Post by Julie on May 9, 2005 18:20:00 GMT -5
riot poof
you know what you know so
you go break the terror of the
urban spell >>>>>> this alliance
you say 'I'm on the threshold
of greatness girl' >>>>>> so you
burn your pagoda through the
congo till there's a broken
bond >>>>>> on the birth of the
search white trash my native
son
it will all find its way in time
blossom, riot poof
you know what you know so
you go chain her to your flow
>>>>>> she bites through your
dried lean meat as she's
going to the movie show >>>>>>
in a bth of glitter and a tiny
shiver she crawls through
your java sea >>>>>> black
sahara I'm stepping into your
space oddity
it will all find its way in time
blossom, riot poof
the sun is warming my man is
moistening >>>>>> on the bomb
on the bond on the bomb
I think this is the song about the double standard and the "duh" factor. So the double standard is that so many times in the straight jock community the gay man is seen as a tabu or a weak person because they are attracted to other men. They can get beat up because of it, etc. But then in that same straight jock community we have the fascination and lusting after faux-lesbians. That double standard really makes you think about what is really being discriminated. It's not homosexuality necessarily, it's gays...not lesbians, gays. And that is what really frustrates me and Tori as seen here and rightfully so. So anyways, she's this faerie that puts a little "alarm clock" - wake up call underneath the homophobes pillows to harshly wake them up to the "duh" factor that homosexuality of any sort is not wrong, sinful, or unnatural in anyway. It's that riot of, "Oh my God! He's gay!" When you sit back and think about it, it's not a big deal. It's just a "different" (from a straight person's prespective) sexual orientation.
Here's Tori's description of it:
"To me Riot Poof is about one part of my family that is the conqueror and the other part who were being conquered. They fought at both sides. And you have to find out who you are. Many people don't want to see that they're partly victim and partly the executioner. Every evening I get letters. Hundreds of letters. A great part of them are letters from young women (and men) who where sexually abused by adults they trusted. They hate themselves because they think they made the adults do this. They are all wearing a little victim sign. Like they belong like some elite group. They're drown in a lake called victimhood. Instead of saying: 'No! I have the pride of a lioness. I will hunt. I will escape from this all.' I found this place when I lost my baby. Then I understood the life force you can get from it. So I could go to Venus, to make passionate records there. I can't define my new record yet. I only see this picture in front of me, like it is filmed from a camera that is circling round the heart of Venus. So I can look at her in all her darkness."
-- Tori; OOR Magazine, Sept. 18, 1999
"This record talks a lot about the shadows and the shadow world," says Amos. "Riot Poof is for all the jocks out there who need to deal with their secret sexuality." -- Tori; Tower Records' Pulse Magazine, NOV99
"I'm surprised when I see, for instance, gay men being racist or women colluding with that patriarchal thing, when women are sexist against women. So men don't surprise me. Being a lioness, I know the teeth and claws of women. But, of course, women have always been blamed. We see it down the centuries - 'if she didn't have a wet pussy then we wouldn't have been with her'. Urgh! And they have a woody sitting at the fuckin' table but they see it as this sanctified, insatiable body part. And women aren't allowed that - if they do, they become bad. That's what the song Riot Poof is about. It's like I'm the tooth fairy, the homo fairy and this is my present to all the homophobes. I'm leaving it under all their pillows. (pause) Blossom riot poof."
"Well, that being a poof doesn't mean you're not a hunter, that you're not masculine, or a man. And also being feminine doesn't mean that you're not a hunter either. There are all these concepts around but now the paradoxes are starting to live."
-- Tori; Attitude Magazine, Nov99
"Yeah... Because I was brought up in such a Christian household it is about the father. It's a father God and a son saviour so when I say The sun is warming / my man is moistening in Riot Poof, which is really about a guy who finds his feminine after he burns everything to ground and decides maybe, head, face down to the earth, 'Maybe I need to think about this for ten seconds'."
-- Tori; Much More Music's Speakeasy, Jan 2000
I: So who wrote a song about you?
Darren: Because I was cooking for Tori Amos when I came out, she wrote a song about me. It was called Drama Queen which when translated into Dutch and back into English becomes Riot Poof, so that's what she called it.
-- Darren Staats, Tori's chef during the 1998 Plugged Tour; Gay.com Interview, Early 2001
“Riot Poof is an English from a Dutch saying that is homosexual reference ... Sort of like a queen. And one of the guys on the crew came out and I wrote it in honor of him.” [Gay.com chat - October 2, 1999]
“...For the most part, we’re developing a theme from ourselves in our own loops. Even if we want something to sound like, I don’t know, something that was recorded in 1981 in a linoleum room with Naf plastic boots on, there is a design element. We are the design team; we design. With Riot Poof, there’s cocoa butter on that golden ass. And that ass is chocolate. A lot of R&B has no ass right now. Some of it does, some of it doesn’t. And there’s a sterility to a lot of electronica. Sometimes you want something to be sterile; that’s your point. But the whole idea of Riot Poof is the concept of when I say “you burn your pagoda through the Congo,” “pagoda” being a spiritual reference, and we all know what’s happened on the Congo, and if you want you can use it as black being the shadow, being the rhythm, being the holder and the keeper of secrets, not the acceptable material world but the witch doctor who sees what we masturbate to, what we fantasize about—the things we don’t find acceptable about ourselves, that we’re always constantly cutting out but sometimes we get tripped up when we drink too much to keep it down, or we go have an affair with God knows what.” [All Music zine (www) - October 1999]
Where did the phrase “Riot Poof” come from?
“It’s a Dutch thing. I love that, their idea of not a drama queen but a poofter. But I love the word ‘riot’ being with it, because in a strange way it’s a joke. But at the same time it’s not, because of the unleashing of the gay community. Sometimes it really is a sexual riot, a frenzy. It’s a real male frenzy, that whole song. But the idea of the unbelievable judgment that men have against men who desire to be with other men... But women wanting to be with women is quite yummy to anybody. If you think about it, the idea of men who love watching women being together, there’s an erotica. That’s ‘on the birth of the search/white trash, my native son.’ I’m singing Riot Poof from the concept of the mother - the all-inclusive mother, having borne men who want to be with men, having borne men who want to ‘break the terror of the urban spell,’ who want to kill men who want to be with other men. Because Venus, that’s the mother mode. She’s singing it from her point of view: ‘The sun is warming, my man is moistening.’” [All Music zine (www) - October 1999]
you know what you know so
you go break the terror of the
urban spell >>>>>> this alliance
you say 'I'm on the threshold
of greatness girl' >>>>>> so you
burn your pagoda through the
congo till there's a broken
bond >>>>>> on the birth of the
search white trash my native
son
it will all find its way in time
blossom, riot poof
you know what you know so
you go chain her to your flow
>>>>>> she bites through your
dried lean meat as she's
going to the movie show >>>>>>
in a bth of glitter and a tiny
shiver she crawls through
your java sea >>>>>> black
sahara I'm stepping into your
space oddity
it will all find its way in time
blossom, riot poof
the sun is warming my man is
moistening >>>>>> on the bomb
on the bond on the bomb
I think this is the song about the double standard and the "duh" factor. So the double standard is that so many times in the straight jock community the gay man is seen as a tabu or a weak person because they are attracted to other men. They can get beat up because of it, etc. But then in that same straight jock community we have the fascination and lusting after faux-lesbians. That double standard really makes you think about what is really being discriminated. It's not homosexuality necessarily, it's gays...not lesbians, gays. And that is what really frustrates me and Tori as seen here and rightfully so. So anyways, she's this faerie that puts a little "alarm clock" - wake up call underneath the homophobes pillows to harshly wake them up to the "duh" factor that homosexuality of any sort is not wrong, sinful, or unnatural in anyway. It's that riot of, "Oh my God! He's gay!" When you sit back and think about it, it's not a big deal. It's just a "different" (from a straight person's prespective) sexual orientation.
Here's Tori's description of it:
"To me Riot Poof is about one part of my family that is the conqueror and the other part who were being conquered. They fought at both sides. And you have to find out who you are. Many people don't want to see that they're partly victim and partly the executioner. Every evening I get letters. Hundreds of letters. A great part of them are letters from young women (and men) who where sexually abused by adults they trusted. They hate themselves because they think they made the adults do this. They are all wearing a little victim sign. Like they belong like some elite group. They're drown in a lake called victimhood. Instead of saying: 'No! I have the pride of a lioness. I will hunt. I will escape from this all.' I found this place when I lost my baby. Then I understood the life force you can get from it. So I could go to Venus, to make passionate records there. I can't define my new record yet. I only see this picture in front of me, like it is filmed from a camera that is circling round the heart of Venus. So I can look at her in all her darkness."
-- Tori; OOR Magazine, Sept. 18, 1999
"This record talks a lot about the shadows and the shadow world," says Amos. "Riot Poof is for all the jocks out there who need to deal with their secret sexuality." -- Tori; Tower Records' Pulse Magazine, NOV99
"I'm surprised when I see, for instance, gay men being racist or women colluding with that patriarchal thing, when women are sexist against women. So men don't surprise me. Being a lioness, I know the teeth and claws of women. But, of course, women have always been blamed. We see it down the centuries - 'if she didn't have a wet pussy then we wouldn't have been with her'. Urgh! And they have a woody sitting at the fuckin' table but they see it as this sanctified, insatiable body part. And women aren't allowed that - if they do, they become bad. That's what the song Riot Poof is about. It's like I'm the tooth fairy, the homo fairy and this is my present to all the homophobes. I'm leaving it under all their pillows. (pause) Blossom riot poof."
"Well, that being a poof doesn't mean you're not a hunter, that you're not masculine, or a man. And also being feminine doesn't mean that you're not a hunter either. There are all these concepts around but now the paradoxes are starting to live."
-- Tori; Attitude Magazine, Nov99
"Yeah... Because I was brought up in such a Christian household it is about the father. It's a father God and a son saviour so when I say The sun is warming / my man is moistening in Riot Poof, which is really about a guy who finds his feminine after he burns everything to ground and decides maybe, head, face down to the earth, 'Maybe I need to think about this for ten seconds'."
-- Tori; Much More Music's Speakeasy, Jan 2000
I: So who wrote a song about you?
Darren: Because I was cooking for Tori Amos when I came out, she wrote a song about me. It was called Drama Queen which when translated into Dutch and back into English becomes Riot Poof, so that's what she called it.
-- Darren Staats, Tori's chef during the 1998 Plugged Tour; Gay.com Interview, Early 2001
“Riot Poof is an English from a Dutch saying that is homosexual reference ... Sort of like a queen. And one of the guys on the crew came out and I wrote it in honor of him.” [Gay.com chat - October 2, 1999]
“...For the most part, we’re developing a theme from ourselves in our own loops. Even if we want something to sound like, I don’t know, something that was recorded in 1981 in a linoleum room with Naf plastic boots on, there is a design element. We are the design team; we design. With Riot Poof, there’s cocoa butter on that golden ass. And that ass is chocolate. A lot of R&B has no ass right now. Some of it does, some of it doesn’t. And there’s a sterility to a lot of electronica. Sometimes you want something to be sterile; that’s your point. But the whole idea of Riot Poof is the concept of when I say “you burn your pagoda through the Congo,” “pagoda” being a spiritual reference, and we all know what’s happened on the Congo, and if you want you can use it as black being the shadow, being the rhythm, being the holder and the keeper of secrets, not the acceptable material world but the witch doctor who sees what we masturbate to, what we fantasize about—the things we don’t find acceptable about ourselves, that we’re always constantly cutting out but sometimes we get tripped up when we drink too much to keep it down, or we go have an affair with God knows what.” [All Music zine (www) - October 1999]
Where did the phrase “Riot Poof” come from?
“It’s a Dutch thing. I love that, their idea of not a drama queen but a poofter. But I love the word ‘riot’ being with it, because in a strange way it’s a joke. But at the same time it’s not, because of the unleashing of the gay community. Sometimes it really is a sexual riot, a frenzy. It’s a real male frenzy, that whole song. But the idea of the unbelievable judgment that men have against men who desire to be with other men... But women wanting to be with women is quite yummy to anybody. If you think about it, the idea of men who love watching women being together, there’s an erotica. That’s ‘on the birth of the search/white trash, my native son.’ I’m singing Riot Poof from the concept of the mother - the all-inclusive mother, having borne men who want to be with men, having borne men who want to ‘break the terror of the urban spell,’ who want to kill men who want to be with other men. Because Venus, that’s the mother mode. She’s singing it from her point of view: ‘The sun is warming, my man is moistening.’” [All Music zine (www) - October 1999]
