[Excerpt]

First, the truth. I am writing this review on borrowed credentials. I know very little about Courtney Love or post-punk rock. What I do know is the result of an unsought-after education from my 17-year-old stepson Amos, whose own punk band, TNT Pudding, used to practice in our shed until all the songbirds left the neighborhood and my face developed what threatened to become a permanent rictus of pain. For a time, just after Kurt Cobain's death, Amos was big on Courtney Love and so, when Hole came to Raleigh I went as dutiful stepmother, trying to understand the appeal of this bleached blond widow-mother screaming hatefully tender songs.

And, I'm proud to say, I did understand-not entirely, but enough to buy a clingy little rayon Hole T-shirt in which I look a fright. With all due respect to the fragile anatomy of the inner ear, Courtney Love was to die for up there on that stage. "Raw" doesn't even begin to explain it. She made Mick Jagger look like the maiden aunt of the apostle Paul, but what got me was how smart she was. I mean, here was this woman engaged in the musical equivalent of a thermonuclear meltdown and she had this shining intelligence that wouldn't stop.
 
 
 

Melinda Ruley
AlterNet, 1997