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Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)
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- From: Chuck Warner <chuck AT hyped2death.com>
- To: "Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)" <typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: [TypicalGirls] Shrreds! (where is it?)
- Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 00:22:41 -0400
Title: Shrreds! (where is it?)
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
Hyped to Death CDs/Messthetics
P.O. Box 351
Westminster, Massachusetts 01473
http://hyped2death.com
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3)
, (continued)
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3),
robin dunn, 06/02/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker(part 3),
Dina Hornreich, 06/02/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker(part 3),
Matt Perkins, 06/02/2007
- [TypicalGirls] preTG-era suggestions, Dina Hornreich, 06/03/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker(part 3),
Matt Perkins, 06/02/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker(part 3),
Dina Hornreich, 06/02/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3),
jhubbard, 06/02/2007
- Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3), Dina Hornreich, 06/03/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3),
Dina Hornreich, 06/02/2007
- [TypicalGirls] Bangles/Family Fodder, Douglas Wolk, 06/02/2007
- Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3), Dina Hornreich, 06/02/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3),
dan bailey, 06/02/2007
- [TypicalGirls] Shrreds! (where is it?), Chuck Warner, 06/03/2007
-
Re: [TypicalGirls] 15 must-haves for the beginning girl rocker (part 3),
robin dunn, 06/02/2007
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