Feminists and Feminist Sympathizers Unite: A Bold Call for Pazz & Jop Activism

about half of my votes went to females or female-fronted bands, but it's because i really liked those records, you know? it's not like i voted for barbara morgenstern to 'smash the patriarchy', i voted for her cuz she made a good record!! (plus she's german...swoon)

My feelings on this issue are very strong, and very well-chronicled elsewhere on this board. But the more I think about it, the more I think that the glossies do, for better or worse, have a tendency to dictate the greater rock-critical discourse (there are exceptions, naturally, and many of them post here); it's no accident that so many of their writers were in the upper echelons of glenn macdonald's critical alignment ratings. And they tend to favor coverage of female bands with 'hot' singers (photo needs, you know), and they also seem to only have room for one of these particular bands at a time in their news hole -- unless they are doing one of those execrable women-in-rock features, which i have been absolutely sick of since about 1994.

If this proposal is serious, though, then you get into the Lilith Fair Problem -- is it only bands with female vocalists that count? What about a band like the Pixies, where the secondary vocalist and bassist is a female? What about someone like Avril Lavigne, whose backing band and material is very male-dominated?

It just seems like a Band-Aid solution to a cut-jugular problem.

signed,
half of the records I voted for this year had dudes in their bands.

You mean like segregating the P&J voters according to how many votes they gave to a particular genre of music? Oh wait, that would be patrinism.

(sorry, bad joke)

I made a conscious effort, but no deserving guys got bumped for less-deserving women. I am good.

So far this year 8 of my favorite 10 records are by women or part-woman bands, I think.

We're always looking; if you know other women who review records regularly, by all means have them email me. But women writers don't necessarily vote for female artists, though, obviously. At least not as much as, say, Jimmy Draper or Metal Mike Saunders do.

</sarcasm>

Anyways, I dont vote in P&J and I didnt buy enough new music this year, so really, the year in female-lead music for me was dominated by Alice Coltrane's old records on Impulse. I wonder if more women would be inspired to participate in music by hearing her music, which EASILY competes with the best avant-jazz ever made without being relegated to the sides by hard-relativist multiculturalism?

What it all comes down to is more editors need to seek out more women writers to begin with, though I've done such a shitty job in that respect (esp compared to Chuck) I hesitate to bring it up. More women need to be part of the ongoing discussion, not just rounded up at the end of the year for polling purposes. We don't need more female winners, we need more female perspectives.

Ha, I sound like I'm running for office!

"Patrinizing" is my new favorite word.

The problem is not that we don't vote for women: It lies in the labels who sign or don't sign them, and the inherent sexism of a society who holds them to different standards. Women in music are still stuck in roles that are notably filled with stereotypes: Their images/music are filled with blatant references to sexuality, humility, overt "cuteness," or reactions to said things.Granted, MUCH of music is filled with this, but with women, it's often assigned to them. When compared to so many male artists, women have yet to undo this preset role, in music or other places, which is something you're celebrating/creating by seperating them.

If you truly want to be more aware of women artists, then why not petition labels to send you more music? Why not make a petition that the MALE critics don't outnumber female critics 10 to 1? Why not petition more women to write about music, instead of "granting them your vote" based on the fact that they have a vagina? That is the real sexism.

Will someone please keep Chuck Eddy away from the jailbait?

Funny; when I've assigned pieces to male critics Amy Phillips's age (or much younger - i.e., Daniel Dimaggio starting when he was 16!), nobody ever accuses *them* of being jailbait. Though maybe that's because young male critics are more likely to ramble confessionally about their record collections than about their lives, I dunno....

And I don't really think adding more female writers would include more votes for female artists (music can't be divided down gender/race lines), but it would provide a better sample of the listening public.

A simpler implementation can be had if 75 percent of the male voters are simply cut from the roll. Most of them are probably ignorant, white middle-aged shitheels. Get rid of all that toxic flab.

Which is interesting because then it becomes a case of what was formerly underdog status now potential shifting into triumphalism -- except, of course, the arguments about what hip-hop is and 'should' be are all the more fierce as a result. (So a vaguely similar comparison might be when glam metal took over the world, even though it didn't.)

Anyways, I think it might be worthwhile to look up Jeff Chang's recent essay, "Word Power: A Brief, Highly Opinionated History of Hip-Hop Jouranlism" which appears in Steve Jones' "Pop Music in the Press." I think his points would help illuminate the argument that Matos is making above about how rap journalism diverged from the same route that rock criticism took.

Hadn't noticed this one. It's exactly what I said two posts ago.

I always wondered what the hip hop magazines would have done if a critic there wanted to WRITE that, say, Rakim or Biggie or KRS were boring and "Ice Ice Baby" and "Jump" and "Cars With the Boom" and "Parents Just Don't Understand" and stuff like that were the true classics, or if somebody wanted to write that hip hop went downhill when it got arty in the late '80s (as lots of rock critics did, say, at Creem or Phonograph Record Magazine in the early '70s.) Would they have been ALLOWED to write that stuff? I doubt it. But maybe I'm wrong; maybe somebody even DID! If so, they're my hero. (To be fair, I do know Daniel Smith wrote a positive lead review of Hootie and the Blowfish in Vibe in the mid '90s. Which definitely made her my hero that day, even though she was totally wrong!)

I'm actually somewhat (not entirely, though) surprised at how PM Dawn has become this lingering punching bag for liking hip-hop the 'wrong' way or something. To me the first album and a good chunk of the second remain elegant hip-hop/pop records, and they scored a fair share of radio/MTV hits, so it wasn't like they were being prized for being underground -- anything but, actually. In fact the more I think about it much of the discourse and annoyance with them (then and now) reflects that which Outkast gets these days...

And their biggest hit sampled a beautiful Spandau Ballet song!!!

Actually, I never even had any idea that PM Dawn WERE a hip-hop punching bag (for anybody except KRS One, that is), until Oliver's initial post way up thread. I am so out of it!

And their biggest hit sampled a beautiful Spandau Ballet song!!!

And it was fantastically done as well. I think I might listen to the album here tonight!

"I love you because you make me sick."

Near-stereotypical grunge/gen X line out of context if you had no idea where it came from beyond the year of release, in context a moody rumination in a striking arrangement.

Frankly, I think PM Dawn would have been disliked for a variety of reasons (Matos already hits upon some of these) - Prince Be didn't fit into the testosterone model of MCing that dominated the late '80s/early '90s (ala KRS, Rakim, Chuck D, etc.0, and sampling Spandau Ballet was seen as being crassly commercial (keep in mind, this was post-Vanilla Ice backlash).

Arrested Development though - the backlash against them had much more to do with the fact that so many white critics loved them. When "Tenneessee" first dropped, they were getting all sorts of love on urban radio but this changed by the time "Natural" (their third single) came out. (You saw similar things happening with Digable Planets too but that became very complicated when their 2nd LP dropped a Black Power album, thereby alienating white fans and they had already lost their black fans based on the backlash to the first LP).

I could be wrong, but I think the Fugees were the first to maintain their credibility among hip-hoppers despite getting mad love from the alternative and mainstream press. But by that time, hip-hop had become so much a part of the pop mainstream that rap heads could stop tripping off this fear that "their music" was being co-opted.

So if they had sold but not had all the hosannas-in-print they wouldn't have been minded as much? Hm.

You saw similar things happening with Digable Planets too but that became very complicated when their 2nd LP dropped a Black Power album, thereby alienating white fans and they had already lost their black fans based on the backlash to the first LP

Basehead to thread! ('This is a song about the problems white males face in America today...*guitar blast*...okay for our next song...")

what about Public Enemy?

Sterling - I think it's a little of both but sensibility wasn't the main issue I think. There wasn't a lot that separated the DPs' sensibility from Tribe's but Tribe had the Native Tongues cred backing them whereas once DP got swooped up by the cafe crowd, that triggered knee-jerk skepticism from the smaller-minded hip-hop faithful. I'm just idly make conjectures but had DP not lost the support of the rap heads, their 2nd album would have done for them what "Resurrection" did for Common Sense.

PM Dawn, compared to say, Kwame or The Future Sound or a host of other post-New School acts, were not that different in their sensibility either but even Kwame with his "fucking polka dots" was never rejected to the extent PM Dawn was. Their dismissal came initially on the wave of all the attention that "Set Adrift" received. Just to be subjective, Prince Be was weak as a lyricist. His attitude may have been very similar to De La Soul's but he was no Trugoy or Posdnous. Hell, he wasn't even PA Mase. So when all these people went ga-ga over "Set Adrift" (which hit, let's be honest, on the strength of sampling Spandau Ballet and mostly that), the rap nation (ill-defined but stay with me) decided, "oh, here's another Vanilla Ice pop act" and promptly kicked PM Dawn to the proverbial curb.

Furthermore, in the early '90s, you simply did NOT diss KRS-One. Here was a rapper who might well have been a blowhard but circa 1991, the man was godly. He practically ended Melle Mel's career. Dude embarassed Queens for half a decade until Nas and Mobb Deep redeemed the borough. You did not step to KRS no matter how big of a hypocrite he was. With one magazine interview and one altercation later, Prince Be was forever known as "that fat rapper who KRS threw off the stage." At that point, PM Dawn's sensibility could have been more hardcore than the Wu - their career, in the eyes of the general hip-hop community was beyond salvagable. I mean, dudes were already dead, KRS just drove the stake through.

oliver, it is uncomfortably close and i had to think about even saying it. but the bottom line is that it's genuinely what i believe. i could try to be more sensitive about the way i phrased it but there wouldn't be much point in doing so as i'd only be veiling an opinion that i knew would come in for that kind of criticism in slightly more palatable terms to save myself having to justify it. the thing is that i know i'm not making an implicit attack on anyone at all, simply making an explicit statement re the kind of music criticism i'd like to see more of. the bottom line is that i couldn't give a flying shit who writes it, provided that it says something interesting. for the record, a few less middle-aged, straight, white male music critics would be a good thing in my book, but only if the numbers are made up with people of differing gender/race/orientation who are gonna give me something worth reading. that said, i'm sure there are certain bars to entry/offputting factors/glass ceilings in journalism that need to be removed for this to happen. however, i think these are less an issue for women than they are for people of other ethnicities/educational backgrounds etc.

what about Public Enemy?

run dmc, too...

Dave again - I hear you about wanting more "good" writers irrespective of background. All I can say is that I think different people have a different sensibility and that background plays a role in that. I would NOT want to try to make that statement out to be scientific or anything and I agree- there are some definite glass ceilings out there that make new, different (but compelling) voices harder to hear. Again, I think having role models is tremendously important in that regard.

absolutely - then again we weren't exactly disagreeing in the first place, were we?!

>>Where's Jeff Chang in all this? Isn't he the expert on who's racist and who isn't? Oh wait, this thread isn't about black people. My bad.<<

>>Just for the record: this thread is largely about black people, to the extent that so many Latin musical styles are African diaspora musical hybrids, and so many great "Latin" musicians are, you know, black. But I take Waldo's point. In fact, one of the reasons I posed this question in the first place was my feeling that all the self-righteous talk about hip-hop's critical disenfranchisement was a bit ridiculous. That argument might have made sense ten or fifteen years ago; but now, hip-hop clearly is American pop music, and anyone who doesn't get it -- any critic who doesn't listen to hip-hop/understand its beauty and power, etc. etc. -- has more or less opted out of the game. So it seems to me that Chang et. al. are preaching to the choir. Latin music, on the other hand, actually is largely ignored...

-- Jody Rosen (jodyrose...), February 19th, 2004.<<

What the PnJ results would look like if only women voted.