Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

Mother's Finest is a funk rock band founded in Atlanta, Georgia by Joyce Kennedy and Glenn Murdock in the early 1970s. The group charted with the singles "Fire" (#93 Pop Singles), "Baby Love" (#79 Black Singles, #58 Pop Singles), "Don't Wanna Come Back" (#54 Black Singles), "Love Changes" (#26 Black Singles), and "Piece Of The Rock" in the mid to late 1970s.
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A super-cool act formed in Atlanta in the seventies, Mother's Finest made history as the first multicultural heavy metal band. But more specifically, Mother's Finest is considered the preeminent funk rock group, thanks in part to the woman who as co-lead vocalist sounded like quite the holy roller: Joyce "Baby Jean" Kennedy.

Lifting the spirits of funk rock fans to near-religious heights, Joyce Kennedy would part her lips at a microphone and something like a lightning bolt of soul struck a chord with all who heard her.

"Baby Jean" was born in a tiny Delta town called Anguilla, Mississippi, and was raised in Chicago. Which is where she met the man who would become her husband and co-lead vocalist, Glenn Murdock. Together, Joyce and Glenn embodied the next generation of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, but with a decidedly, hardcore rock 'n roll spirit. Joyce surely delivered the spine-tingling vocals for which Tina was known. But something of Joyce's voice also possessed the honey-drenched warmth of Gladys Knight, too.

Too out-of-the-box for black radio, too black for rock radio, Mother's Finest found -- and absolutely still has -- a loyal, cultish following.
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In 2003, Jessica Hopper penned a piece for Punk Planet called "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't." It focused on the burgeoning genre of rock that was drawing youth to live shows; a genre of music that was becoming about a new look and a lifestyle, at least more so than it had in recent years. Emo and hardcore music was evolving as its own scene, and even though there were thousands of bands partaking in the sound, there were still so few women participating. Why? Hopper said it was because the music had become all about faceless, nameless women who were heartbreakers, bitches and all around unworthy of the men singing the songs.

Where would a girl find herself in that?

"It truly did not occur to me to start a band," Hopper writes, "until I saw other women playing music." She cited the riot grrl movement and bands like Babes in Toyland and Bikini Kill as inspiring her to pick up a bass guitar. And now that riot grrl is unfortunately a thing of the past, it's time for females to take part in this otherwise male-dominated subgenre of emo and hardcore music.

Enter Sandra Alva.

The 22-year-old drummer from Los Angeles has almost 20,000 followers on Twitter. She has fans intent on reaching her, sending her photos of them in her T-shirts, having her sign their CD covers. She also happens to be a lesbian.

Alva first became well-known as the drummer of Black Veil Brides, a metal group that performs donned in black paint. After leaving the band last fall, she joined up with Modern Day Escape, an otherwise all-male screamo group. But situated behind her drum set behind four guys, Sandra still steals the show.

"When i was about 10 years old, my cousins joined this band," Sandra told AfterEllen.com. "They practiced at my cousins house and I would always sit and watch. I thought it was so cool how they were able to make their own music, so I decided I wanted to be a musician too. I tried the guitar, the bass, but wasn't feeling it. Then I sat behind the drums, and I easily started playing beats." She said it was a hidden talent, and she kept up with her newfound love of drumming.MORE

Seminal Los Angeles '90s alt-rockers that dog. are reuniting for a couple of shows, auto-correct-defying name and all. They perform tonight, August 26, and Sunday, August 28 at the Troubadour.

Before playing with bands like the Decemberists and writing music for the (totally underrated) live-action Josie and the Pussycats film, that dog. served as a link between Liz Phair and Rilo Kiley, sidestepping grunge and challenging their friends Weezer in crunching pop consistency with great, yet failed, singles like "Never Say Never" -- whose bridge Rilo went on to crib for their own "It's a Hit."

"I remember being on the road and calling my dad, who was a major record executive," that dog. frontwoman Anna Waronker recalls over the phone, referencing her pops, Warner Bros. producer Lenny Waronker. "I was like, 'Is ["Never Say Never"] a hit?' And he said, 'Allllllmost.'"

They stood out from their DGC Records contemporaries both visually -- as they were three blonde females ( my note: WRONG. 2 blonde and 1 dark haired woman} and one male -- and sonically, as all of the women sang, and one played violin. Unlike say, Hole, they didn't try to hold their own with the boys.
"At a time when people were screaming about death, we were talking about crushes," Waronker says.

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Wikipedia

That Dog (styled as that dog.) is a Los Angeles-based rock band that formed in 1991 and dissolved in 1997, reuniting in 2011. The band consists of Anna Waronker on lead vocals andguitar, Rachel Haden on bass guitar and vocals, her sister Petra Haden on violin and vocals, and Tony Maxwell on drums. Their punk power-pop songs were full of hooks and many layered vocal harmonies.
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That Dog Interview (1997) about their 1997 album "Retreat from the Sun"
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Their latest album, Grey Oceans, was released this May. It manages to keep the strange experimental sounds such as those from noisemakers and child's toys yet sounds much more polished than previous albums. Bianca told us that the overarching theme of their live shows this tour is "bedtime, bedroom, lovespells, dreams and past lives."

A recent live performance in New Orleans was nothing short of jaw-dropping. They performed with their favorite New Orleans trans musician, Sissy Nobby, of whom Bianca says, "We love him right now."

I was actually shocked to see that they didn't use any type of vocal effects; that's just what they sound like. Sierra's professional opera training is evident; her voice is crystal clear and almost dream-like and Bianca's high pitched gangster squeal was legit. Both girls performed in haunting, mystical costumes, much like those worn in their latest video, "Lemonade," which is amazingly beautiful and very fairy-tale-esque.MORE

The story of how Sierra and Bianca Casady formed CocoRosie is on its way toward legend. Two American sisters, half-Cherokee, and not close during their nomadic childhood, are reunited as adults in Paris and, just for fun, record the ground-breaking and eerily beautiful La Maison de mon Reve in their bathtub. The CD finds its way into the hands of powers that be at Touch and Go and suddenly they have a record deal. Sierra abandons her Parisian opera studies and they move to Brooklyn where they mingle with the likes of Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) and Devendra Banhart. Much touring ensues with positive reviews and comparisons to everyone from Billie Holliday to Portishead.

With their second CD due early next month, Junkmedia spoke with Sierra about the changes that have taken place in their lives in the past 18 months.

Brooklyn seems like the red-hot center of a lot of interesting new music with you, Devendra, Antony, TV on the Radio, etc. What's it like to be in the middle of that?

There's two sides that we see to this subject. One is we just kind of hide away and do our own thing and don't feel necessarily connected to a scene. And then on the other hand there is something special, some kind of collective consciousness that seems to be uprising right now. I think there are several artists in New York that do feel really connected and for us that's Antony, and a few other artists like Diane Cluck. She's a really special folk musician. It's kind of a small little family circle, but there is something. I can't explain it.

Given that you never intended your first album to be heard by anyone other than friends, were you nervous about writing the second album, knowing it would be heard or wondering how it would be received? MORE

A couple of years after moving from Albany, New York, to Los Angeles, In This Moment frontwoman Maria Brink almost gave up on her dream. It was mid-2004 and she was living alone, had no friends, hated her day job, and none of the groups she called to audition for would call her back. But instead of following her judgment, packing up her car and heading back east, the singer drove to a local tattoo shop and had the words “We Will” inked on the underside of her left wrist and “Overcome” on her right one. The phrase, once the slogan for the civil rights movement, became a mission statement for the tenacious singer. “Another time when I was down and frustrated, I had the word ‘Believe’ tattooed over my knuckles, which was the most painful thing ever,” she says from the table of a cozy coffee shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, between sips of a soy latte. “I did it for the same reason; to give myself motivation. It’s visually in front of me all the time, pushing me on.”

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