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

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  • From: Douglas Wolk <dbcloud AT panix.com>
  • To: "Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)" <typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [TypicalGirls] Random Observation
  • Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:13:14 -0700


Emily's on the money. The Velvet Underground, the ur-alt-rock band, had a male viola player and a female drummer; that doesn't seem to have permanently stuck as the formula, either!

I tried to make a quick mental list of other rock bands w/ string players, and came up with the Dirty 3 (man), King of the Slums (woman), Fairport Convention (man), Rasputina (women but that's sort of their raison d'etre), Belle & Sebastian (women), The Ex (a man in their "Scrabbling at the Lock" era, a woman more recently)... there doesn't seem to be a particular pattern.

Douglas

At 1:54 PM -0700 6/19/07, Emily Arkin wrote:
Interesting... (I'm a female rock violinst myself) I think
that, due to their arty bent, these bands wanted to
incorporate instruments that were not necessarily
considered rock-by-nature (rather than this being directly
related to gender). Tho I guess many people argue that the
off-kilter/experimental nature of Liliput and The
Raincoats' songwriting is a direct result of being
female/having a feminine aesthetic. There's something about
that argument that I don't like but I can't quite put my
finger on it. I guess it's just that I hate to see musical
ideas pigeonholed by sex when there are so many other ways
to describe music which don't invoke the whole ball of
gender stereotyping wax.
Emily
http://shepherdessband.com





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