[TypicalGirls] Shrreds! (where is it?)
Chuck Warner
chuck at hyped2death.com
Sun Jun 3 00:22:41 EDT 2007
>Chuck, weren't you planning at least tentatively once upon a time to
>do a comp of H2D/Messthetics-era female-oriented stuff? Any chance
>that's still on the horizon somewhere?
>
>Dan
Yeah...this seems like an opportune time to open up the discussion.
I count any number of reasons for the, um, delay. First, however,
you should understand that I have some deeply-indoctrinated feminist
roots that keep getting in the way of commercial good sense, here.
Exploiting female singers for sex-appeal and profit is a long and
discouraging tradition in the music business, and I can barely get
comfortable with the "grrrl" coinage, let alone write "girl singer"
without cringing (I use quotes to ease the guilt). I have contacts
with thousands of musicians from '77-84, and it would be little
trouble to patch together several decent CDs of thematically
disparate female vocals...and they'd all make money. But as those
hardy souls who've kept up with the regional versions of Messthetics
have seen, I've drifted farther and farther into an archival/academic
direction, and I can't stand the thought of something haphazard:
So... here are the challenges:
(1) As we can all see by the limited debate over Dina's list of
essentials, there were only a handful of all-female bands to begin
with --and almost every one of them became well-known (and
well-reissued). Among the unknowns in the
Messthetics/Homework/Teenline spectrum, the Androids of Mu, Wilma and
Boy Trouble (respectively) were themselves quite high-profile
compared to "average" H2D bands. (Y Pants were of course on the early
Homeworks --and kindly agreed to stay on for the 100-series
revision...) Which begs
(2) the debate over how many bands should be included that merely had
a female singer. Allowing that she should at least be the principal
songwriter will limit that selection to manageable size. But
(3) the biggest problem is the way that most of these bands recorded
and arranged their songs. Here's a condensed version of a VERY long
argument over what (so often) went wrong, excerpted from the
[8000-word] liner-notes to Messthetics #103. This paragraph
introduced Coventry's Human Cabbages --a fine band with an excellent
singer, but their recordings [5 songs extant] illustrated my point
more than they showed the exception...:
The fact that Messthetics has so few bands with female vocalists
involves a far longer story than we have space for here. Plainly,
however, something about playing with a "girl singer" tended to make
young [male] band-mates conduct themselves in a more dignified and
professional manner -and/or to make utter fools of themselves showing
off. And even the laziest studio knob-twiddlers felt strange
compulsions to make the vocals "pretty" , or else to pile on effects
til everything sounded like Siouxsie -or whoever else had recently
topped the charts. In commercial circles this was business-as-usual,
but the first principle of Messthetics' musical universe is
unselfconsciousness -and above all never worrying about who (if
anyone) is paying attention. So while untold hundreds of teen-aged
boys with unremarkable voices were able to sound like...just that,
only the tiniest handful of women made it to vinyl sounding relaxed
andordinary.
Bands like Kleenex (and surprisingly many other Swiss, Dutch, German
and Scandinavian bands) did this spectacularly well, but the
phenomenon I'm talking about didn't really gain meaningful traction
in the US or UK until the Riot Grrl bands (who were often
self-consciously writing for a female audience), and only became
established for good (one hopes) with the geek culture bands [guys no
longer have to impress the girls] and laptop pop [you never have to
face your audience --or internalize/conform to their expectations].
Then, finally, from a purely practical standpoint,
(4) Women from punk-era bands remain MUCH much harder to trace than
men. Not just because some of them have married (or divorced) and
changed names, but also because far fewer ever kept telephone
listings in their own names, or are now given to myspace braggadocio
over their past musical exploits. In my experience it's also
significantly less likely that they are still making music (further
complications of (3) above? i.e. it's harder to keep making music
just for fun when people assume you're trying to be a pop-star
[simply because of your gender]) ...which, to bring things full
circle, is often an excellent reason to reject someone like me out of
hand when I come asking to reissue their 25-30-year-old song...
(Brenda Kenny from Naafi/Naffi remains the only musician from any
Messthetics-scene band who simply cut off my spiel to say "Not
interested... No... Not interested in any reissue, anywhere, ever."
I didn't even get to tell her I was only interested in the
instrumental B-side, "Freddy's Fever" [there's still hope, I suppose,
if I can track down Sir Freddy Viaduct...] ;o)
Anyone wanna help with my wish-list, btw? Some of the star[let]s are
Esmerelda [Noh Mercy], Stef Petticoat, Rose Collis [Outsize
Oddments], Carol Bently [Aquila] and Toxicomane [4 or 5 anonymous
highschoolers from Southampton who formed a band to fill a vacant
slot on the barely-issued South Specific compilation]...
So at this point I'm clearer on the concept of what I want to do, but
even with the singing-in-their-natural-voices + anti-commercialism
filters in place, I'd be chronicling a "scene" in the UK that didn't
yet exist (certainly not in the sense that everyone was swapping
tapes or going to each other's shows). That's the "Let's Talk About
Prams" series ...speaking of essential listening:
http://hyped2death-www/ra/Vital_Disorders-Prams.rm
In the States--the Shrreds! compilations-- should be a good bit
easier, as long as people don't mind if it's more individual singers
than all-women bands. Mostly because there were so many more records
and so many more bands played out (so that members of other bands
know where to find them).
Enough for now? Any comments'd be most welcome...
thanks,
C.
P.S. Since there don't seem to be CD reissues of the Bangles' indie
7" and 12" EP, "All Over the Place" is an easy selection (and
arguably the stronger material anyway: Douglas is exactly right).
And if it was just me making the list, I'd throw in the Mystère des
Voix Bulgares album (Nonesuch, 1980-)? Not TG at all, except that it
was completely mindblowing to everyone that heard it for the first
time back then, partly because of the melodies, but especially
because it was this MASS of women making all kinds of incredible
vocal sounds without any preconceptions of (or training in)
traditional/classical singing technique.
--
Chuck Warner
Hyped to Death CDs/Messthetics
P.O. Box 351
Westminster, Massachusetts 01473
http://hyped2death.com
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