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\"Although Exile in Guyville was celebrated as one of the year's top records by Spin and the New York Times, it was also, to some, an abomination: a mockery of the Rolling Stones' most revered record and a rare glimpse into the psyche of a shrewd, independent, strong young woman. For these crimes, Liz Phair was run out of her hometown of Chicago, enduring a flame war perpetrated by writers who accused her of being boring, inauthentic, and even a poor musician\"--Page 4 of cover.

This chapter discusses Yoko Ono's searing vocalisations, or screams, for lack of a more refined terminology, as politically charged instances of abject sonic art. The term 'Abject Art' is typically employed to refer to a tradition of radical performance art that involves the use of bodily fluids and excretions as a means of conveying the often disturbing processes of abjection. As a feminist performer, Yoko Ono's revolutionary impulse to 'shout from the heart will be treated as a move to redefine musical expression through gendered processes of abjection and cultural resistance, her vocal performances constituting an impassioned response to contemporary movements in art and politics. According to a Kristevan perspective, the revolutionary potential of artistic practice lies in its capacity to bring about such a collision within a politicised context. Free Speech Movement (FSM) can be considered a key, transformative historical moment that galvanised many US white middle-class youth to embrace political activism, and power of political speech, or vocalisation.

'Counterculture' emerged as a term in the late 1960s and has been re-deployed in more recent decades in relation to other forms of cultural and socio-political phenomena. This volume provides an essential new academic scrutiny of the concept of 'counterculture' and a critical examination of the period and its heritage. Recent developments in sociological theory complicate and problematise theories developed in the 1960s, with digital technology, for example, providing an impetus for new understandings of counterculture. Music played a significant part in the way that the counterculture authored space in relation to articulations of community by providing a shared sense of collective identity. Not least, the heady mixture of genres provided a socio-cultural-political backdrop for distinctive musical practices and innovations which, in relation to counterculture ideology, provided a rich experiential setting in which different groups defined their relationship both to the local and international dimensions of the movement, so providing a sense of locality, community and collective identity.

[Courtney Love] has been staging a number of these antics lately. Perhaps it is the strain of promoting a new album, or possibly the imminence of the anniversary of [Kurt Cobain]'s suicide. Based on her track record, it seems more likely that the date is shining a bright light on her. Love's life has never been particularly wholesome. Long before she married Cobain she was a manic, mouthy mess. The only difference was that after she married Cobain she had people around her who had a stake in keeping her employed. With her film career a fading memory and her musical career also grinding to a halt, Love has come to symbolise all the things that Cobain rejected. As his aura of wealth-denying sanctity increases, her long plunge into the shallow eddies of celebrity becomes more pronounced. Love has wallowed in the trappings of fame. As she mires herself deeper in fashion spreads and underwear commercials, the place from which she arose - her role as the leader of Hole and as Cobain's wife - becomes more compromised by its proximity to her celebrity. Contrary to popular belief, she was never the grungey feminist she purported to be. Love, or her people, have been adept at spinning her story into some kind of palatable rock chick-lit fantasy: unloved fat girl, abused and abased, finds love and expression through screaming her guts out on highly acclaimed grunge albums. In fact, Love's story is closer to that of Paris Hilton than Patti Smith. She is a trust-fund kid who spent her twenties ingratiating herself in rock scenes across America and looking for rock-star boyfriends (Shane MacGowan and Billy Corgan were early contenders). The one she finally hooked up with held opposite creeds and values from her own, but that does not seem to have been an obstacle to their romance. I recall running into the happy couple in Honolulu the night before their nuptials: Courtney told me jokingly that for her wedding present, her husband was giving her \"his ATM (cash) card\". Love's saga also creates a number of sad realisations about the culture industry, such as why the image of a hysterical, blonde female slowly fading into nothingness is such an enduring one in our collective psyche. It is no coincidence that the only time Love has been taken seriously was when she played a brunette, Althea Flynt, a character who, except for hair colour, was like herself. Love seems to revel in a good cliche and has seldom missed a chance to be one, whether it was the grieving widow billing herself as a \"survivor\", the drug-addled former stripper or the philosophy-spouting hippy mamma who was one of the kids on the cover of a Grateful Dead album. She does not miss an opportunity to rewrite the story of her life in a way that conforms to our expectations of the famous.

Alas, terms like \"wife\" and \"feminist\" are often considered mutually exclusive, which may be why some Americans have problems with [Hillary Rodham Clinton]'s career. Hillary's womanliness is somewhat on the back burner (although she did lose 20 pounds during Bill's Presidential campaign, which is very much the action of a full-blooded female), but if anything should qualify her as a first-class wife, it's the way she Stood By Her Man during the degrading details of MonicaGate. Some people think that in itself was the action of a fool - but, hell, if she'd dumped the guy, she'd have been called a first-class bitch. Hillary won that race in part because [Rick Lazio] came off as your typically oily double-talking shyster: if there's one thing Hillary Clinton isn't, it's sleazy. By focusing on women's issues - education, health care, and abortion rights - she kept her fan base, so to speak, securely in her pocket, and, I should add, still does: since becoming New York State's senator, she's kept right on target on those issues in a way that is quite unusual among American politicians. She's also unique among First Ladies in that she has - and has always had - a real, respectable job. (Oh, supposedly Laura Bush was a librarian or something - one of those \"women-only\" professions that are considered acceptable by Texans to do before you have kids. But it hardly counts - and ever since she cancelled National Poetry Day for fear that someone might write an anti-war poem, it's been hard to take her commitment to education seriously.) If Hillary has a fatal flaw, however, it's that slightly inhuman air that she exudes, of being too good to be true. It's impossible to imagine her in an unpremeditated mode: uncoiffed, angry; sitting on the toilet, or having sex. She has never been known to utter an unscripted word in non-politico speak, and although this is certainly true of scores of politicians, it's possible that it's more off-putting - because more unusual - in a woman. Isn't she ever premenstrual? Does she ever have a bad hair day?

There were many such moments in the 1980s and 1990s, and thanks to my job, I saw them all: giant sarcophaguses opening to emit Iron Maiden, members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers hung by their ankles, Bon Jovi flying, Peter-Pan like, across a hockey stadium ... the list of gross, theatrical excesses goes on and on and on. In the 1990s, clever staging and super hi-tech inventions made arena rock more artful, but no less vulgar. The staging of Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones' shows made Andrew Lloyd Webber stage shows look positively paltry. The rock shows all purported to have some underlying contextual meaning that made the pageantry pointed, but in retrospect, I'm not sure what it meant. U2's \"Zooropa\" tour and subsequent tour-with-the-giant lemon thingy were probably the apex of all this pomposity - but I was lucky enough to be in attendance the night they all got stuck inside the lemon, and the parallel to Spinal Tap was too huge to be ignored. Arena rock seems cheesy now even at its best, but one reason for the obsolescence is simply that it outpriced itself. [Peter Gabriel] tickets cost in excess of $100, with the result that the audience was as staid and bearded and gentrified as Gabriel himself. They'll pay to see Peter, or the Stones, or U2, but when those bands die off or retire, these extravaganzas won't be replaced by similar shows by an ageing Thom Yorke, Beck, or Matchbox 20. At least, I don't think they will. The likes of these shows will never be seen again, and that's a good thing, not a bad one.