Local Women Rock-In

The roomful of women in my Carrboro shack has collected for a purpose: to discuss the role of women in indie rock and the local music scene. This isn't exactly how we normally spend our Sunday evenings. Many of the women play in local bands, volunteer at college radio stations WXDU and WXYC, or frequent the music clubs. Though they're all involved in the "scene", hanging out together en masse isn't part of the agenda. These gals are usually too busy rocking to bother dissecting the white male scene.

What follows is an edited transcript from a 90-minute rap with 30-ish local gals. Unfortunately, lots of people are unrepresented in the transcript since A) some are less vocal than others and B) I had to boil it all down to fit. Sorry. (Carrie McLaren)

In the house and making noise:

Anne Gomez (AG) - ex-Blue Green Gods bassist, WXDU

Kristina Carey (KC) - WXYC, WUNC

Mary Gunn (MG) - Guitarist, yet-unnamed band

Monica Black (MB) - Drummer, yet- unnamed band

"Lani" Herman-Giddens (LH) - Former Mammoth Records employee, yet-unnamed band

Lauren Alexander - Piano teacher

Laura Ryan (LR)

Monique Morrissey (MM) - Washington, DC, visitor

Mary Beth Ross (MR) - WXYC

Jane Daly Witten (JW) - WX YC

Michelle Polzine (MP) - Drummer for Chapel Hill bands Munch and Hymen

Tricia Tuttle - Guitarist for Chapel Hill's June, WXYC

Julie Deagel (JD)

Carrie McLaren (CM) - SF! host

KC: (Summarizing a long, convoluted monologue by the party's host ) Why do most women start playing much later than men? Why is it not till they're out of college that they even think to be in a band?

MP: Because they don't have self-confidence or role models.

TT: The Go-Gos got me interested in music. But guys in h igh school considered girls groups a novelty.

CM: Has it changed since we've gotten older?

LH: Seems to me that it's stayed the same, the people are just different. There were always bands with women in them. Mary Huff from Southern Culture, X-Teen s, Taz Halloween . . .

KC: Seems like there are more women playing in bands now. Maybe there are just more bands.

MG: There are A LOT more bands.

KC: So the percentage has probably remained about the same. How many of you were into female rock sta rs when you were in your teens?

MB: I liked Jimmy Page and John Bonham. I always liked the guys. There were plenty of role models. They just weren't women.

MR: I think it's a function of sex. A 12-year old guy may have a role model that's not particul arly impressive in and of himself but can play an instrument and get a lot of girls. For women, we don't have role models like that Ñ women who aren't good-looking but can play an instrument and get guys.

KC: I think you're right-on, Mary Beth, especial ly since MTV. Men can be butt-ugly and still be seen as sex symbols.

MB: What about Chrissy Hynde?

(Everybody talks about how hot Chrissy is)

KC: Yeah, but that's a pretty minute subsection of women in the rock world. Think about all those girl grou ps back in the 60's. Women in rock were not song writers, were not instrument players, they were models who sang or danced.

MP: That's the way society is. I don't know why rock and roll would be any different. It completely parallels reality. If you're not the man's image of beauty, then you're not going to get anywhere. That's the way it is at work. You have to be twice as good to be half as noticed.

CM: Why aren't women drawn to indie rock the way men are?

MP: Punk rock is all young white male bec ause they don't have anything to do or worry about, so they go out and make this music full of angst.

CM: But women can have angst. Why is it particularly male angst?

MM: Punk takes a while to get used to, especially in the early 80's when it was really fast. You have to take a jump and actually have an image of you liking that stuff and if you associate it with guys and think it's just juvenile, it's going to take a while to do that. It's going to take awhile before you start hearing it for itself an d not just for the fact that it's noise. It takes perseverance and men will have it because they know they're going to like it because it's their kind of music. But women are more likely to listen to it once, not like it and quit. . . . I used to go to a lot of punk shows at my high school and I thought "this is really cool shit!" But I never thought I'd buy an album and come home and listen to it, even though I thought they were really cool. Guys I knew were doing that, but I didn't and it was because I didn't picture myself doing that. I didn't know I was like that. That's why it's nice that there are a lot of girl bands now, even though people get sick of hearing about it. In D.C., the scene has changed a lot. There's a lot more women in bands, a lot more women that go to shows, women in the mosh pit. I think it helps for people to see others like them involved.

JD: In the little town where I grew up, playing in a band was part of this guy thing where you'd steal a car and hang out. It didn't occur to me to even think about playing in a band. That was a guy thing.

TT: I don't know how many of you were taught when you were little that to be sexy or appealing to a man, you have to be vulnerable in some way. But that's the antithesis about indie and punk rock. It's about being tough. You get over it in high school, but that's the time you'd be starting to play an instrument.

LR: Remember in the 80's when they had all these stock punk rock girls in bad movies and it always turned out that, underneat h it all, they were really sweet and tender. Like Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink . .

MR: And her older friend dressed weird, then, when she met a guy, she started wearing a sweater!

LR: Did anyone read the Pamela Des Barres book, I'm With the Band?

MB: Oh, I loved that! I thought it was great. She was so genuine and innocent. Yeah, it was corny, but she knew it was corny and she knew it was stupid.

LR: Yeah, I agree, but it's not something I ever thought about, "Gee, I really respect th is person. I want to sleep with him!" I guess I just don't get the whole groupie thing.

(Tape cut off. Intermission. Monique is now fluent)

MM: I go out dancing a lot and I'm not really paranoid about guys looking at me. It's the kind of thing you jus t take for granted. But I have all these male friends that don't want to go to gay bars with me because they don't want to be scoped. It's so funny how men get so scandalized by the fact that they're getting looked at. But, back to playing in a band, I w ouldn't want to be on stage . . . actually, I'm tone deaf and I have no musical skills . . .

KC: There's many men rockers that hasn't stopped!

MM: I would never want to be on stage because I don't want people looking at me. It's not so much a sexual thing as being self-conscious about my body Ñ not the way my body looks particularly. I don't care. It's just the idea of having somebody look AT YOU.

MB: Women come under more scrutiny for the way they look. And how they sound. Everything - more scrutiny!

AG: It never occurred to me when we were starting the band that it was any sort of weird thing for us to be a band with two women and one man in it until people started commenting on it.

KC: Again, it comes down to the sexualization of it all. Wh ether you play music in a band, on the radio, or are a spectator, being female, you're being singled out and sexualized in one way or another. There are nights at WUNC when I am genuinely fearful. I get a disproportionate number of calls from men who use my name in a way I'm not comfortable with. It's really creepy and that doesn't happen to men.

AG: Yeah, hasn't everybody who's been on the radio gotten a masturbation call?

LH: There was an interview with Picasso Trigger where they brought up one o f the member's sexual orientation, that she was a lesbian. I've never read that about any other band except Bronski Beat!

AG: Actually, they were probably just trying to be silly. Kathy Poindexter always gets up there on stage and says, "We're the most politically correct band . . ."

LH: But the band didn't write the article.

MR: The point is that people that look at bands with women in them are obsessed with their sexuality one way or another. If the player is not good, then they say it's because s he's a woman and if she is good, they celebrate . . .

MB: No, if she's good, they say, ". . and nice tits too!"

MR: It's what they look like, then whether can play or not, then they link them up.

MB: Like with Wanda Jackson, everyone was like, "boy , she sure is sexy, and she can sing too." But they would never be that way with, say, Jimmy Page. ÒBoy, he sure is sexy and he can play guitar too!Ó

JW: That's because the people writing these article are men.

KC: Imagine a band in it with women the size of the guys in Screaming Trees. It wouldn't happen.

AG: Remember when Bridget Booher wrote that article in the Independent about the Meat Puppets and it was all about how cute they were. At the end of the article it says, "Meat Puppets - tasty!" It was great!

KC: Even now that there are more women in th e indie rock scene, there's still this constant sexualization . . . If you were a thirteen-year-old girl reading about a band like Velocity Girl, where they're always describing how beautiful the woman is, it's still very discouraging for someone who doesn't look a certain way. There's always an extra pre-requisite for women - to be beautiful.

MP: And it's a very narrow vision of beauty.

CM: Is talking about women rocking a good thing? Is it somehow positive or negative?

MB: The beauty of rock and r oll is that anybody can do it if they just have the slightest desire. I would tend to steer away from the "we are women who play music" thing. We're just people who like to play music.

MG: It's not that it's positive or negative. It ought to be irreleva nt.

MB: For me, it's very bothersome to be pigeonholed as Òthe girl who plays drums.Ó I'd rather be the person who plays drums.

MP: Not me. I'm a woman and I totally identify with being a woman. I'm into my uterus. When I go see bands with wom en in them, I totally stare at them and see what they're doing.

MB: Yeah, that's true.

KC: It is necessary for not only role models but co-patriots. It's true not only for bands. When I'm listening to public radio, I only want to hear women DJs.

LH: I've a four-year-old niece who only wants to hear music with a girl singing and whenever I put on something with a guy singing, she'll say, "No, let's listen to girl music!"

AG: Women don't make the some assumptions as men do when they see women playin g.

CM: Are there stereotypes of local women rockers?

MB: I think the stereotypes are that they're either Anne or Laura.

MP Yeah, I don't think there are enough for there to be stereotypes!

MB: A friend of mine went to Music Loft to buy a guitar a nd when she got a Telecaster the guy said, "that's a chick guitar."

MB (and Mary): MUSIC LOFT SUCKS!!!!

MP: Women rockers say: Music Loft sucks!

MB: Every time Mary and I go into Music Loft the guys are like "Hey girls . . . huh! huh! Need some s ticks, honey? Let me get ya some nice light ones!"

KC: God forbid they take women seriously.

JW: Yeah, but Music Loft is rude period. I went in there with my husband and they treated him like shit!

MB: Equal Opportunity Assholes.

CM: Has an yone here experienced overt sexism on the local music scene?

MP: Not really. Most of the boys I know in bands here are really cool.

LH: You mean like being in a crowd and having people grab your ass? That kind of thing happens all the time.

CM: I gu ess the thing that interests me is how some otherwise very cool guys react when you say something about the lack of women in the rock scene. It's very difficult to approach topics related to sexism without guys thinking you're being radical and divisive.< p>LR: Maybe they resent the publicity women rockers get, the novelty of it.

MP: It bothers men when all women are in bands because they feel excluded, but when all men are in a band, they think nothing of it.

(Anonymous belch)

KC: That's because tha t's the natural order. Like at WXYC, men think they're going to be constrained by a more multi-cultural approach. These are for the most part guys who were on the outskirts in high school. They're alternative men and this is their "in" club where they're in control and where they're determining the cultural norms and they don't want to give up that. When women say that they don't think the format represents them and that they want to have more imput, the guys get all bent out of shape.

CM: It's very dif ficult to establish a dialogue with the guys without them feeling like you're accusing them personally.

MP: Guys are so defensive. "oooooo, I'm such a goooood man! Don't persecute me!!!"

LR: There is a certain amount of oblivion with some of them. I h ave this huge guy friend that had never even considered the idea that I couldn't just walk out to our car at two in the morning in New York. It was an amazing realization to him.

JD: Yeah, but a lot of them want to live in that oblivion.

LR: Oh, exac tly. They say that they're treating you like anyone else but they don't understand that you need to keep pushing them to understand your position.

TT: I have a question. Why do you think guys would support women in bands then? Michelle, why do guys you know encourage you to make music?

MP: Because they're my friends!

(Many express sympathy for Wilson-Phillips)

Number of times Mondo 2000 asks Shonen Knife about sex and their relationship with boys in recent interview: 7

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