Publication:
HeartttaCk

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

HeartAttack #23
Top Ten:
Krigshot LP
Diskonto All
Clusterbombunit Live
DS 13 Live
Cruetzfeldt Live
MVD Live
Dir Yassin Live
Judas Priest-Unleashed in the East
Snifter-All

This being the second installment of the women's issue I'm going to continue with the music column I started several issues ago about female and female fronted punk and hardcore bands. Got that, this is part two, so if I leave out your favorite band its because I covered them back in issue 18. That was the sex issue, so you probably skipped the column about music for something more titillating.

I was recently asked by a friend what were the best all female metal bands. Normally when it comes to music I have an instant if not somewhat opinionated answer to every such question. Instead I just got confused, and replied "ah, there are no all female metal bands." This got me to thinking, Lita Ford and the Great Katt aside there really are no all female metal bands I could think of. So I conducted this scientific experiment. The Havoc record library's Metal Section contains198 LP's. That's pretty straight up metal because I generally file the cross over and grind with hardcore. Out of 198 LPs, two feature women, and in both cases it's a single female member. Jo Bench of course played bass in Bolt Thrower, and I already talked about Sacrilege in issue 18. I still think the first Sacrilege LP "Behind the Realms of Madness" is the best female vocals on any HC record ever. This LP belongs on your turntable right now. So our sampling of 198 Metal LP's found zero all female bands and only two with a single female member. I wanted to make a similar scientific examination of the hardcore section but it would take forever. The point I'm trying to make is this, as bad as hardcore is doing at breaking down traditional male dominated music business attitudes its not doing nearly as poorly as other forms of music such as metal or rap. In those scenes the women are placed in such a marginal role they might as well not be present at all. In Death Metal for instance women only seem to appear in lyrics as victims of rape and dismemberment. Likewise in rap music women seem mainly portrayed as bitches and ho's to be used and abused as sex objects only. I guess this sort of rampant sexism is part of what got me really disillusioned with both metal and rap in the early 90's. I've pretty much written off both forms of music as having any of the validity and sincerity of punk and hardcore due to their sexism and major label attitudes.

When I used to get to review records for fanzines one thing that always turned me off about a band was the "slut" or "dumb bitch" song. This is almost as archetypical as the anti-cop song or the "fuck you" song. Typically written about an ex-girl friend of a band member, such a song is filled with references to what a fucking slut, whore, bitch etc. this woman is. Slut by GBH would be a typical example. I recall not wanting to distribute the Assuck/OLD split 7" because I was offended by the Assuck song "fish factory." I remember an extensive exchange of letters with those guys about that song until I was convinced that they were not a sexist band and regretted doing the song. In the post rap music era we are pretty much acclimated to the use of abusive terms towards women, I guess this sort of stuff had more shock value in the late 70's and early 80's. Still, it is indicative of the lack of respect shown towards women in the music scene that such songs are tolerated. As many a reviewer and letter writer to MRR has pointed out a similar song written about a black man which called him a "dumb Nigger" or a "stupid darkie" would instantly create a storm of controversy. Jeff Bale has a thoughtfully written about how he thinks such songs are actually a healthy expression of youthful angst and frustration in gender relations. He argues that by taking out their frustrations in musical form the men are able to vent the confused feeling they may have towards women in this turbulent period of life for gender relations. While such songs may be cathartic I think that in general they are denigrating and disrespectful, reinforce sexist attitudes and encourage a male "frat boy" attitude in the scene. I think the scene benefits much more from a tolerant attitude and acceptance of women in roles outside of passive sex objects or targets of verbal abuse. An illustration of this are all the great female punk bands which have contributed to the power and endurance of hardcore and punk from 77 to today.

I don't know how I managed to mention the Bags and the Go-Gos but not the Avengers back in issue 18. The Avengers were not an all female band, just a female singer. However, Penelope Houston was one of the more gifted vocalists and performers of the period. I have to say that the recent Avengers re-issue on Lookout (Lookout?) while interesting, should not be accepted as a substitute for the CD Presents LP or the (rarer, more expensive) original studio recordings. I always fear with these re-issues that young punks will form an ass-backwards impression of a band. That is hearing a CD of demo's, live tracks and out takes before the classic studio recordings that got the rest of us hooked back in the day. When talking about crusty HC last time I forgot to mention Society Gang Rape from Sweden. I think this is a totally underestimated band. They did have one male member, but the songwriting, guitar and vocals was all female. Society Gang Rape was one of the best blends of traditional Swedish HC with SE style HC and metal that I've heard to this day. Speaking of crusty HC Disrupt had a female vocalist for a short time, and of course so did Destroy. Potential Threat and Hagar the Womb are two other female fronted bands coming from the Crass, Poison Girls angle in England in the early 80's. One female band thatís gotten a lot of attention lately are the Donnas. This band is corny as shit and a total rip off of the Runaways. Avoid this tepid pablum and check out some bands with female members like Noothgrush, Detestation, Anti-Product, Armistance, Damad, Ebola (Ger.), Fuck on the Beach or Arms Reach, this shit has power that corn ball bands on Lookout will never be able to touch. One of my favorite punk bands of all time Chaos UK had a female bass player for a while, Becki, who later was in Spite. Lets not forget that today in Minneapolis we have female singers in Ereshkigal, Calloused, and Scorned and a female bassist in Disembodied. There was an all female band here a few years back on Profane Existence called Smut who later went on to record for Spanish Fly, which is Lori from Babes in Toyland's label. Actually PE put out some records by Sofa Head and Internal Autonomy both female fronted punk bands from the UK. One band I've always really liked was Madhouse from DC. They didn't really fit into the Dischord hardcore scene so well but were a really great band with a very Siouxsie influenced singer. Adrienne formerly of Spitboy is now singing with Aus Rotten. Adrienne along with Chris of Slug and Lettuce are to me the two most dedicated and inspiring women in the punk scene today. OK that about wraps it for women in punk, I'm sure tomorrow I'll remember 20 bands I forgot in this issue and issue 18, so I'll re-visit this topic in the future. Now we've talked a bit about women in hardcore how about women in comic books.

I've noticed that comics, traditionally aimed at young males are making another stab at marketing to females. Sailor Moon and Xena titles have been selling very well at comic stores across the country fueled by a demand by female readers. There was a really corny attempt to lure more female readers in the early 80's with characters like the Dazzler that failed miserably. But some progress has been made in the last 20 years with women comic book characters coming in to their own as opposed to playing traditional roles of sexpot, victim, seductress or loyal wife etc, all with built in stereotypes of weakness. I don't know much about Xena to tell the truth but from what I understand her character is a rip off of in my opinion the best female comic character ever, Red Sonja. Red Sonja has made several appearances in comic form in and out of the pages of Conan by far the best was the series by Frank Thorne from 1976. Really I think Conan's female companions Be-Lit, Valeria and Sonja are some of the best female comic characters of the 70's, much more inspiring than the Invisible Girl for example. That is not to say that the rest of the women depicted in the Conan comic, indeed in the fantasy genre as a whole, are not dreadfully sexist stereotypes. Even today the few strongest female characters are typically members of super teams such as the X-men and the Avengers. If you look at the Wasp's character in some of the early Avengers comics you can see how far the female super heroines characters have developed since the silver age. Still there is a long way to go and I think like rock music comics will continue to be male dominated for some time.

The MP3 format has been getting a lot of press lately and we are being told that record stores and CD's will soon become obsolete etc. Bullshit. They said records would become obsolete with the outbreak of CD's but vinyl is still going strong. The record store survives despite competition from mail order, it will survive competition from the internet. Who really wants to go "virtual record shopping" anyway. We were joking on tour that we could save a bundle by having a "virtual tour" over the internet. We'd set up a web cam and perform in front of a backdrop that could be digitally edited so that it looked like any number of sleazy punk dives. We could have a computer generated audience complete with a drunk guy who keeps jumping on stage and grabbing the mic. Viewers could watch this safely from their terminals without ever having to leave their house. We in turn, would never have to leave our practice room, just click on the menu and presto Code 13 live in Zurich! Or Tokyo, or Johannesburg, the possibilities are endless. We could tour the world without leaving our computers. We could even have virtual cops come in and break up the gig after two songs and spray mace on everybody.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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