Cover Girls and Typical Girls
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: Rambling | Tags: albums, amanda palmer, beth ditto, music as politics, music journalism, punk, the slits, women in music Leave a comment »There were several predictable bones to pick with this piece in which former editors of the New Musical Express select their most noteworthy covers. The feature leaves out a lot of the former Accordion Weekly’s history, notably anything prior to the late 1970s, but what struck me most about the covers chosen was the disparity between the first one and the last. Pennie Smith’s 1979 cover shot of the Slits, then a relatively obscure and resolutely uncommercial dub-punk girl-gang, mudlarking in the grounds of their Surrey recording studio, was part of a set which became a defining image of the band, notably through being used on the cover of their debut album Cut. This article looks briefly at the controversy generated by the images themselves, and how it relates to subsequent and current presentation of women in the UK music press. Read the rest of this entry »
Subtle Subversion: how I learned to love The Raincoats (a bit)
Posted: December 13, 2011 Filed under: how i was made, Rambling, Raves | Tags: 1990s, albums, ana da silva, bad reputation, gina birch, greil marcus, how i was made, kurt cobain, music as politics, music journalism, postpunk, punk, Rhian E Jones, simon reynolds, the clash, the raincoats, women in music Leave a comment »Written for Bad Reputation.
*
“So, I’m supposed to buy her some noodles and a book and sit around listening to chicks who can’t play their instruments, right?”
– 10 Things I Hate About You
As a twelve-year-old in a post-industrial backwater, I discovered punk a long time after the fact, but when I did I took to it like a mohawked and safety-pinned duck to water. With the snobbery and omnicognisance of youth, I quickly developed a doctrinaire approach whereby if ‘punk’ songs weren’t short, sharp, and shouty, I didn’t want to know. Man, did London Calling fuck with my head, with its rackety punk take on reggae and soul and funk and lovers‘ rock and, god forbid, jazz. When I first heard London Calling I swore never to listen to a good two-thirds of it again because it clearly wasn‘t Real Punk. Like all teenage girls, I was insufferable. Read the rest of this entry »
Patti Smith, Outside Society
Posted: October 11, 2011 Filed under: Reviews (recorded) | Tags: albums, patti smith, patti smith group, Rhian E Jones, the raincoats, women in music Leave a comment »Written for Wears the Trousers 09.09.11
*
The past few years have consolidated Patti Smith’s position as godmother and high priestess among women musicians. Following her induction into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame in 2007, last year saw Just Kids, her memoir of life in ’70s New York, receive a National Book Award and a future stage adaptation, and just last week she was awarded the coveted Polar Music Prize by the King of Sweden. Where this leaves her as an artist who once proudly and profanely proclaimed her position “outside of society” is anyone’s guess, but the establishment’s recent embrace of Smith appears to have been the spur for the release of this collection, a primer or sampler of her work aimed, presumably, at those discovering it for the first time. Read the rest of this entry »
The Raincoats, Odyshape
Posted: September 26, 2011 Filed under: Reviews (recorded) | Tags: albums, ana da silva, gina birch, patti smith, postpunk, Rhian E Jones, the raincoats, the slits, women in music, x-ray spex Leave a comment »Written for Wears the Trousers 26.08.11
*
The wave of musical experimentation which took place in the wake of punk generated many new and startling sounds, some of which endured and grew in influence while others became lost to musical history. The Raincoats, a London-spawned, ever-shifting collective based around the partnership of Gina Birch and Ana Da Silva, are now firmly in the former category. Their self-titled debut was described by Vivien Goldman as “the first woman’s rock album” to emerge, its lack of musical or vocal hierarchies or focus-pulling solo virtuosity pioneering an arresting and persuasive kind of rock without the cock. In 1981, Odyshape continued to shift the rules of the game. Read the rest of this entry »
My bombers, my dexys, my high: on Amy Winehouse.
Posted: August 25, 2011 Filed under: Raves | Tags: albums, amy winehouse, bad reputation, jazz, music as politics, music journalism, pop, Rhian E Jones, singles, women in music Leave a comment »Written for Bad Reputation 25.07.11
Amy Winehouse, for all the typically Machiavellian marketing behind her early development and signing, was an atypical star to launch, even before the drink, drugs, bisexuality, tattoos and self-harm and sprawling domestic disharmony on the streets of Camden set in. 2003 was a year of slickly manufactured, crowdpleasing pop anthems spawned by reality tv or established industry hit machines: Britney, Christina, Avril, Beyoncé, Sugababes, Rachel Stevens, Girls Aloud. In this climate, Winehouse’s debut Frank, an engagingly personal and subtly powerful blend of jazz, soul, dub and heavy drinking, stood out as an album of grit among gloss, accomplished and ambitious, recalling the eclectic and impeccably imperious style of Dinah Washington and Nina Simone. Read the rest of this entry »
Like this:
Never Mind the Bollocks.
Posted: July 18, 2011 Filed under: how i was made | Tags: books, links, music journalism, Rhian E Jones, women in music 1 Comment »Music books written by women, list of. Go, compare, question, critique.
Why don’t more women write about music – or do they? And why don’t more women write about Dylan? It can’t just be me and Sady Doyle.
Also, with due apologies for more self-promotion – I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here yet, but I’m currently writing a chapter on female postpunk musicians for a forthcoming anthology on that shy and elusive creature, the girl band. This book will be a contender with or without my contribution though. Watch this space.
Like this:
In Defence of Rihanna’s ‘Man Down’.
Posted: July 18, 2011 Filed under: Rambling | Tags: bad reputation, film, paul porter, queen, race, Rhian E Jones, rihanna, roger ebert, women in music Leave a comment »Written for Bad Reputation, 8.6.11
*
Another week, another women-in-music controversy, and another hotly debated video from Rihanna. Having ticked domestic violence and sadomasochism off the musical list, she’s responded to recent accusations of being a major player in the oversexualisation of pop by upping the ante, making her latest offering a blend of sexual violence and violent retribution. The video for Man Down, which opens with Rihanna shooting a man who is later revealed to have assaulted her after they dance at a club, has kicked up a predictable media dustcloud. It’s all a far cry from ‘Pon de Replay’. Read the rest of this entry »
Can Adele and her Marketing Men change the face of Women in Music?
Posted: July 11, 2011 Filed under: Rambling | Tags: adele, bad reputation, image, in the news, laura snapes, music industry, music journalism, music marketing, politics, pop, pop music, Rhian E Jones, richard russell, rihanna, s&m, sexuality, soul, the guardian, the prodigy, women in music, xl recordings Leave a comment »Written for Bad Reputation, 1.6.11
*
Poor old millionaire superstar Adele, eh? No sooner has the dust settled on the furore over her objections to being a higher-rate taxpayer, than she gets thrown into the vanguard of another of those putative Real Women in Music revolutions. A mere three years after she started out, and after just seventeen weeks of her second album at Number One, it appears to have suddenly dawned on Richard Russell that Adele exemplifies all that’s healthy and hopeful in the otherwise dire and overheated state of contemporary pop. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh bondage, no more.
Posted: April 26, 2011 Filed under: 1 | Tags: poly styrene, punk, Rhian E Jones, women in music, x-ray spex 1 Comment »Jesus, it’s been a bad week. 53 is no age.
This is my favourite X-Ray Spex song:
Women, Men, and Music: the XY Factor
Posted: February 13, 2011 Filed under: how i was made, Rambling, Rants | Tags: alex ross, anwyn crawford, bad reputation, frances morgan, meta, music journalism, politics, popular culture no longer applies to me, Rhian E Jones, the music industry, women in music 2 Comments »Let me begin with some residual New Year bonhomie by saying that the New Yorker‘s Alex Ross is not the problem here. It’s just that you sometimes need to take an inventory of the symptoms before starting on the cause. Last month I attended a talk by Ross on the release of his latest book. The talk and the discussion which followed were interesting enough, but throughout the evening I couldn’t help noticing that, although there were several women in attendance, every single raised voice in the room was male.
Like this:
Gaye Advert and the Great Cock ‘n’ Balls Swindle
Posted: December 19, 2010 Filed under: how i was made, Raves | Tags: albums, music as politics, music journalism, punk, Rhian E Jones, singles, the adverts, the slits, women in music, x-ray spex 3 Comments »‘Sexuality in Rock’n'roll is one more area weighed down heavily by its history and language. While none could or should deny the aspects of sexual interest and thrill inherent in live music, the performance space is problematically male-dominated.’ – Ian Penman, NME, 1979
‘I really wish that I’d been born a boy; it’s easy then ’cause you don’t have to keep trying to be one all the time.’ – Gaye Advert, 1977
Women in bands, when under the media spotlight, often find themselves swindled out of due credit by virtue of their gender. If they’re not being accused of clinging to the coattails of their backing boys to disguise their own lack of musical ability, they’re being judged on their aesthetic appeal to the exclusion of anything more relevant. It’s disappointing to observe how ubiquitously this principle applies. Even in the midst of punk, as girls picked up guitars, bass, and drumsticks, taking the stage alongside boys as more than cooing vocalists or backing dancers, they attracted that lethal combination of critical suspicion and prurient interest.
I love punk partly for the number and variety of women it involved and the freedom of expression it offered them. I loved X-Ray Spex – a Somali-British teenage feminist demagogue whose vocal screech swooped like a bird of prey over twisting vistas of saxophone. I loved the Slits and their slippery, shuddering dub-punk hymns to the tedium of sex and the joys of shoplifting. And I loved Gaye Black, bassist for The Adverts and widely regarded as punk’s first female star.
Read the rest of this entry »
