The Primitives were an alternative band from Coventry, UK fronted by Australian vocalist Tracy Tracy. A little twee, a little punk, they fused 60's bands' melodic sensibilities with fast Ramones-style power chords. They gained popularity when Steven Patrick Morrissey himself named them one of his favorite bands. They were best known for their 1988 hit "Crash," but this one has always been my favorite:
Las Vulpess (The Foxes) formed in 1980 in Bilbao, Spain. They had many members come and go but the lineup solidified in 1982. This was their big hit, released in 1983, which translates to "I like being a fox." Note fox is also slang for slut in Spanish. Apparently this song is the bands own original lyrics over their rendition of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog." I love nothing more than a Spanish-sung girl punk band. I'd like to cover this, or at least get one of those fox-tail accessories.
Named for an Adam Ant song, girl fronted art-punks Animals & Men formed in 1978 after they met at a Wire/Ants gig in Bristol. They apparently still play out. This song is about tribal violence at gigs a la Crass vs Ants fans and the way that promoting the next big thing created a physical battleground.
In the 1990's Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein had a collaborative project called The Spells. They released a 4 track EP in 1999 called The Age of Backwards, and never released anything again. They lived on opposite coasts, Brownstein in Olympia, WA and Timony in Boston, MA. Apparently after the release of Age of Backwards they had a songwriting correspondence via the internet where they wrote a few songs which they planned to make in to a full length. This never happened.
More recently, Timony's been playing with a new band called Soft Power in DC, and Brownstein has been concentrating more non-musical projects such as writing a book, starring in the upcoming film Some Days Are Better Than Others and relocating to NYC. She also has a music blog on NPR.com called Monitor Mix. Here she discusses The Spells with Timony and has posted a few unreleased songs for download:
In my opinion, the Spells were the most perfect fusion of Timony's ethereal magical stylings of Helium and Brownstein's angular poppy hooks of Sleater-Kinney. A match made in heaven. Now if only they would release that full-length!
Telepathe are an electro-pop duo from Brooklyn. The two girls have been playing together for years, and were previously in the art/prog rock band Wikkid. I have repeatedly noticed that when I go to Todd P type shows in Brooklyn, Telepathe are one of the only all-female bands in the line-up.
Telepathe recently released their first full length album, Dance Mother (produced by David Sitek from TV on the Radio) on IAMSOUND Records. While their previous releases were more in the pseudo-rap vein, this new record is much more danceable. They are currently on tour with Ladytron and the Faint. Also, one of my favorite young graphic designers, Kate Moross, designed their new t-shirts. I want one.
This song has been playing on repeat in my house. We can't get enough!:
Also, here's an interview they did with NylonTV on Iraqi pop music, being female musicians in the indie world and their cat:
Mica Levi AKA Micachu is a 21-year old musician from the UK. She spazzily plays a tiny guitar and has an endearing cockney deadpan. Although she was classically trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, she often uses unconventional instruments which are customized/homemade. She is also a well-known DJ in the London grime scene, and was commissioned to compose an orchestral piece for the London Philharmonic at the mere age of 20.
With her band Micachu & the Shapes, she recently released her debut album Jewellry on Rough Trade Records. She is playing tonight and tomorrow in NYC (March 24: Death by Audio and the 25th: Pianos), if you are around, you should really go!
For those of you who miss Tracy and the Plastics, they may have "broken-up", but apparently Wynne Greenwood is still making music (and cool weird videos) just like the old days of Tracy, Nikki & Cola. This video was part of an installation called "Face It" she had in 2008 at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects:
Linder Sterling, known simply as "Linder" was an important figure in the Manchester music scene of the late 70's and early 80's, influential collage artist and lead singer of the post-punk band Ludus. She is also a photographer and best friend to Morrissey, responsible for the photo collection "Morrissey Shot."
Along with Peter Saville, she designed many of the iconic album covers for the bands in the Manchester/Factory Records scene. Most notably, she did the cover for The Buzzcocks' "Orgasm Addict." Apparently, Pete Shelley wrote The Buzzcocks' classic "What Do I Get?" with Linder in mind.
A radical feminist, Linder's work (be it collage, music or performance) had a central theme of challenging cultural expectations of women. In Ludus, her lyrics tended to explore sexual politics. In the chorus of "Little Girls," she demands, "Little Girls, shake up, wake up! Let's remember how to use our wings." In "The Escape Artist" she addresses women's safety with the lyrics, "I was thinking wishfully, just how pleasing it would be to walk at midnight unafraid, to open my door, be quite safe." In "Breaking the Rules" she discusses the spectrum of sexuality.
In the early 80's, the famous Manchester music venue The Haçienda was what she described as "a male preserve", where they frequently played soft-core porn on the televisions. One notorious Ludus performance, on December 5, 1982, Linder decided to take her revenge and demonstrate her confrontational feminist tactics. Before the performance, she decorated every table in the club with a red-stained tampon and a cigarette butt. She also handed out pieces of raw meat wrapped in pornography. Despite her vegetarianism, she constructed a dress made entirely of raw meat which she performed in, with a dildo underneath which she revealed at the end of the performance. Linder said that the meat and tampons were supposed to represent "the reality of womanhood" and the dildo "manhood, the invisible male of pornography. That it can be reduced to this, a thing that sticks out like a toy." Linder managed to completely scandalize the usually aloof, unflappable rock kids of the Hacienda, who by the end of the performance had backed away from the stage and could barely bring themselves to applaud. Even Tony Wilson himself was very concerned about the potential of blood dripping on the floor and had her escorted out of the venue. That's punk rock, Linder.
I found this interesting recent interview she did with the Tate Museum where she discusses her collages from the 70's, in which she combined images of domestic spaces from women's magazines with cars and pornography from men's magazines as a way to critique "the various cultural monstrosities" of the time. She is now recognized as an important figure in the art world and her collages have been exhibited at museums such as the Tate and P.S.1. Her work has recently been collected in a retrospective book entitled "Linder: Works 1976-2006." The thing I like most about her art (both visual and musical) is that it has a very radical message but at the same time is very aesthetic/beautiful.
I named this blog after largely forgotten, nonetheless seminal, British post-punk band Girls At Our Best!, who formed in Leeds, England in 1979.
In actuality, there was only one girl in the band, lead vocalist Judy "Jo" Evans. While her distinct, soaring, bittersweet vocals may make the music sound light, it is not without a message. Evans' tongue-in-cheek lyrics tended toexamine issues of politics, excess and the status quo. The song "Politics" is a cheery satirical look at American-style campaigning, "Go For Gold" criticizes middle-class lavish consumption and "Warm Girls" is a critique of the institution of marriage.
Funny side note, my friend recently informed me he attends Cambridge University with Judy Evans' daughter. Maybe he can hook me up for an interview some day!
Saturday night I went to see ESG. Let me just say, the Scroggin girls still know how to get down.
The minimalist post-punky funk band was formed by sisters Renee, Maria and Valerie in the late 70's. The lineup has since evolved, now including two of the original women's daughters. The sisters grew up in the projects in the South Bronx; their mother gave them instruments and encouraged them to start a band in order to keep them out of trouble and off the streets. They were discovered by historic Factory Records producer Martin Hannett, and went on to tour with Public Image Ltd., A Certain Ratio and The Clash.
The 3 women of color were a rarity in the predominately white, male-dominated punk scene. Even on Saturday, 30 years into their career, it made me wonder, what is it like for them to perform for an almost completely white audience, full of pushy aggressive dudes?
My favorite film of all time, Derek Jarman's 1977 cult classicJubilee. The film centers around a punk girl gang living in post-apocalyptic London. Jarman, an experimental filmmaker who was openly gay, was arguably one of the first British filmmakers to feature positive images of gay sexuality in his films (most notably in Sebastiane), and was called the godfather of queer cinema. His films have often been praised for being allegories of political resistance. While this film does portray some queer characters, it is most significant for it's portrayal of strong female characters, which I would argue makes the film quite feminist.
While the cast and amazing soundtrack give the film a lot of punk cred, it was was controversial in the UK punk scene when it was released because Jarman was considered an outsider looking in. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood went so far as to create a t-shirt on which she printed an open letter to Jarman, denouncing the film for its misrepresentations of punk.
Either way, Jubilee is iconic for many reasons, particularly for its cast, which includes:
1. A young Adam Ant as an aspiring punk singer, The Kid, when he himself was still an aspiring punk singer.
