Women who Rock: Part 3

We left off with the beautiful Janis Joplin and Tina Turner, who ruled the era of the Summer of Love as Queens of rock n’ roll.  From here, Rock in general exploded into about 10,000 genres, subgenres, and crossover genres:  Funk, Soul, Pop, Punk, Metal, Alt, Grunge, Classic, Soft, Hard, Prog, and I could literally go on forever. Consequently, I debated for a long time where to go from here.  The Funk mavens of the 70’s? The acoustic ladies who hung with Cat Stevens and the like?  80’s/90’s feminist folk?  Pop divas?  Punk princesses?  The options are endless!**

Consequently, I’m just gonna try to draw attention to some female musicians that I am particularly inspired by.  Who better to start with than two women who were born at the exact time that Janis Joplin and Tina Turner were tearing it up?

PJ Harvey (b. 1969)

That link is to the video that made me fall in LOVE with this chick by her sheer badass-ery.  (Sexy white suit + Bejeweled High Heels = Hell Yeah.)  After then tumbling down the rabbit hole that is her collective musical output so far, I discovered that PJ Harvey was Gaga before Gaga was Gaga, in that she does whatever the hell she wants without apology, and her stuff is wacky.  …Except for the fact that her music/style is completely different. There is no couple of songs that encompass PJ’s sound because she has varied so much over the course of her 20 year career, but shes' generally pretty punk.  (Here's another song, if you just can't get enough.)

Neko Case (b. 1970) 

Quite a bit better known than PJ and significantly more folk/country influenced, Neko’s powerful and unique voice totally captivated me a few years ago and I still haven't stopped being hypnotised by it.  For a hilarious autobiography of this lady, check out this link. 

The thing that inspires me about these two artists, and which links them in my mind, is that they both have a really unconventional feminist viewpoint without being militant or even really promoting Feminism as a cause. (Which often puts people off.) These women have game-changing ideas simply by being awesome artists who aren’t afraid to share a unique and intelligent point of view through music. 

(See also: “Lady Pilot” and “People Got A Lotta Nerve” by Neko Case;

“Dress” and “ Working for the man” by PJ Harvey)

**The historical stuff I have talked about heretofore was based on Dr. Ken Kleszynski's History of Rock n' Roll class at University of Portland.  AWESOME class, AWESOME professor.

Women who Rock: Part Gaga

I couldn't resist. This is badass.

Women who Rock: Part 2 (Meet the Co-Queens)

The initial pioneer-esses have broken into Rock!  The blues mistresses crooned the inital battle cry, a couple brave ladies took up the mighty Axe, and one or two more joined the ranks with the power of Country. 

Now what?

...girl groups.  Yikes.  I mean, on the bright side more and more ladies were getting involved with this new-fangled music, but things got pretty Sugar Pop-y for a while.  Let's just move on, shall we?

There are two women who, to me, totally revolutionized what women could do and say with music:

Janis Joplin and Tina Turner.

I've gotta start with Janis Joplin because I fell in love with her first.  There is absolutely nothing that can compare with her total freedom of spirit, raw blues instinct, and raspy screech.  She sounded like she drank whiskey from the bottle and smoked cigars as soon as she could walk, and she sang from the fathoms-deep depths of her freakin' soul.  Her songs also contained an insight and intelligence that female singers hadn't possessed before--certainly not in their songwriting, anyway.  Check out Get it while you can, one of my favorite songs of hers.  I won't even begin to go into her bio, because many people have done a much better job of documenting her life, and google will yield you a wealth of info.  There is supposedly FINALLY going to be a biopic about her starring Amy Adams entitled "Janis Joplin: Get it while you can" in 2012.  We will see if it actually happens though...There appears to be some behind-the-scenes drama over who gets the biopic.  Zooey Deschanel was supposed to play her in another flick a few years back, but that fell through.

Anyway!  In the parking lot of a Taco Bell somewhere in central Oregon, my friend Jamie told me about Tina Turner's incredible life story, and piqued my interest in this incredible woman who, like Janis, has been called by various publications at various times, the "Queen of Rock and Roll."  Since then, I have discovered that Tina Turner is an awesome and inspiring human being, as well as an incredible entertainer with a voice that ROCKS.  (<< I don't know what I like best about that video... The costumes, the dance moves, or Tina Turner's high level of badass. My favorite might actually be the tall white guy.)  Anyway, check out her biopic "What's love got to do with it?"

Personally, there is no way that I could choose one of these two fabulous, revolutionary women upon whom to bestow the crown designating the "Queen of Rock and Roll," so I hereby giving them matching crowns, and thank them for fully bringing women into the world of Rock. 

Women who Rock: Part 1

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of music by women.  The way I figure it, I am a woman. And I wanna hear how modern women express themselves through music.   Not like, the way a pop diva does, by singing songs which are half the time written by men, and most of the time singing about the Y-chromosomed sex in a questionable way. (i.e. "My Humps" by good ole Fergie Ferg.)  Lately, I wanna hear music that is totally the creative baby of a woman, and not with the end of giving a dude a stiffy. 

So I've been wanting to write about some of the badass musicians I've discovered on this journey, but this whole journey begins a long time ago.  In my History of Rock and Roll class with Dr. K in college, I was impressed that, during the birthing pains of all things Rock, we studied practically no significant contributors who were female.  Because there were practically no significant female contributors. 

One of the first things Dr. K said in this class was, "Rock and Roll is... Rhythm and Blues played by white people."   When rock music first came to be, it was because Rhythm and Blues was being born in America and white people got really stoked about it and tried to participate.  As far as the nuts and bolts go, the instruments and chord progressions of the genres were the same, but the stylings were different.

Anyway!  There were a few women on the ground floor of rock, starting with pre-R&B blues and jazz singers like Bessie Smith.  Most of these women were black, both because blues was essentially invented by African-Americans, and because it was a bit more widely acceptable for a black woman to sing about love in speakeasies since African-American ladies were already so marginalized by society. 

The first woman to really begin to break out of the lady-blues/jazz-singer mold, and therefore, my first "Woman who ROCKS" was...

1. Memphis Minnie - called by Groves dictionary "the only significant female blues instrumentalist."  One of the first guitarists to take up an electric guitar, and definitely the first woman to do so, she was a hard-drinkin, hard-fightin', tobacco-chewin' woman you didn't mess with, and she contributed innovations in rhythmic accompaniments to the beginnings of rock and roll.  Thank God that the Mother of Rock and Roll was a total badass.

In order to totally make that stylistic jump from Blues and R&B over to rock n' roll, we've gotta add some white chicks to the mix.  First, was...

2.  Wanda Jackson.  Known as the Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda has the honor of being the first woman to record a rock n' roll song.  Unfortunately, the "scandalous" rock music that she got her start with was never that successful, and her money-makers were pop hits as well as country and gospel stuff later in her career.  I once made the unilateral decision one summer that Let's Have a Party would be the official party song, and every time we got drunk my dear, patient housemates had to endure me blasting it and insisting that we were about to have a hoot n' a holler. 

The most commercially successful early woman of rock was the adorably precocious child star...

3. Brenda Lee.  But really, her commercial success came from the fact that she, like our charming super star Taylor Swift, was way more country and pop than she was rock.  She also discovered much earlier than Wanda the advantage of going in a pop and/or country direction.  Check out this saccharine little number, her biggest hit:  I'm Sorry .  While she was kind of a rocker when she was a kid, she smoothed out her sound considerably by age 15.  Make sure you stick around for the spoken word section of I'm Sorry.  Priceless. 


These three ladies were the first significant female contributors to rock-and-roll-badassery, and all Women who Rock today owe at least a little sumpin' sumpin' to their daring contributions to musical history.  Let the saga continue...

Then I confess, hear on my knee...

...before High Heaven and you
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love

COHEED AND CAMBRIA.

That's right.  I tired of hiding it.  "Danielle," you may say, "Are you a 16 year old boy?  For what reason have you not grown out of that phase?  Why would you like such a band?"  Worse yet, you might say, "Who the hell is Coheed and Cambria?"

Alright.  So maybe my love of Coheed and Cambria springs from a deeply held desire not to grow up.  Maybe it speaks to poor taste.  Maybe it speaks to AWESOME taste. 

Or maybe it conjurs memories of driving to school with my brother my sophomore year of high school with "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" blasting in his little silver hyundai, the smell of stale fast food and teenage boy thick in the air, nauseously weaving down I-84 to see, for the umpteenth day in a row, if we could make it to school in the 8 minutes and 13 seconds it took for the song to play out.  Maybe some days the car was filled with angsty sibling tension over one of us thinking the other was making us late, or whatever other stupid thing we were bitching about. But some days as we ripped up the freeway, tailgating to within 4 feet in our desperation to get to school on time and singing/screaming along with INKSSE:3, there was an unmistakable sense of camaraderie, flying on the epic music through a bright Idaho morning to a school which we generally considered a wasteland.  I think we listened to that song every morning for at least an entire semester.

Coheed and Cambria will forever remind me of those mornings, but I would like to take this time to argue that they are actually a really awesome band in their own right.  What other band uses their entire discography to tell one epic Sci Fi tale? That's right, all five studio albums tell the story of "The Amory Wars" written by lead singer Claudio Sanchez, and the epic Sci Fi tale told through Coheed's music has been turned into a comic book series and a full length novel.  Come on.  What nerd reading this isn't totally excited right now? 

Sci Fi + Rock = Magic.

Beside that completely awesome fact, I just dig the music.  According to Wikipedia, Coheed is "Progressive Rock," but there is something so epic and expansive about their style that makes it almost operatic in scope, which may also explain my love of them.  I love a band that's not afraid to make a song as long as it needs to be.  In addition, they morph towards metal, punk, and pop when they need to, making them delightfully varied and diverse in their soundscape. 

While I'm on my soapbox preaching the good news/Simultaneously using this blog as a music confessional...

I still listen to The Alkaline Trio on a regular basis, and occasionally indulge in My Chemical Romance and sometimes Fall Out Boy.  Don't look at me like that.  It's fun music.  I will no longer apologize for my behavior, and I will embrace my identity as a preteen boy!

Anyway. Getting back to business.  Coheed and Cambria.  Next time you have to do something in approximately 8 minutes and 13 seconds, I challenge you to listen to this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_Now6WDRc
and not feel totally epic while accomplishing your 8-minute task.