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Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)
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- From: "Lani Smith" <LSmith AT minlib.net>
- To: "Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)" <typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters
- Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:02:47 -0400
Alex, I love your positive attitude!
- Lani
PS. Thanks so much for that EP, if it was you that sent it...
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex murray-leslie <a AT chicksonspeed.com>
To: "Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)" <typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Cc: kimberly AT sfbg.com
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:07:58 +0200
Subject: Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters
Kimberly,I think these views are more than just based on girl groups in the US,please do consider what´s happening over here in Europe too! We are at it full on anddon´t see things as negatively as you do. Anyway, MTV has very rarely supported or playedgood music, so who cares about this mass mentality, we have other ways of getting attentionand having our great music infiltrate the boring domains of male music. Lets support who´s out there nowand move forwards together!A few Women´s groups and solo acts, performing, reforming or just new to the scene in europe:The SLitsThe RaincoatsAnat Ben DavidAlaskakevin BlechdomPlanningtorockTina Weymouth (releases over here quite often)Angie ReedGudrun GutMiss KittinThe Long BlondesBjorkSiouxsie SiouxGustavPam HoggRhythem King and Her FriendsDanni SicillianoChloeAnn ShentonChicks on SpeedLas Perras Del InfernoMichaela MelianVivian GoldmanPeachesElle BanditaThe PipettesRobots in DisguisePiney GeerFrancoise CactusCobra KillerCatriona ShawElectralaneThe Girl Monster OrchestraDie Braut Haut ins AugeThis is not including the huge number of female dj´sthat would be another 100 or more names, at least! Electric INdigo has a siteunder the title: female pressure, its been around for a long time, she also just released a cd compoozing with things of the female kind.is there a data base with all these acts, maybe this should be created, so we can all get a clear overviewof whats happening in the world of women´s music right now.oh and to celebrate women´s music ...... we just released the GIRL MONSTER 12" and the cd with 60songs is available end of Sept, worldwide.
On Jul 20, 2006, at 2:30 AM, WWWhatsup wrote:
[This story is spin I'd say. Le Tigre are just on hiatus. And there aremore girls in bands now than ever.]http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=1130&catid=107&volume_id=147&issue_id=234&volume_num=40&issue_num=42A band of sistersAs Sleater-Kinney, Destiny's Child, and le Tigre bid farewell, anex-all-girl punk band member wonders, where have all the music-making women gone?BY KIMBERLY CHUN kimberly AT sfbg.comCast your eyes on the Billboard chart and it seems like summer2006 will go down in history as the season of the Latin diva, withNelly Furtado doffing a soft-focus folkie-cutie image by declaringherself "Promiscuous" and Shakira holding on to the promise of,well, that crazy, sexy, but not quite cool chest move she's closeto trademarked via "Hips Don't Lie." Rihanna and ChristinaAguilera brought up the rear of the Billboard Hot 100 singleschart last week solo singers all. But with the on-again, off-again slow fade of Destiny's Child, the imminent demise of theexplicitly feminist Sleater-Kinney, and the earlier evaporation ofthe even more didactic le Tigre, one has to wonder, what hashappened to all-girl groups?Was it a gimmick? Did Newsweek and Seventeen leach riot grrrl'sgenuine grassroots movement of its "authenticity" and power? WasSarah McLachlan lame? Was Courtney Love insane? Perhaps the answeris on today's pop charts, where the sole "girl group" if youdon't count the manly guest MC appearances is the frankly fauxPussycat Dolls, a sorry excuse for women's empowerment if thereever was one. Their 90s counterparts the Spice Girls baldlyappropriated "girl power" as their own marketing slogan, but atleast they gave 30-second-commercial-break lip service to thenotion.The scarcity of all-female bands particularly the variety whosewomen do more than simply lip-synch on video has perhaps spreadto supposedly more progressive spheres. Erase Errata bassist-vocalist Ellie Erickson notes that when the band recently playedChicago's Intonation Music Festival, she was shocked to discoverthat their all-female trio made up almost half the total number ofwomen performing among about 50 artists. Even at a more down-low,underground gathering like last months End Times Festival inMinneapolis, where Bay Area bands dominated, only one all-girlband, T.I.T.S., made the cut, observes the band's guitarist, KimWest. "When we were in Minneapolis there were so many girls whocame up to us and were, like, 'This is so awesome! There are noall-girl bands here and it's so rare to see this, she recalls.Girl groups do persist: the news-making, stand-taking, chops-wielding Dixie Chicks among them. But for every Chicks there's aDonnas, now off Atlantic after the Bay Areabred band's secondmajor-label release stumbled at takeoff. Is Dixie Chickscredibility forthcoming for commercial girl bands like Lillix, theLike, and Kittie? Some might argue that feminism's gains in the70s and 80s which led to the blossoming of all-female groupsfrom TLC to Babes in Toyland, Vanity 6 to L7, and Fannypack toBikini Kill have led to a postfeminist moment in which stronglyfemale-identified artists are ghettoized or otherwise relegated tothe zone of erotic fantasy (e.g., Pussycat Dolls). Gone are thedays when Rolling Stone touted the "Women of Rock" in their 199730th anniversary issue and Lilith Fair brought female singer-songwriters to every cranny of the nation."I think that with the demise of Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre, it'sa very sad time for girl groups," e-mails Evelyn McDonnell, MiamiHerald pop culture writer and coauthor of Rock She Wrote. "Itseems like the end of the 90s women in rock era, an era thatunfortunately left fewer marks than we hoped it would 15 yearsago."Radio's known resistance to women-dominated bands hasn't helped.Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna told me last year that despite the bestefforts of her label, Universal, to get her feminist trio's firstmajor-label release, This Island, out to the masses, "MTV didn'tplay our video and radio didn't play our single either. Some ofthat is that we're women and they've already got Gwen Stefani. Sowe just have to wait till she stops making music or something likethat." She was told that a group of three women was less likely toget play than a band of men fronted by a female vocalist.Perhaps feminism is simply not in vogue, speculates Erase Erratavocalist-guitarist Jenny Hoyston. "I think any woman who's amusician is going to have people say she's only getting attentionbecause she's a woman," she says. "It's gonna be assumed that theydon't know how to work their gear, that they don't necessarilyplay as well. That kind of typical stuff.... A lot of peoplearen't taken seriously, especially if they get too queer or toogay in their songwriting, and I think that people get judged a lotfor being too feminist, for sure, and I think there's a majorbacklash against feminism in scenes that I've been a part of inthis country. I think people are cooler about it in the UKdefinitely and in some other countries in Europe."But how does one explain the strong presence of all-female (orfemale-dominated) bands in the Bay Area such as Erase Errata,T.I.T.S., 16 Bitch Pileup, Blectum from Blechdom, Boyskout,Vervein, and Von Iva? "I think San Francisco is a big hub forwomen bands," offers West, a veteran of Crack: We Are Rock andDeath Sentence! Panda. With a provocative name and costumes ("It'ssexy from afar and scary once you get closer," West says), theband including guitarist-vocalist Mary Elizabeth Yarborough,guitarist-vocalist Abbey Kerins, and Condor drummer Wendy Farina reflects a kind of decentralized, cooperative approach to musicmaking. "There's no lead," West explains. "I think that's a reallybig element. We all sing together and we all come up with lyricstogether. We each write a sentence or a word or a verse and put itin a hat and pull it out and that becomes a song. No one has morewriting power than anyone else it's all even. I think girls aremore likely to like some idea like that than guys."And there's power in their female numbers, West believes,discussing T.I.T.S.'s June UK tour: "It's funny because it was thefirst time I'd ever been on tour with all four girls. When I'd goon tour with Crack, guys would be hitting on us, and withT.I.T.S., guys were a little more intimidated because I think wewere like a gang. We had that tightness in our group, so it'sharder to approach four girls than one girl or two girls,especially when we're laughing and having a good time."In the end, McDonnell is optimistic that feminism could make acomeback. "I see a revival of progressive ideas in general inculture, largely in reaction to war and Bush.... The Dixie Chicksare arguably the most important group in popular music, andthey're fantastically outspoken as women's liberationists," shewrites, also praising the Gossip, Peaches, and Chicks on Speed."And the decentralization of the music industry should openavenues to women, making success less dependent on cruelly,ridiculously chauvinist radio."Ever the less-optimistic outsider, I'm less given to believingfile sharing and self-released music can dispel the sexismembedded in the music industry or stem the tide of socialconservatism in this country. But that kind of spirit as well asgoing with the urge to make music and art with other women, fromour own jokes, horrors, and everyday existences is a start. SFBG---------------------------------------------------------------WWWhatsup NYChttp://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com---------------------------------------------------------------_______________________________________________TypicalGirls mailing listTypicalGirls AT lists.ibiblio.orghttp://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/typicalgirls
-
[TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
WWWhatsup, 07/19/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
Alex murray-leslie, 07/20/2006
- Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters, Lani Smith, 07/20/2006
- Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters, J Neo Marvin, 07/20/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
J Neo Marvin, 07/20/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
brandon wolford, 07/20/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
J Neo Marvin, 07/21/2006
- Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters, Dina Hornreich, 07/21/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
J Neo Marvin, 07/21/2006
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Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
brandon wolford, 07/20/2006
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters, weasel walter, 07/20/2006
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] A band of sisters,
Alex murray-leslie, 07/20/2006
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