables on the rock institution of boy bands getting their roadies to hand-pick female groupies from the crowd by huddling with bass player Melissa auf der Maur to publicly check out some guys in the audience ("Yeah, see, I agree with you, that one's cute").

Hole played most of the songs off of Live Through This. Highlights included "Asking For It" ("This song's about getting tied up...and liking it"), "Gutless" ("for Trent Reznor"), the speeding-train intensity of "Softer, Softest" ("this song's for Michael Stipe and for someone else--you know who you are"), and the simmering anger of "She Walks On Me," a song that will go down in history as containing the best fuck you in rock & roll. As Courtney built up to her primal scream, she let the audience carry the lyrics: "it's....not....yours...," until we exploded into a group "Fuck you!" Even if you tried, you couldn't help but yell along.

Other songs included "Teenage Whore" and "Pretty On the Inside" from the album of the same name. We got a sneak peak at upcoming Hole with a number of song debuts, including "Best Sunday Dress," and "Drunk in Rio"--written by Kurt Cobain and Hole drummer Patty Schemel when they were...you guessed it, drunk in Rio.

At the end of their three-song encore, Hole pulled the classic concert trick of meandering into a long stretch of improvisational noise so excruciatingly boring that we were actually relieved to see them leave the stage. But just before she exited Courtney, stealing yet another boys-only rock & roll gesture, tipped over equipment and trashed the stage, screamed "Fuck you, industry weasels!", and flipped off the audience with both hands.

The crowd, wearing satisfied, post-Courtney grins, shuffled out of Roseland and back into the outside world, where girls don't really rule. Yet.
 
 
 

Celina Hex
MTV Online @ AOL, 1995