Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

typicalgirls - [TypicalGirls] Shrreds! (where is it?)

typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • 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 andŠordinary.

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



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page