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onyxlynxstultiloquentiathe_future_modernesPunk literature is often given to tiresome romanticizing and rehashed clichés, but Alice Bag's recent autobiography, Violence Girl, offers a poignant, personal story from the unique perspective of a poor Hispanic woman raised in East LA. The book focuses on Bag grappling with her Chicana identity and feminist politics while fronting her seminal 1970's punk band, The Bags. In the radical punk scene of late-70's Hollywood, she found the strength to reconcile a tumultuous relationship with her abusive father and acquired skills that propelled her pursuit of political activism and teaching later in life. In this interview, Alice reflects on her early experience with punk and glam rock and analyzes the role of her book and persona in the larger feminist and Chicano movement. In the Bay Area this week, Bag will be reading and performing short acoustic sets: Jan. 11, San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch; Jan. 12: Amoeba Music, Berkeley; Jan. 13: 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, Oakland.
How has the book tour been going?
It's been great. My publisher is very small, so I book all my readings, do the networking and even have to buy my own books and then resell them to stores where I'm reading. The feedback I receive is really what keeps me going. It encourages me to book another show and drive across the country to some place I've never been before and sleep on somebody's couch so that I can read in front of strangers.
What do you think of the progress that female musicians have made in the past 30 years?
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laughingratthe_future_modernes's requestthe_future_modernesSeminal 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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WikipediaThat 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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alexbayleafthe_future_modernesPatty Schemel has played with some of the best bands of the last three decades. The out drummer has been on the kits for Hole, Bastard (a short-lived supergroup with Courtney Love, Louise Post and Gina Crosley), Imperial Teen and Juliette and the Licks. And luckily, she's brought a camera with her to recording sessions, backstage areas and into the studio. It was only right that she'd hand over the hours of footage to some capable friends (including director P. David Ebersole) to make a movie out of it.
Hit So Hard Trailer
Q&A: Patty Schemel is Alive and Kick-drumming
onyxlynxStarting out in black vaudeville in the early decades of the 20th century, Waters originally performed and recorded the sort of bawdy come-ons (“It’s Right Here for You” and “I Want to Be Somebody’s Baby Doll So I Can Get My Loving All the Time”) that, in the hands of Waters, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and other women, first established the blues as popular music. Waters’s style was advanced: understated, sophisticated, dramatic without being histrionic, ideally suited to the soon-to-emerge repertory of elegiac, subtly blues-influenced pop music that would come to be thought of as the Great American Songbook. It was Waters who made hits of the future standards “Am I Blue,” “Supper Time” and “Stormy Weather” (years before it became associated with Horne).Hope the embed works; the featured tunes are "Sweet Man" and "Dinah," but the other videos are also of interest.
the_future_modernesRosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 October 9, 1973) was a pioneering Gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock accompaniment. She became the first great recording star of Gospel music in the late 1930s and also became known as the "original soul sister" of recorded music.
Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her inspirational music of 'light' in the 'darkness' of the nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, her witty, idiosyncratic style also left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists, such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the world of pop music, she never left gospel music.MORE
the_future_modernesthe nickname "Geechie" or "Geechee" was most commonly given to people from around coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and is an alternate name for the Gullah ethnic group of that region.
the_future_modernesJessie Mae Hemphill (October 18, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was a pioneering electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the primal, northern Mississippi country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage. She was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in northern Mississippi just east of the Mississippi Delta.She began playing the guitar at the age of seven and also played drums in various local Mississippi fife and drum bands.
The first field recordings of her work were made by blues researcher George Mitchell in 1967 andethnomusicologist Dr. David Evans in 1973 when she was known as Jessie Mae Brooks, using the surname from a brief early marriage, but the recordings were not released. In 1978, Dr. Evans came to Memphis to teach at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis). The school founded the High Water label in 1979 to promote interest in the indigenous music ofThe South. Evans made the first high-quality field recordings of Hemphill in that year and soon after produced her first sessions for the High Water label.
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She was unique in country blues as a female defying tradition by singing her own original material while accompanying herself on electric guitar and playing tambourine with her foot. She employs a folk-blues open tuning style with a hypnotic drone in her guitar playing instead of relying on standard, 12-bar blues styles. She occasionally was accompanied on a second guitar by producer Evans.MORE
the_future_modernesthe_future_modernesWhy has this musician who recorded over two hundred sides and was well-loved by the Black blues audiences of the '30s and '40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? Perhaps it's because Memphis Minnie doesn't fit the myth of the young, tragic, haunted blues man and she is too complex of a character to be easily marketed. She shaped a life very different from the limited possibilities offered to the women of her time. She lived a long life, was at her best in middle age, and would spit tobacco wearing a chiffon ball gown. Memphis Minnie's music remained popular over two decades because it was lyrically and instrumentally in tune with the lives of Black Americans. It remains vital and influential today because of her inventive, rhythmic guitar playing and her songs, which capture people and events and bring them to life across the years.
Starting in 1929, her records lead us through twenty years of recorded blues and illustrate her life, as she moved from the rural South to urban Chicago. Musically there were three basic phases to her style: the duet years with Kansas Joe, the "Melrose" band sound of the late thirties and early forties, and her later electric playing. She was always a finger picker, and played in Spanish (DGDGBD), in open D (DADF#AD) and standard tunings, often using a capo. For guitar players, the first part of her career is definitely the most inspiring, as her inventive variations make masterpieces of tunes like "When The Levee Breaks"(1930) or "Let's Go To Town"(1931). In terms of her influence on the development of blues, she was an important player in the Chicago clubs during the '40s when musicians like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rodgers and Johnny Shines, were coming up. MORE
rockunroll - BBC Documentary: Girls in a Bandonyxlynx - Musiciansstultiloquentia - Punk expert needed!the_future_modernes - Alice Bag's got a book out!!!!laughingrat - Happy 35th birthdaythe_future_modernes - 90s flashback: Rachel and Petra Haden. Anna Waronker. that dog. (plus Tony Maxwell, male drummer)onyxlynx - Amy Winehouse Found Deadalexbayleaf - Kathleen Hanna on the 90s, teen spirit, stripping, and more...the_future_modernes - Women who drum: Patty Schemel of Holethe_future_modernes - quick hit.onyxlynx - Ethel Watersthe_future_modernes - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Guitar heroinethe_future_modernes - Linda Hopkinsthe_future_modernes - The front woman of the Vanessa Davis Band: Vanessa Davisthe_future_modernes - Black History: Ruth Brown, The Woman Who Built Atlantic Records 1928 - 2006the_future_modernes - Koko Taylor: "My music is like a therapy". 1928-2009the_future_modernes - Black History Month: One of the Hidden Ladies of the Delta Blues Geeshie Wileythe_future_modernes - Black History: Jessie Mae Hemphill- electric guitaristthe_future_modernes - Black History Month: Hadda Brooks 1916-2002, pianist & composer & actressthe_future_modernes - A bit of black history month blues: Memphis Minnietimeasmymeasurekrja![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
