The Food Connection Behind Music Anthology ‘Here She Comes Now’
Gif by Samantha Bolton for Yahoo Food.
Food fans might recognize some of the contributors in “Here She Comes Now,” a new anthology about female rockers, disco queens, and alternative music icons. The book begins with a transformational moment involving Gloria Gaynor of “I Will Survive” fame, as experienced by New York Times food writer Jeff Gordinier when he was in grade school. Eventually, writes Gordinier, “Female performers and songwriters would often be the ones whose music buoyed up my spirits.” He wasn’t drawn to a single genre, or a single songstress. Instead, he had countless performers on heavy rotation: Billie Holiday, Rosanne Cash, Heart, Siouxsie Sioux, Lauryn Hill, Feist, and on and on.
“Sometimes I’ll pack up a bunch of CDs for a long road trip — yes, I’m a child of the seventies and eighties, and I still use CDs — and along the way I’ll reach into the stack and realize that almost every album I have chosen as a traveling companion has a woman at the center of it,” he notes in the introduction.
The salvation and satisfaction he found in their voices led to the book “Here She Comes Now,” which he edited with author/producer Marc Weingarten. The two lined up more than 20 writers to tell the “real, raw stories about life changed and charged up by the greatness of female artistry,” as Gordinier puts it.
Among the contributors are Kate Christensen, author of “Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites,” who writes about Tina Turner, and Charlotte Druckman, who penned “Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen,” who takes on Mary J. Blige. Rosie Schaap, the drinks columnist for The New York Times and author of the memoir “Drinking With Men,” covers her fascination with the late Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention. And Phyllis Grant, the blogger behind Dash and Bella, takes on a major player in the category: Madonna.
Also anthologized are Dolly Parton, Sinead O’Connor, June Carter Cash, Björk, Ronnie Spector, Nina Simone, Stevie Nicks, P.J. Harvey, and Kathleen Hanna. Gordinier apologizes for omitting the likes of Joni Mitchell, and reflects on how strange it is that female artists were once marginalized. “It seems crazy now, during a post-Madonna era in which the pop charts are dominated by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.”
Anyone who believes chefs are the new rock stars needs a copy of “Here She Comes Now.” What’s more apt to stir your soul — a meal or music? For Gordinier and his essayists, it’s the latter.
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