Women in Rock

Marketing and promotion and record sales on the other hand...

I don't feel that there is a divide in MUSIC, but that definitely there IS a divide/gap in the INDUSTRY.

Most people in the industry and in the general public don't regard female rock musicians in the same light that they do white male rock musos, it's as simple as that.

However, most people in the industry and in the general public also aren't particularly warm to black rock artists or white rap artists.

People want things to follow a strict set of bullshit guidelines: white boys make rock, white girls sing and look pretty, black folks rap. It's amazing how much trouble people have opening their minds up to other possibilities, and the industry knows this, thus they generally stick to the format, and artists have to do things to try to compensate for the imbalance(thus we get The Lillith Fair and the Black Rock Coalition etc).

This is possibly more of a rambly rant than yours, sir.

i am not going to rant a 10,000 word essay on how fucking WRONG this statement is because i'm over at suzy's for tea. but it is NOT necessarily women doing it to themselves. it is the fucking press who cannot conceive of the idea of a female artist being powerful enough in her own right to sell magazines.

case in point... a writer for a national style/music magazine wanted to write an article about us, we were in negotiations with our press person to get them to ride with us in our van on tour, come to a couple gigs, interview us, and all kinds of fun stuff for a feature. great, huh?

then he goes to his boss, to pitch this article, and voila, no. the only way he can write about us is to consolidate it into some big mishmash issue about women in rock. ok, i KNOW that male bands have to deal with this, being lumped into improbably "scenes" and crap. but at least that is based on music, rather than SOLELY on gender. how frustrating is this?

about the lillith fair/ladyfest sort of willing isolationism, i jus don't get it. OK, i do understand the frustration wtih the general sexism of the music industry can drive you to want to say "fuck it" and go do something on your own. but this only marginalises women further, and makes us seem even more like the outsider.

of course, these women in rock specials in magazines are humiliating and demeaning and present female musicians as something odd and other, but it's a total catch 22, how else are you supposed to get yourself into the standard music press? do you say "fuck no, i won't do it" and shoot yourself in the foot in terms of exposure, or do you grit your teeth and swallow your principles, thinking "maybe this time they might actually get it right?"

anyway... i am boring suzy, so i'll shut up.

Here's your problem: women in rock presenting themselves as being separate

Think about that for a second.

I don't know which is more prepostorous: the 'women in' or the 'rock' part.

Too bad SY have none of those then.

The entire media approach to women in the arts is a minefield, in which people are constantly blowing themselves up on sexism, condescension, tokenism, and host of other things besides. True. (Chief among them is all of this assigning and soaking up of "credit" -- saying "they're great, and they're women!" when "they're great" would suffice, or otherwise breaking out the trumpets and asking for some sort of certificate when they produce a piece that says "look, there are in fact worthwhile female artists in the world.")

When people complain specifically about this fact, they tend to say that media either ignore, marginalize, compartmentalize, or aggressively mistreat female artists. In most cases the argument comes down to a list of "serious" female artists that the speaker doesn't think are taken "seriously" enough; in a sub-set of those cases it's argued that the media doesn't take these artists seriously because they only allow women through the gate as sexual entertainment. Okay.

I suppose here are my first questions: (a) do you think those are fair characterizations of the complaints, (b) do you agree with them, and most importantly (c) if so, do you think this is the fault of the media, or the fault of the actual market for people's attention to such things?

Because I sometimes think what I'm seeing is a feedback loop. It's easy to say that media should be taking the work of women artists more seriously, but then it's very hard for me to imagine which "serious" women artists those media's audiences would be receptive to. And that audience, in response, continue to think that fact has nothing to do with gender, because look: they're just evaluating the major important works everyone is talking about in the weekly magazines, and calling them as they see them. Both sides reinforce the other's habits, one monetarily and the other through its content.

So so so what exactly can be done about this? The media's solution has been to throw together "women in rock" issues! To essentially say "we honestly don't think the bulk of you readers will be that interested in these artists, but we're supposed to be taking women seriously, so here's what we've come up with!" And I'll bet this does have some positive effect, but how does that ghetto get broken down? Is the next step the cover article that says "she's impressive, can you believe this came from a woman?" I'm not sure what direction any of this can run -- strings of horrible awful stories about women that eventually create a situation where people aren't surprised to be reading about women any more? At which point actual journalism can reenter the picture?

I'm just thinking in type, here. I dunno -- anyone?

There was a time when folks like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Janis Joplin etc. played right alongside the big-time men of their era and weren't referred to as "Women in Rock"...they were simply musicians, plain and simple, because the emphasis then was on THE MUSIC rather than THE IMAGE ASSOCIATED WITH THE PERSONALITY ASSOCIATED WITH THE MUSIC.

Honestly, I really think it boils down to that. Similarly, think how most male modern rock acts are categorized by their "image"...guys with tattoos & piercings & sock-hats = nu-metal, guys with cute-boy sweaters & clean-cut = emo...USUALLY WITH VERY LITTLE REGARD TO THE MUSIC THAT THEY MAKE.

Pink, for example. Her music on her new album is NOT at all different from her last. The only thing that's changed is her LOOK, and we're all supposed to follow right along with the hype..."oh, she's all ROCK and stuff now, she's so creative!"...HA!

What I was getting at is this...the MTV-iffication of the music industry has changed the emphasis from "the music" to "the image associated with the entertainer", and, thus, we get these "Women in Rock" issues and other gender-split-music-industry-politics nowadays, where we DIDN'T have them back in the 60s.

However, I think mp3 is changing that, as now people are exposed to honest-to-God "music" totally without the images to attach to it. Other than the singing voice, there is no way to tell whether the musos are male or female, and thus, I think the mp3-revolution going on now might lead us back into a world without these "Women In Rock" or "Black People Can Play Rock Music, Too" type stereotypes, as the emphasis shifts back towards the actual "music".

I think this "women in rock" impulse is a facet of a systemic problem with all aspects of press coverage -- whether entertainment features or so-called hard news -- the push to publish what is deemed "newsworthy." Why is something "newsworthy"? Because it "matters." Why does it "matter"? Because it's "newsworthy." So it's a basically unsolvable problem, and it's hard to trace whether the culprit is "the media" or the wants of the readers they ostensibly serve. I would say it's a media perception of what people want to read and assumptions of what these readers would find novel. In the absence of something truly novel, there is a rush, I think, to spot, and perhaps amplify/distort, an issue into something that seems more novel, through a discrete group, a movement, a social force, a trend.

Main Topic: It's not really just MTV that creates image problems... it's the exponential proliferation of media sources in general. Images and logos are the predominant features of our time, and unless something drastic happens, this isn't bound to change. It will probably only get worse.

Also, on the mp3 "revolution" -- what, you never heard of "radio"?

Do you think (a) and (b) are worthwhile things to do? Both of them completely excite plenty of people and plenty of women; do they carry much value for you? Or is (c) the goal?

cf. joan jett's gary glitter covers and compare to her tommy james covers.