I haven’t forgotten. What a shock it was, all our fears manifest at once. Fourteen young women, massacred for no other reason than being female! We were rocked to the roots by the proof of the pudding of fears our generation of women was fed, to wit: ‘don’t dare pursue your dreams, you’ll be killed if you do‘.
(In case you’re American or too young to remember, you can read all about it here.) Murder sucks for any reason, but random, gratuitous slaughter of the young, ambitious and promising is particularly horrifying.
The tragic irony of Tempest Gale’s murder in November just a few weeks before the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal Massacre just serves to stir the pudding. But dammit, change must come.
I recorded this song last night. It’s raw and rhythmically ragged, but a powerful version, I think; I was alone in the room and feeling emotional at the time. I wrote this just after the Montreal Massacre.
Actually, it was on the following International Women’s Day. Anne Cameron had come to Hornby and given a rockingly powerful talk at the Hall, after which I went out and bawled my head off in my car then wrote this song.
It hurts to sing, because after twenty years, so little has changed. Still, so many pointless losses, so few gains, politically speaking, socially speaking. Oh, women now have the right to go die with the boys in the sands of Afghanistan, I suppose. It was never my ambition to be Sgt Rock.
(more…)
written at midnight Christmas Eve… 
