girl bands

[Karen Weiss <weiss@nrl-aic.ARPA>]

>Date: Tue, 24 Mar 87 03:32:42 CST
>From: hogge@p.cs.uiuc.edu (John Hogge)
>Subject: females in indi rock
>
>Why don't we discuss:
>
>             Female Artists on Independent Labels 

I'm puzzled by the inclusion of "Susy & Banshees [sic]" in your list of indi
bands.  They debuted on the Virgin Label, four albums prior to "A Kiss In
the Dreamhouse".  This doesn't strike me as being particularly indi-esque.
I mean, they have an airline and all.  But whatever.  That you should
mention this album also puzzles me, as it is, in my mind anyway, the
beginning of the end of good records by the group.

But no more gripes.  Your heart is definitely in the right place.  Since you
list the Slits, I thought you might be interested in some facts (and gossip)
about some of their female Rough Trade contemporaries.

Budgie, the Banshee drummer boy, played drums on the first Slits record,
"Cut".  Palmolive, who originally played with the Slits, switched over to
join the all-female Raincoats.  Later, Ari Up and Viv Albertine, both of the
Slits, collaborated with others as the New Age Steppers on the On U Sound
label.  Featured in this project was experimental heavy white dub production
by Adrian Sherwood.  Also involved with the New Age Steppers was Neneh
Cherry, daughter of jazz trumpeteer Don Cherry.  Her most successful group
was Rip Rig and Panic, made up of members of fellow Rough Traders the Pop
Group.  She also had some releases with Raw Sex, Pure Energy.

Lora Logic, whose band Essential Logic was a Rough Trade group, was the
original sax player for X-Ray Spex, featuring the young, intelligent,
mulatto, feminist, and quite short vocalist Poly Styrene.  After the X-Ray
Spex' only album, "Germ-Free Adolescents", her solo career didn't live up to
the early promise she showed.

Essential Logic wrote the title track to the Lizzie Borden film "Born In
Flames", in which appeared a performance by the fabulous all-female band
"The Bloods".  Their sole recording, a 7" entitled "Button Up", should be
required listening for all white funksters.  On Blood vocals, and having a
minor role in the film, was Adele Bertei, who at one time worked with her
friend Pat Place and the Contortions crowd during the No New York period.
Pat Place later became the guitarist for the Bush Tetras, consisting of
Cynthia Sley on vocals, now married to Ivan Julian (one-time guitarist for
Richard Hell), Laura Kennedy on bass (she once worked at the bar here at the
9:30 Club), and token guy Dee Pop on drums.  He's now married to Dear
France, former musical comrade to John Cale.

Laura Kennedy had a brief stint with a horrible DC band called She.  I
mention it only because some friends of mine were in it.  Sally Berg played
drums.  She previously had played drums with another DC band called
Egoslavia (formerly named REM but changed for obvious reasons), who put out
a locally successful 12".  She then moved to NY, where she played for a
while with Lydia Lunch, then recorded an album with a band called Indoor
Life, and this past summer was the second drummer for Robert Palmer's US
tour.

Adele Bertei contributed heavily to the soundtrack of the film "Beth B. and
Scott B.'s Vortex", along with Lydia Lunch and John Lurie of the Lounge
Lizards.  She had a somewhat successful-in-discos 12" called "Build Me A
Bridge", and has worked in the studio with Thomas Dolby.  Hers is the high
voice you hear on "Hyperactive".

A one-time close friend of Bertei's was Leslie Woods of Au Pairs, in my
estimate one of the most important musical and political bands to happen.
They consisted of two of each, and their message was one of equality.  Au
Pairs released two albums, the first of which, "Playing With A Different
Sex", is available on CD.  There is also a bootleg of a benefit show they
did in Berlin.  Word is that the band didn't authorize its release, but
Woods privately did, and took the money and went to South America, and they
broke up.  But that's just word, right?  I saw Leslie Woods perform solo a
year and a half ago at the 9:30 Club.  She drunkenly sang in front of a tape
machine, and it made me sad.

Also on Rough trade was Delta 5, all girls, with two bass players.  They
recorded one album, but are most notable for their singles.  Similarly, the
all-female Modettes came out with an album on Stiff, but it wasn't as good
as their singles.  Another all-female singles band to emerge was Kleenex,
from Switzerland.  After their first single, they changed their name to
Liliput due to some problems with copyright infringement.  This band's
singles are my favorites of the era.  Girls At Our Best, a band with one
girl singing and three guys playing, had that essential girl-band sound.
They too put out good singles and one so-so album.  This seems to be a
common malady.

Around the same time that DAF became popular in this country, a couple of
German girl bands also made it across the ocean.  X-Mal Deutschland is still
putting out records, although I don't like what they've done since their
first 7" and 12".  Malaria put out a wonderful 12", "New York Passage", and
then a mediocre album, and then broke up.

Bettina Koster from Malaria moved to NY, where she briefly played with Sally
Berg in a briefly together band called In the Service Of.

If you've noticed an element of wife-swapping in all this, then you've
gotten the point.  Most of these women, and many others who weren't
mentioned, were and are extremely supportive of each other.  Perhaps it's
the feeling that if the support doesn't come from women, it's not gonna
come.  What unifies these ground-breaking female musicians is a sexual and
political open-mindedness (sex and politics can be the same thing, really),
and a commitment to destroy repressive roles.  This is the restriction that
Poly Styrene sings about in "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!"  It's what the Slits are
onto when they sing "There's another marketing ploy - typical girl gets the
typical boy."

I find it interesting that an awareness of sexual politics and the support
of fellow women musicians seems to have completely eluded the music of Kate
Bush.

The all-girl scene isn't quite as exciting to me today as it was seven years
ago, but there are a few names I can add to your list.

The Pandoras seem to have made the jump directly to a big label without
working up through the indies.  This may have been due to the masterminding
of some cigar-smoking exec ("Yeah, yeah, girls, psychedelia, sixties hair,
short skirts, like those Bungles or watchamageggie, yeah, yeah...").  Too
derivative and revivalist for my taste, but they definitely will appeal to
some.

Brix Smith, wife of the Fall's Mark E. Smith, has her own outfit called The
Adult Net.  Very sixties flavored.  Their current single is titled "Spin
That Web", or something like that, and past singles have included a cover of
"Incense and Peppermint" and a namby-pamby original called "Edie Sedgwick".

Other bands about which I have second-hand information are:

Anti-Scrunti Faction, all-girl and not terribly inventive hardcore.  I like
one song of theirs that I've heard, "Slave To My Estrogen".

GASH, Girls Against Sexual Harassment, from Australia, not all girls, and
good but not great.

Scrawl, a raw female trio from Columbus OH.  Wicinski likes 'em, Hofmann
hates 'em.

On the DC front:

Fire Party, brand new hardcore.  Four girls, all friends and/or girlfriends
of Dischord boys.  Too new to tell, but they sound promising.

Betty, three women singing off-the-wall acapella.  They've been described by
Scott Simon of NPR as "the Marx Brothers meet the Andrews Sisters".  Funny,
topical, Bette Midler times three.  They do all their band correspondence on
my Mac, and Alyson takes care of my cat when I'm out of town.

Finally, it behooves me to mention Broken Siren, from DC.  This is a band to
watch out for - three women, self-described as "brains meets trash".  The
9:30 Club has written about them, "the Bangles meet Einsturzende Neubauten".
Hell, Tim Wicinski is their roadie, main man, and he stuffs rags in the
mouths of people who don't like them.  Even Jim Hofmann has been spotted at
one of their shows.  They've just completed an eight-song tape, produced by
John Labovitz, a fellow L-H.  They're currently label shopping, so if anyone
has any contacts, please let me know and I'll pass it on to the band.

To Pat Waara, the following news: Mourning Glories broke up months ago.
There will be no vinyl forthcoming from these people.  Lida Husik, however,
is currently recording with John Labovitz, aforementioned L-H and producer
of Broken Siren.  Lida is working pretty much solo, with some help on
percussion from Dan Joseph, drummer of the now-defunct DC band 9353.

Also, Peter Alfke writes about the film Suburbia, "... it was directed by
Penelope Spheeris ... I believe she was in one of the bands shown in the
film (Catholic Discipline) for a while."  She wasn't, but you may be
thinking of Phranc, who was.  Phranc is currently working on her second
album, continuing to create under her self-chosen moniker as "Jewish Lesbian
Folksinger".

- Karen Weiss