by Carrie McLaren
Instead of saying that we're smashing sexism, we're trying hard not to be a macho rock 'n' roll label. - Calvin Johnson, K Records
Ok, so all the Women In Rock articles have been done to death and it's time to move onto something like quirky-yet-reverent lounge acts. Discussing sexism in the indie rock world is kind of a drag. Since the typical story pre-supposes a sort of girls-a gainst-boys polarity, there's always this feeling we should be comparing and contrasting. Even if "girls play as well as boys" is recognized as a not particularly enlightened view, gender differences are key. While I'll be the first to acknowledge differe nce (as culturally constructed), this whole male/female dyad has got to go, and with it, any assumptions that punk and rock are the province of the former.
Sure, you don't have to be too high up on the food chain to realize women make punk rock. There were always Slits, X, Specs, et al, but punk could never be "womanly" or "feminine." Since getting involved with music usually begins in adolescence, that magical age when boys need to turn manly, it's no surprise that the music communities which evolve then are hyper-masculine enclaves - punk, hardcore rap, heavy metal. Along with being an outlet for angst and all that, music can help boys make a case for being rebellious, tough, etc. Conveniently, punk, rap and metal all come with a weakass, "female" analog - pop, R&B, power ballads. Yet particularly for punk, this way of perceiving music in dualistic terms has been a sort of Achille's heel. By defining themselves by what they oppose, The Mainstream, punk fans recycle the latter's tired dependence on black and white terms. In lieu of a conscious, positive ("this is what we are about" rather than "this is what we are not about") definition of community, y oung-angry-man aesthetics (volume, aggression, rawness) become central to identity; a politics in and of themselves. With this noise created in opposition to something else, punks can only love what Mainstreamers hate; that's how opposites work. But as we 've seen with the flowering of alternative music, this doesn't work so well when the underground goes over. Finding selfhood through hard-rockin' bands doesn't get you very far when the people you're rebelling against start listening, too.
Though there will always be cardboard enemies available to fight, at some point doing so just becomes, well, sad. The June issue of Maximum Rock N Roll checks in with a popular theme - major labels bad, indies good - charting in detail the interwoven r elationships between labels so that punks can separate out the real rock from the major label bullshit. Problem is, accepting unquestionably the fundamental difference between indies and majors prevents rockers from examing why a cycle wherein majors coop t the underground only repeats itself. When Virgin Records had Smashing Pumpkins release their debut CD on Caroline to establish "indie cred," it worked. But blaming Virgin for such tactic misses the point; if it's so easily ripped off, indie cred must be pretty shallow. One MRR columnist actually did make this point. In fact, he used to explain why he was leaving the magazine.
If punk rock is to remain at all relevant to another generation of music fans, it needs to be re-evaluated - disconnected from a limiting "masculine" aesthetic, from the idea that rock can be evaluated with some sort of two-dimensional criteria.
It's kind of ironic, yes, but Rock and the Pop Narcotic, Joe Carducci's handbook of he(t)-man rockisms, may have the answer. Ironic because the book on one hand epitomizes punk's "us vs. them" (them = Pop . . . which pretty much includes anythin g "feminine") world view. Yet strip away the extraneous tripe about rhythem sections, etc. and Carducci suggests only one demand of his music - that it gets an affirmative response to the question, "does it rock?" Waylon Jennings, Duke Ellington, Nancy Si natra could all therefore be considered rockers - depending, of course, on who's answering . . . . which lead's us to the test's radical potential. By focussing on rock as an active verb rather than a noun (supported by adjectives), it can account for con text - who's responding, time, place, intentions, mood, packaging, all the things that may combine to effect how the question is answered. Incidentally, old-school punks like Carducci deny these elements have any real import on the rock experience. Fortun ately, there are more ways to punk rock these days. And more people doing it.
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There have been lots of women in bands and all-women bands on the label starting way back with the first compilation tape. But to be considered cool for doing that is a very recent phenomenon. - Calvin Johnson
The state of Washington has been the source of indie fantasies for years now, but ciphering through all the media grunge surrounding Seattle, the impression that gets me most comes out of nearby Olympia. I once read about a scorching summer ballgame th ere where the boys playing wouldn't take their shirts off to show solidarity with the girls. Whether such a gesture was actually necessary is beside the point; it represents a sort of childlike resolve to play fair, an effort indicative of the politics th at have made Olympia a near-mythical haven for misfit rockers, particularly women rockers.
Since the early 80's when Calvin Johnson founded K Records, girls as well as boys had a outlet for constructing music on their own terms. Beat Happening was a pioneer in many ways - boys and girls (Beat Happening was originally Calvin and two gals, Hea ther and Laura, but Laura moved and Bret superseded her) making music together that, although inspired by punk, reflected an appreciation of things "girly." K took seriously female artists and popular culture that never made it inside the boys' club; it's as if Calvin and them never learned Nancy Sinatra and Wanda Jackson weren't punk.
In a way, Beat Happening (and others, naturally, but I'm trying to keep this simple) reveled in an age gone by. What they did lyrically with simple nursery-schooled rhymes paralleled a sparse instrumental playground. Like shouting "do over" when no o ne's sure of the rules, Beat Happening took the punk sounds out of punk and started from scratch. Even their lack of instrumental skill, the most prominent marker to remain, meant something else in context. By defining their community in terms of "girls " and "boys," the K kids were rejecting more than authority. They were rejecting the very construction of adulthood, where to be a man is to be manly and to be woman, the opposite of man, womanly. They romanticize an age where gender roles are more fluid , where love is innocent, everyone acts dumb but no one expects otherwise. Despite some obvious drawbacks, the approach has been instrumental in moving indie ahead, in confronting the political numbness that followed the first wave of punk. At a time when no one wants to preach, let alone listen to it, this new school makes its political impact in the way the music sounds, is presented, packaged . . . the whole aesthetic. The potential for breaking down gender barriers is certainly no less here than in th e Riot Grrrl movement (also Olympia bred), which, like 70s punk, attacks sexism explicitly.
Naturally none of this has happened in a vacuum. Lots of folks made music early on that challenged the punk model. There are parallels yet to be made with lo-fi, where the rhythm section that drives Carducci's rock is superfluous while the "feminine" h uman voice is oft a dominant player. And there are lots more reasons more women are making rock now. But what's important is how bands like Beat Happening - whatever the bands may sound like - are de-centering rock, divorcing it from a particular aestheti c. This isn't to write-off bands that play the loud/fast/aggressive noise that we're forever associating with testosterone and masculinity; but it is to say that these sounds alone aren't what makes music strong or tough or good. The radical potential of scenes like Olympia and wherever people support each other making music themselves is seen when bands like Fugazi play with Tiger Trap or Mary Lou Lord and it doesn't seem weird. It's punk that's inclusive rather than exclusive. Is it any wonder that of t he pioneer 80's indie rock labels still around today, the ones to remain on the edge of things are those with rosters that not only prominently feature women but are simply eclectic? SST and Alternative Tentacles may be making money off their back catalog , but remain largely irrelevant while Sub Pop and Matador (not around in the 80's but it . . . sort of . . . evolved out of Homestead) rock their socks off with Spinanes, Jale, Liz Phair and the Shams alongside Jon Spencer, Unsane, Codeine, et al.