Not So New Here

champagnecandy:

allwasteandvoid:hveasey:

Hole- Violet/He Hit Me… (Saturday Night Live 1994)

I had been looking for this video on Youtube to show my sister, and couldn’t find it, probably due to how SNL flags any of their content on youtube, but luckily I remembered I had downloaded it years ago and found it hidden on my external hard drive.

This is a thunderous performance of Violet, and one of the things that’s so striking about it is how none of the anger in it feels artificial or put-on. This isn’t Courtney going through the motions and playing her big hit because it keeps the crowd happy, there’s real rage and fire behind it that’s just burning her up. That moment :30 in when Courtney swings her guitar behind her and throws her leg up on the amp is perfect. This video also made me miss Melissa Auf Der Mar too. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new guys, but there’s something special about seeing Melissa throwing her body around as she plays bass and provides back-up vocals that isn’t there anymore. 

The other special thing about this video is the small bit of He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) at the end. After the fury of the previous 2:45, Courtney shows some vulnerability to the audience, with a pained but powerful vocal and alternating between staring directly out in wide-eyed defiance and keeping her eyes tightly shut to the world. This thirty second snippet of the song, for me at least, expresses much more than Hole’s full cover of the song and works as a perfect coda to Violet.

Damn. 

Team Courtney 4eva. 

I just love Hole so much.  I will say, as raw as this is, and feels, that the sling-the-guitar-put-the-foot-up-on-the-monitor move is a C-Love classic, particularly from this era (I recall a very similar…VMA? performance from this period when she also changed the words to “one above and two below” which was, let’s say, thought-provoking to my thirteen-year-old self.)