IT'S A LONG WAY TO THE TOP WHEN WOMEN ROCK 'N' ROLL
EDEN MUNRO
VUE Weekly, September 13, 2007
Spend
a few minutes scouring the internet looking for something along the
lines of “sexy album covers” and you’ll quickly turn up a vast
assortment of images that have graced the jackets of all kinds of
records, from Whitesnake’s Love Hunter to Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese
to Christina Aguilera’s Stripped. And while there’s plenty of variety
in the sounds that each of those albums holds within its covers, the
one thing shared amongst them all—and plenty of others, too—is the
placement of scantily clad women at the front and centre.
It’s difficult to deny that, for most of its history, rock ‘n’ roll has
been a male dominated form of music but not every female is under the
thumb of male powers. While someone like Madonna, who keeps a tight
reign on the control of both her image and her music, might be an
exception in a world that is beset by insta-star making machines like
American Idol, with singers being judged more on their ability to
perform material written by professional songwriters than their own
creativity, the fact remains that there are women out there who are
capable of so much more, and who are right now flexing their own
creative muscles.
Kim Rackel makes up one half of the horn section in The Wet Secrets,
and she admits that there were a few female musicians who intrigued her
as a child—The Misfits, the rocker girls from the cartoon Jem and the
Holograms, and Joan Jett—but as much as she was thrilled by the images,
she was never won over by an aesthetic alone
“I was pretty infatuated with Madonna when I was little, and Michael
Jackson—I loved Michael Jackson, as well—but I think it was more the
sparkles and the dancing,” she recalls. “It was the music—I loved the
music, too—but I think it was the whole package ... I thought it was
pretty goddamn cool.”
The other half of the band’s horn section is Donna Ball, who has also
held down the bass for local metal band Some Won Spit, and she agrees
with Rackel’s assertion that music is about more than simply the image.
Counting off the first bands that she listened to while growing up,
Ball doesn’t name a single act with any sort of official female
presence.
“When I was a kid I really liked Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, Glass
Tiger—whatever my sister listened to is what I liked when I was
little,” she explains. “I didn’t really think about female influence.
It was always 100 per cent music. I was always more about music—I can
play music, I like it, I’m good at it—more so than having an idol in
music.”
After moving from the West Coast to Edmonton, singer-songwriter Sall
Gibson says that she has been impressed with the number of girls she
has seen out playing at this city’s numerous open mic nights. Gibson
says that her initial influences were, like Ball’s, more male-centric
than female, though for different reasons.
“If anything, women musicians influenced me in a reverse way,” she
chuckles. “Because my vocal styling is in a lower range I was
frustrated constantly because I couldn’t sing any of the female
songwriters that I liked, so I ended up playing a lot of guy’s songs.”
Just as women count plenty of male musicians as influences, the
opposite is often true of men. Edmonton’s Eamon McGrath, who performs
solo and with both The Wild Dogs and Red Medicine, says that he was
already looking up to local all-girl punk band The Homewrekers when he
was 13 years old, and today he lists both Joni Mitchell and Lucinda
Williams among his favourite songwriters. McGrath is also quick to add
that he likes all of them because of their songs, not the novelty of a
woman playing music.
In fact, the idea of shaking up the
traditional male mentality of rock ‘n’ roll with a female presence is
something that McGrath takes seriously—the drummer in his first band
was a girl and until just a few days ago his girlfriend was playing
bass in The Wild Dogs.
“It’s good to have girls in bands because they do bring a specific
perspective to the music,” McGrath considers. “There’s something very
male about rock ‘n’ roll and when you see a perspective from the other
side of the gender fence it’s really refreshing.
“I’m not trying to say that there are these great, vast differences
between guys and girls,” he emphasizes before continuing, “but the
reality is that rock ‘n’ roll is a phallic kind of attitude
historically, and changing that up is good.”
If there is some pressure for female musicians to put forward a
particular image, it certainly doesn’t manifest itself in some
overarching rule that applies to everyone, as Gibson makes clear.
“Because I’m a songwriter and I’m a reasonably proficient guitar
player, I don’t really think about the image thing too much,” she says.
“I mean, I’m most comfortable on stage with my toque and my hoody and
would never really think twice about going on stage like that.”
For Rackel and Ball, sexuality is something that they have few
problems with when it comes to the stage—in addition to The Wet
Secrets, both women also perform with Capital City Burlesque.
“I can pretty much get on the stage and act like a total retard and
take off my clothes at the same time, and be okay with it,” Rackel
laughs, adding, “So I guess prancing around in the giant boots and the
little marching band outfits that we have—we’re pretty comfortable
doing it.”
Bobbi-Jo Moore, the singer/guitarist for Vancouver’s The Elixxxirs,
admits that she’s never had any serious difficulties in music that she
would attribute to her gender and she points out that there are some
possible advantages for females in the industry, too, partly due to the
fact that there are statistically a whole lot more men playing in bands.
“For me, booking gigs is really easy and it has been ever since I
started the band,” she notes. “Even if [a promoter] hadn’t heard our
music or anything, if I went up and talked to them they’d seem to give
us a show. So I’m not exactly sure if that’s because I’m female—I think
that has something to do with it—or if it’s my outgoing personality,
but I’ve heard from a lot of my friends who are guys in bands and they
don’t seem to have the same success. They have to try harder to get
gigs.”
Moore goes on to say that she would be at a bit of a loss if image were the number one concern.
“One of the things that attracts our fans is the songs,” she says. “I’m
not the greatest singer in the world and I’m not the greatest guitar
player, either, but I write really great songs [that are] catchy and
people like to dance to them. As a female, if I was singing other
people’s songs it would be a lot harder.”
She sees the respect that she gets from other musicians as a
direct result of working her way up from the bottom, rather than being
plucked from obscurity and paraded around by a bunch of handlers.
In the end, Ball agrees that it’s important for women to prove
themselves as musicians. “I don’t think a lot of people think that
girls can play,” she admits regarding the challenges facing female
musicians today, but she adds that, once the initial shock wears off,
acceptance is usually not all that far behind. “You just have to prove
yourself, I suppose.
“It’s almost not a sex issue and just an issue of talent, because I
think that everyone has to go through it,” she says. “I don’t think it
matters what gender you are.”