Want to do my Ph.D on Sonic Youth, The "Sister" Period
Interesting and disturbing article from the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald, about how female rock bands don’t get no respect, with articles about them focusing more on their looks than their chops. It sucks. I like a lot of female bands, and I don’t give a damn what they look like. A great song is a great song and a great performance is a great performance, no matter what the band looks like. A lot of my favorite songwriters and musicians these days are female. Lora MacFarlane of Australian "band" Ninety-nine, for example, writes these incredibly pithy, wonderful, even funny songs and then playes them with some really oddball ear-tickling arrangements that sound just as influenced by Indonesian gamelan as by punk rock. Keri McTighe of my new favorites Nathan writes impressionistic portraits that take on a much darker tinge than the music once you start paying as much attention to what the words are saying as to the lovely voices singing them. Sleater-Kinney has some amazing songs, played with a real kick; Corin Tucker even wants to be your Joey Ramone, and I think she’s got a real claim on it. I’m sorry to read an article like this one that says they aren’t taken seriously by the press because they’re women. It sucks that the writers or their editors can’t open their ears wide enough to notice that some of the best music out there is being made by women, and who gives a damn about their shade of lip gloss. They’re focusing on irrelevant crap rather than on the music. I don’t get it. Is it that the reporters have no ears, or that their editors have no brains?
Posted at 11:39 PM
thanks, ralph...i now dub you honorary girl for a day. but honestly, we all know that this isn’t really "news"...it’s been going on since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of rock).
on the same topic, maya price gives a fine rant about rolling stone’s recent "women in rock" issue at www.steppinoutmagazine.com (they use frames so you’ll have to work for it--choose the 11/27/02 issue, then "more music", and scroll down). since rolling stone ceased being relevant a couple of decades ago, i haven’t seen the issue but after reading this response i feel as if i have. it makes my skin crawl, but it doesn’t surprise me.
Posted by shirley at 9:57 PM, January 4, 2003 [Link]