[Hey, guys: Remember VISIONS OF MANLINESS WEEK? I sure do! Because, during that week, I was e-mailing a bunch of dudes! And, in my e-mails, I made jokes to dudes. About how they should write about things that dudes cared about, and were good at. Like comic books! Or sports! Or opening pickle jars! Or… music. For some reason, I kept referring to the process of listening to/writing about/collecting records of/playing music, specifically The Indie Rock Music, as a “dude thing?” Like, OVER AND OVER? And I was like, “wait a second, Sady. You are revealing some fundamental fucked-upness in these here jokes of yours. Because you personally listen to/write about/play music, often The Indie Rock Music, ALL THE TIME! As do lots of ladies! So, like… why do you still think of it as a thing reserved for dudes? Because these 64,000 jokes of yours would seem to indicate that you do!” Well: It turns out that there are some answers for these questions. And, for the purpose of answering them, we institute LADYPALOOZA (less stupid title TBA? No, it’s not TBA. This is the title, and it’s stupid), a Tiger Beatdown Theme Post Party specifically for talking about the Ladies and Music thing. It is much like Lilith Fair, except it is going to melt your face! From a variety of perspectives! First up: We start it hard, with a post by the exciting and rock-enabled Silvana. Who, it turns out, some of you may know!]
I used to be in a band.
I used to be in a band with a bunch of dudes.
People are always shocked when they hear this, if they know me, because they have a very specific sense of “women who play in bands” and it is most emphatically not me. In order to be a woman who plays in a band you have to be, first and foremost, hot. Preferably hot in that slightly NOT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE way, so that dudes can believe that they are the only guy in the world who really, truly understands how hot you are, and can correspondingly believe that by bestowing upon you their belief in your paramount hotness, they are giving you a sweet gift which will make you so ecstatically happy, and can therefore believe that, because all you want in the world is for dudes to think you are hot, you will sleep with them.
You can be slightly not one hundred percent hot by doing something out of the ordinary, like wearing glasses, having a tattoo, or wearing clothes that don’t match. Just like how overalls made Rachel Leigh Cook not-hot in She’s All That, wearing striped socks with checkered shoes will get you into the dudes-love-you-because-you-just-don’t-UNDERSTAND-how-hot-you-are club.
I am not one of those women. I am, plainly, fat. I am mildly cute. And I do not look like In A Band Woman. Guys seem to have a really hard time projecting their fantasies onto me! Go figure.
But this piece is not about how I look. No, basically it is about how I hate guys who are in bands, I hate dude music, I love lady music, and I love ladies who are in bands.
You want a poster child for the “feminists hate men and they are sooooo very mean” contest? I’m it! Because when it comes to music, I am sick and tired of dudes and their guitar riffs and their opinions.
When I was in a band, I wanted to rock out so hard. We rehearsed in a storage shed with a bunch of other bands down the hall. There was no bathroom. We would drink beer and the guys would go outside and piss on the tree. I was the only woman I ever saw at that storage facility, and I would go around the corner of the shed and piss on the pavement, hoping no one came by to look at my butt. It was not a woman-friendly environment. I thought I was in the band because I was good. It turns out I was in the band because they were tolerating me, since I was dating one of the guys in the band. After I broke up with him, they kicked me out. Apparently, I was not “committed” to the band! You know, because I was applying to law school? And trying to do something with my fucking life? Never mind that all the other band-dudes were pursuing regular careers so they could, like, make money and rent apartments and buy diamond rings for their girlfriends. But no, I was to have no ambition other than being in the band or I would be bandless.
I cried. And then I realized that I hated being in the band, because I had basically zero chance of ever getting any part of my creative vision into any of our music. I had dreaded going to practice. They wanted me to try harder! Try harder?! You’re not good enough, by the way. And also, try harder at doing the things that we tell you to do, even when you object to what we’re saying, but we don’t care what you think, because LADYBUSINESS.
That was the year I really got into Le Tigre.
I had moved to the United States when I was seventeen, and I didn’t know anything about music. Everything I knew was out of date. To my mind, Nirvana was still new and this was in the year 2000. And so I fell in with all these Band Dudes who were very serious about music and took each other’s opinions about music Very Seriously. Everything they listened to was made by men. The Pixies had Kim Deal; that was basically it. As far as they were concerned, Kim Deal was the only woman in the history of women who didn’t suck at music. My only frame of reference for women making music was when I had listened to TLC and the Pocahontas soundtrack back in the eighth grade (“how high does the sycamore grow…” I can still sing that song top to bottom). So I felt like I was the only young woman in the world who felt like making some goddamned rock music.
You know what? I really, truly, believed that I sucked because I was a girl, that I must have some weird thing about me that I could just not understand how to write songs or to play guitar or to rock out or to sing angry, because of my vagina. Dudes made me believe it. Because all through college, they refused to listen to women making music, refused to listen to women’s opinions about music, and regarded women who were really into music as “cute.” If one of their girlfriends happened to like one of the dude-approved bands of Dude Music? It was, oh, isn’t that cute, until, oh god, she is copying me GET YOUR OWN MUSIC.The number one thing I learned from being in a band and hanging out with a lot of guys who were Very Serious about music is that basically the worst thing that can happen to the music you love is for too many women to like it, or for one woman that you know to like it real hard. Music that is good is not music that women go crazy for. If women go crazy for it, it must suck, because women have terrible taste and like all that chick shit and like shave their legs and stuff but oh my god it’s disgusting when they don’t.
Did you get that? You are a shitty music-lover because you do not like all the same music that they do. But if you start liking it, then the music is shitty and they stop. I remember when I started liking a Pavement album a real lot. It suddenly became the least favorite Pavement album of my fine dude friends.Back to Le Tigre. One summer I made a wonderful friend who happened to be dating a guy who, magically, did not hate women, and he had made her a mix CD with some Le Tigre songs on it. She went crazy for Le Tigre and bought all the albums. And then she made me listen, and I went crazy for Le Tigre and bought all the albums. Oh my god. Women making music. Women screaming. Women kicking ass.
I brought the albums, and Sleater-Kinney, who I also discovered through my same friend, to my dude friends. They were unimpressed. They couldn’t say why. They weren’t stupid enough at that point, or even self-aware enough, to say that they didn’t like it because it was made by women. They just happened to not like it, even though they liked ALL THIS OTHER MUSIC THAT WAS LIKE IT. I don’t know, it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s boring. It’s whiny. It’s screechy. Oh, it’s repetitive. Or is it derivative?
Whatever it is, it sucks.
Being a feminist who is into music and cares about feminism and women in music is a giant pain in the ass, because music is the greatest haven of all time for ITSJUSTMYOPINION-ism. Because, you see? Music is art. Which means if you try to criticize someone’s personal taste, especially if you are suggesting that they don’t like woman-made music because THEY HATE WOMEN, you will get nowhere. There is almost no argument you can make that will have any effect whatsoever, because it’s just my opinion, man. And people believe, they believe with all their hearts, that they are entitled to their opinions when it comes to art, even if those opinions are stupid.
My personal favorite is “I just don’t like women’s voices.” Have you ever heard, in the history of time, anyone declare that they just don’t like men’s voices? No? That’s because there are so many different kinds of men’s voices, guys! Duh! Guys screaming, and guys shouting, tenors and baritones and bass, guys yodeling, guys crooning, guys singing slightly-out-of-tune, guys rapping, guys singing in that weird Pearl Jam voice and I know you know what I’m talking about. But women? Women’s voices. I don’t like them. They are high and whiny. I put them in the box of things I automatically don’t like.
I went to your concert and I didn’t feel anything
I went to your concert and I didn’t hear anything
I went to your concert and I didn’t feel anything
I went to your concert and I didn’t see anything
For me, this song was the ultimate piece of feminist music, more powerful than the songs that explicitly talked about feminism and feminists, than songs that talked about sexual assault, objectification, about the history of the struggle for women’s rights, about sex. This was a feminist song about music, about de-prioritizing men’s voices in music, about rejecting the music that men make as being kind of fucking boring.
This is what I call “dude music.” To clarify, just because music is made by men doesn’t mean it’s dude music. And just because music is made by women doesn’t mean it’s not dude music. No, dude music is music that prioritizes the status quo, that prioritize men’s voices, men’s experiences, and the experiences of people in power and who benefit from the current power structures in our society. Dude music is music that can ever be described as “noodling.” Dude music is post-rock, and prog-rock, and rock that exists not to say anything, but to showcase how awesome the men in the band are at playing guitar. Dude music is music that has nothing to offer people who are disenfranchised or oppressed, because it either is totally uninterested in their disenfranchisement/oppression, or actively profits from it. Dude music is “I went to your concert and I didn’t feel anything.” Because it is made by men, for men to enjoy, for men to profit from. Women have three roles: 1) to serve as inspirations for songs; 2) to be sex objects who, hopefully, also make music men feel good about Their Art; 3) to be someone who is dangerously standing in the way of men acheiving greatness (see, e.g., Yoko Ono and Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious’ girlfriend). Women do not make the music. Hopefully they buy the music, but not too many of them because then your music is Not Serious.
But hey, dudes who make serious, manly music? I went to your concert and I didn’t feel anything. Also, fuck you.
[Silvana is a lawyer and freelance writer who lawyers and writes in Washington, D.C., and blogs as “M. LeBlanc” at the blog Bitch, Ph.D. She likes ladies who make music, hating on the prison-industrial complex, and french fries.]
35 Comments
Yes yes YES to this post times a thousand. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that crap from people, as a girl who’s very much into music. “All women sound alike” – yes, because there is no difference between the voices of PJ Harvey, Lykke Li and Aretha Franklin. “Women don’t write music, they write lyrics” – lolwhut Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Tori Amos? “It all sounds like Kate Bush”, as if Kate Bush is the ONLY woman EVER to make vaguely rock-ish music. “Girls are too whiney” – and Linkin Park is…? “she didn’t write that song, the guitarist/male rocker she was dating did (especially if she was Courtney Love)” Aaaaargh.
That said, someone mentioned Mindless Self Indulgence above as an example of a band with female members but sexist lyrics – MSI’s lyrics are satirical, often trying to point out the sexism and homophobia in rock and rap music. The song cited, “Bitches”, is a pisstake on misogynistic rap music about how women are silly billies who only want some good hard cock. One of the other songs from that record, “Faggot”, is am incredibly empowering song about being “found out” as gay. Their songs don’t always make their satire clear enough and miss the intended mark, but I think they fall into a far different category than those attempting to uphold the patriarchal status quo. Sometimesthey end up inadvertently supporting it, but those are attempts to subvert and mock it that misfire.
Oh, wow, thanks for this. I’ve been in bands since I was in high school and I felt like you were writing from my brain. Luckily the band I’m in now isn’t SO much like this, at least a couple of us consider ourselves feminists. I would love to be in a band with another woman at some point, I’ve only ever played with dudes. And yeah, my husband, and reason I started playing in bands, used to say “I just don’t like women’s voices.” Luckily he has grown up and doesn’t think like that anymore. Dudes that think like that do need to grow the fuck up. Much love. <3 Kat
Yesterday I played a reunion gig, womens’ rock band, mostly covers, last time we played together was around 1991. I play keyboards, using a good old DX7 for these kinds of gigs; played Hammond B3 for 12 years (still have her; no longer have the people to move her!!). I’ve got the best B3 patches you can have on a DX7, got years ago from a guy who designed them & loved B3s.
Anyhow, we’re doing soundcheck at this club, there will be 3 bands, 2 that are more country than our rock band. Soundguy wants to run me thru direct box, OK. Wants me to turn my amp very low, OK if you put keyboard in monitor. I play him some rhodosonic patch, then tell him OK I’m going to be playing a lot of Hammond B3 type stuff, and of course I use a volume pedal, so my volume will be all over the map.
There’s this pause. He tells me, “You need to not change your volume.” I said, I use a volume pedal, my volume will be all over the place, here’s an example. We were actually playing “Hush”, by Deep Purple, and I was doing a long really out-there organ solo, so I played a measure like that. He just stared at me.
So in the gig, I had real trouble hearing myself — and I’ve played in a number of rock bands, live sound is always an issue, especially when you play keyboards and the typical attitude is “if you have the keyboards anywhere near the guitars in volume level, we will say you are playing too deafeningly loud”. I haven’t listened to the tape yet. I didn’t want to turn up my amp, for stage sound, since we had less experienced band members, we’d not all played together before (this was reunion of several iterations of a band), and they were very nervous about on-stage sound.
Guitar friend of mine in audience, who played in bands with me for 10 years, loves the B3, said the house mix wasn’t too bad (except for bass and drums were very high in mix, which is not “the way it always must be”, but “this is ONE possible way to mix live sound”)(we’d gotten the sound guy to greatly lower how he was doing bass & drums, but not enough).
I do B3 technique (roars, screams, big glisses, “wow!”s, etc., it’s very messy).
So, if I play at that club again, I’ll request that we either run our own sound, or not use that sound guy! At reahearsals, we had a guy sitting in for some songs on bass, who works as a sound guy, and he “got” our sound much more (and yeah, of course rehearsals aren’t gigs). Years ago, a couple bands I was in often played a club in Sierra Madre, and the house had 2 possible sound guys; I brought the B3 to those gigs for both bands. After a couple go-rounds, my bands and I said, we’ll play on the nights X sound guy is there, but not on the nights Y sound guy is there, and that’s what we did. The Y sound guy told me “you have to compress your sound”. I’m going, this is a Hammond B3, they by their nature do not fit in some small category, they are dragons!
I call my self a radical feminist, and even at age 58 it’s hard to say “I want my monitor volume to be higher”. Though I do it! And we can make sure we support other band members in this too.
One thing to keep in mind, all you guitarists out there, is, please don’t do the same oppression to keyboardists, that male musicians do to you! Seriously, this has happened in a number of women-only bands I’ve been in — oh, the guitars can be loud! but Goddess forbid the keyboard makes any serious noise! This is “internalized self oppression”, if I recall the terms right.
So, we had a lot of fun at the gig! after all that! and we’re planning on playing again this summer.
Gesine
who still has “Hush” running through her mind
I want to distribute this to everyone I know, or paint it on a wall, or put it on a tshirt.
You said it all!
GIANT. SQUID.
dude, le tigre fucking rock. it sounds like you knew too many douchey guys.
also: heart
All I know is it was my sister who turned me on to Faith No More, and I was thrilled when she liked Rush as much as I did. So there are exceptions.
I love women’s voices, there just aren’t enough women doing prog rock, and there need to be more, in my opinion.
@K: re: Big hands/small hands
I have tiny hands – mutant hands with little fingers that stop short of the second joint on my ring fingers. I never learned to play guitar because it physically hurt me, so I picked up mandolin instead. And wow, I got some flack for that – I never had any idea that mandolin was a dude instrument! Especially since one of the best bouzouki players I’ve ever heard is Beth Patterson.
I like Kate Bush – she was my introduction to Girls Who Rock – but I got so tired of all the guys that said she just screeched and they hated her voice. Bleh.
This article touched a deep, deep chord in many of us, and it speaks a monumental truth: Dudes are afraid of women being better than them, so they have to keep them out.
Love this post. It’s been open on my laptop for three days now and I’ve been working through the comments. As a guy in a band, SeanH’s comment (#84) resonated with me a bit. I obviously don’t personally confront many of the issues that have been raised here, and I am absolutely not trying to derail or make this about Me and My Male Experience in any way, but it’s frustrating to be in a band, playing what should be non-dude music, and still to look out into the audience and see nothing but dudes.
The indie club rock scene here in Boston is a sausage fest, I’ve come to realize; it doesn’t matter so much who you are, or what style of rock music you play, how good you are, or anything. It just feels like the average young person coming out to local rock shows is male, and more specifically, that certain breed of cool sexist hipster male college student we all know, and it is these people, not necessarily the bands, who turn normal club gigs into Shows of Dude Power Solidarity. I would really, really like them to stop.
Which isn’t to say the local bands don’t contribute to the situation, since they totally do. I just don’t personally understand why a band would even want their fan base to be dominated by men, many of whom are self-centered and abrasive to boot. I don’t get it. I mean, I get it… but I don’t get it.
This post really resonated with me. I used to actually be one of those people who thought women’s voices weren’t as interesting/whatever as men’s, but that was because I’d only really listened to pop, I think. Having done the research, now I mostly listen to female musicians. You should check out the book “Frock Rock” by Mavis Bayton, it’s basically a comprehensive detailed list of all the difficulties women face in the music industry. I can’t think of anything that it leaves out. It’s accessible and entertaining and needs to be read by more people, not just those doing musicology courses.
>>>My personal favorite is “I just don’t like women’s voices.”
Wow, this must be a generational thing. Hell, when I grew up, there was Connie Francis, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Lulu, Petula Clark, and more. Top 40. It was never a man vs. woman thing in music. It was MUSIC.
But I think I know what you mean by “dude” music. Because I hate that shit.
Oh, and let me add: Thanks for that Le Tigre clip. Damn, they kick ass!
Just want to chime in and say this is what drives me crazy about Sirius. I could listen to the rock stations for days and never hear anybody who speaks to me.
Also, although System of a Down bored me to tears, Halestorm opened for them and they might be the best thing ever in the whole world. Lady fronted, guy backed, total awesomeness. She kicked ass. I bought the album the next day.
@ Charlie H: There are (at least) two things you can do to change that.
One – Tell all the women who want to to come to the front before you start. Women are usually much shorter than men and, in my shortie experience, usually have men deciding that, oh, no one is using this space, there’s just a girl watching the band so it won’t matter if I stand directly in front of her so that she gets to look at my shoulder blades for the entire show.
Two, make sure the audience knows that you won’t put up with gropers. You can do that as the band on stage and as just another member of the audience. My friends and I have been sexually assaulted more at shows than we have been on crowded public transportation.
I’d just like to take a few lines to promote my favourite all-woman band:
The Robots In Disguise!
If you haven’t listened to them before, I recommend starting with Girl (“Girl – it’s not a dirty word!”). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES672S-XdJ0
TheWhatIfGirl: “creepy stuff from guys who said they liked a band but, upon further explication, clearly were more interested in the fantasy that the woman might graciously decide to sleep with the guy just because he liked her music.”
You have just described a groupie! (Or the stereotypical concept of one – I have a very different personal concept of groupies, which is actually quite positive.) Men like this need to be consistently referred to as “groupies” preferably to their faces/in hearing distance.
I find the way this shit cycles back around every generation depressing. I’m 46, so to me, the post-Nirvana period doesn’t seem all that long ago. And it seemed that every fucking band that was getting attention was either all-women or women-dominated: The Breeders, Belly, Hole, L7, Babes in Toyland, Lush, Elastica, Echobelly. And not only did these bands have street cred, but they were all topping the charts. Any douchey Dudebro saying, “Women can’t rock” would’ve been laughed out of town.
God, I miss that time.
And sorry for the double posting, but c’mon everyone: doesn’t ANYONE remember Frightwig????
And I can’t believe I left Luscious Jackson and the Lunachicks out of my previous comment.
I think we’re twins!
http://www.soundsgoodink.com/featured/her-singing-is-sick
Part of this reminded me of something I read in an interview with the Broun Fellinis, to the effect of ‘if we got to a gig and the audience was all male, we’d probably do a twenty minute set and leave.’ They didn’t care for the experience, it seems. I understand a bit more about that now, I think.
Also, I tend not to listen to much rock, so don’t know much about it. My thirteen year old son likes Linkin Park and the DJ Tiesto, so perhaps I should find some Le Tigre for him to sample.
When I read the ‘I don’t like women’s voices’ line, my first reaction was ‘so that’s why you don’t listen to them!’ but I don’t know any dudes like that, so if you like the comeback, you are welcome to use it. If, not, no problem.
Y’all might have better luck in your quest for badass female musicians if you forgot about indie rock and listened to classical. There’s Martha Argerich, Ingrid Fliter, Hilary Hahn, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Alicia de Larrocha, Mitsuko Uchida, Hélène Grimaud, Wanda Landowska, not to mention the countless flutists, clarinetists or percussionists in orchestras worldwide. Why stick to a genre where even the famous players barely know how to handle their instrument?
this makes me want to learn to play an instrument, start a band, and kick some ass. i listen to a ton of indie and 99% of it is man-made. sadly. although i do think good music is just good music, regardless of who creates it, it would be nice to have some more female musicians in the indie rock arena.
oh thank you for this post and all the awesome comments! I love Luscious Jackson, by the way whoever just mentioned them <3
As a teenager I was deeply ridiculed for my music choices (mostly Tori Amos) and the music I played myself, by the guy friends I hung out with. I have recently thought this was pretty deeply misogynistic but this post just clarifies so much for me. SO MUCH. You ladies and your lady business are awesome.
this makes me want to learn to play an instrument, start a band, and kick some ass. i listen to a ton of indie and 99% of it is man-made. sadly. although i do think good music is just good music, regardless of who creates it, it would be nice to have some more female musicians in the indie rock arena.
I find the way this shit cycles back around every generation depressing. I’m 46, so to me, the post-Nirvana period doesn’t seem all that long ago. And it seemed that every fucking band that was getting attention was either all-women or women-dominated: The Breeders, Belly, Hole, L7, Babes in Toyland, Lush, Elastica, Echobelly. And not only did these bands have street cred, but they were all topping the charts. Any douchey Dudebro saying, “Women can’t rock” would’ve been laughed out of town.
God, I miss that time.
According to the article, nothing was hacked. It was a viral scheme. This isn’t hacking, its people voting.
Pretty sure the thread has gone dormant, but didn’t want to leave Marco and Adam/Cassandra unanswered.
The point of this post is NOT the dearth of awesome women in indie music. THERE ARE LOTS OF AWESOME WOMEN IN INDIE MUSIC. If 99% of your listening is male, you’re doing it wrong. The point is the dearth of the recognition of awesome indie women. Get it straight, dammit.
YES, THIS. THIS THIS THIS. I am a 27-year-old woman, and I sing and play guitar in a band with three men my father’s age (58-60ish) who drive me completely insane for a thousand reasons. One of them even said to me a few weeks ago, “You know, usually I don’t like women singers…you’re the only one I like.” What the jesus’ fuck am I supposed to do with that? It is unbelIEVable how much I have to play nice with these old bastards. I’m printing this out and reading it before every rehearsal.
I’m late to this post, but oh hell yeah. I just started getting into the music business a couple of years ago. I’m a late-comer, older than most newcomers, so I don’t get pushed around easily. But holy CRAP. Yeah. When I first put my band together, I felt like Eliza Doolittle being instructed by Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering! I used to date the lead guitarist (the Colonel), until about a month ago. Now I’m fighting to hang onto the band, but luckily, the other 2 guys have female partners who are musicians, and they are very much sticking with me.
I heard a similar story from a musician in another band recently, about peeing in shared rehearsal space. He said the musicians all peed in empty Corona bottles and lined them up on the stairs. I asked him what the women did. He shrugged and said gruffly, “There weren’t any women there,” and turned away.
Everywhere I go, I see male bands covering the same old shit. The same shit I can hear on the canned tracks during band breaks. The same music I can hear at the grocery store, to be frank. I never see a male band cover a female artist. A lot of bands that have women singers don’t cover many women artists. I get up there and, when I do covers, that’s mainly what I cover – women artists. I don’t care about genre, as long as I love the song and it’s got integrity. And audiences love it! Probably because they never get to hear those songs from a live band.
Admittedly, I live in a small city, but I can count on one hand the number of local rock bands (or blues bands, or metal bands, or punk bands, or country bands, or jazz bands…) with women in them. I’m the ONLY woman locally who actually plays an instrument in a gigging band at this moment in time. And I’m often the only woman at electric jams; I’m almost always the only one who brings an instrument, if there are others. That also disturbs me greatly, as I know women musicians exist! Maybe they are all being steered towards bluegrass and folk. I know lots of people have tried to steer me in those directions, because that world is more embracing of women who play. And that’s another thing that pisses me off, while I’m ranting. Women picking up instruments and then being discouraged from rocking out. No effing way is that happening to me!
From this weekend’s New York Times Magazine (I KNOW, I am an Effete Liberal Snob) on The National:
“The National sound has a layered, seductive quality that is filled with intimate male feeling and uneasy cinematic portent…”
I am sure The National is a fine band, but could there be a better summary of Dude Music than “intimate male feeling”? About which I do not give a shit?
I saw Sleater Kinney open up for Pearl Jam 3 times and they ROCKED. Especially when PJ brought ’em back out jam out to Fortunate Son together. My face was melted.
I wrote “Is it just me, or is the over-saturation of Indie Rock making the record industry even MORE male-dominated? But don’t worry ladies, if you’ve got the look you can work it” on my facebook profile and I was directed to this link by my friend. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
As a musician who also doesn’t suck, and who isn’t comparable to Jewel, or Ani Defranco, or Patsy Cline or any of the other standard female songwriters that get used as a template for all “chick music”… I just want to get up on stage just ONCE, and not have to start playing before people start to pay attention. I will sit through some guy’s painful performance where everyone is watching respectfully, and then, when I get up, watch everyone turn away to the bar to get a drink. Why…? BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN. And then I have to “prove myself” onstage. FUCK THAT SHIT!
I’m incapable of describing music in terms other than “I like it” and “I dislike it” so all this talk of prefix-rock is flying right over my head, so I’ll just say that this has been very useful simply because it’s given me a lot of music to check out.
I might end up not liking it, but given the sheer volume of suggestions, odds are I’ll find something I will like.
Okay, like four months late to the party but two things:
1. I am assigning this post and its sequel to my students in my Music and Gender class because they are just fucking brilliant (if I have Silvana’s permission? I asked Sady but like an idiot totally forgot to ask you!).
2. About “that Pearl Jam voice”: there’s a wonderful piece by Suzanne Cusick called “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex” about Pearl Jam and the Indigo Girls that talks about that voice. Sadly it is not on the internet so I can’t share it here, but it is in the book Audible Traces if anyone wants to find it.
Okay, three things.
3. I keep coming back and rereading this post even months later because it is that much awesome.
woah, it made me kind of sad that people in the post have said things along the lines of “there’s no girl bands like there were in the 90’s” when there’s ALWAYS been completely amazing female bands for a long long time at any given period, especially right NOW! Lust Cats of the Gutters! Grass Widow! Night of Joy! (to name drop a couple rad bands)
or that PJ Harvey is the only female to nail the “dark/heavy” thing. WHAT!?
as a dude, i feel like there’s so much fucking awesome female music happening RIGHT NOW.
i’d like to leave a link to a great compilation of Female Fronted Punk-Rock from 1977-89 that has so many awesome bands in it:
http://kangnave.blogspot.com/2010/02/reference-of-female-fronted-punk-rock.html
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