The Women of Rock

While 70s music may be known for splintering off an incredibly diverse number of styles and interpretations of rock and roll, it should be known for the decade when women rockers came into their own. Well okay maybe recognition of them didn't really happen until a bit later... but that is when late boomer women took up the anthem, heard the call, and sisters started "doing it for themselves."I have always contended (but do not believe anything you hear about me being contentious though) that the sweeping societal changes usually traced to "the 60s" did not really take root and embed themselves in our societal psyche until "the 70s," thus impacting the Later Boomers far more than the Hippie Boomers. I climb out even further on a limb when I say that later born Boomer women absorbed the majority of the shock waves from the impact of these changes.

A great place to view the extent of the type of change of which I speak is in the world of popular music. Rock splintered into so many genres, by the early '70s that I find I must use the generic term "rock" for contemporary music in general in this article, although it might rankle folks who know the difference between adult contemporary, pop, folk, rock, soft rock, country rock, ad infinitum. I firmly believe that the marketing of distinctions between musicians vary far more than the orientations of the artists themselves. But then there are two type of people in the world, lumpers and splitters, I'm a lumper. I prefer to see commonality not difference, and I'll be dog gone dogged if I can figure out the difference between most contemporary pop and folk singers other than the circuit they play and tour.

Anyway, moving on, I will not belabor the old, now well established, argument that Rock 'N Roll is a sexist industry. That isn't news to anyone. But when you think of the world of contemporary rock, across the board and across genres, you will find that many, many of the women whose names come up are later born Baby Boomers: So how did these women manage to survive a sexist industry and claim a niche for themselves? What niche? Well, it is a niche, but it isn't a named one. I mean the niche is filled with women, and why would you want to bother naming something like that? (I'm being sarcastic here!) I'm talking about the Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Joan Osborne, Carrie Newcomer, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, KD Lang, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, and Kate Bush. What these women do could not have been done in the 60s. They are filling a niche they created themselves. In essence these are the ladies of rock who took advantage (long, slow, steady advantage) of a juvenile system that was the mid-20th century music industry, and created the land of women's rock. I think you have to go back to early jazz and blues singers to really find the breadth and depth of women in music that late booming women display. Info at the end of this article will help you keep current with these booming women of rock, pop, and a few more celtic and country folks too. (Another of my articles "Systems theory, semiotics, and deconstructing post-modernist bull" will get you up to speed on the systemic elements of social change.) But let's continue to look at a smattering of what makes these ladies so special before you go flittering off to their sites.

Of course some great amount of gratitude goes to the Grandmothers, Mothers, and Aunties of Rock who are leading edge Boomers or even a bit older. We daughters and sisters should lay alms at their feet, even as our brothers and husbands hurl themselves prostrate and drooling at their feet them hoping for a kind word or smile. (Yes, there are male groupies…ask any male Boomer about Stevie Nicks if you don't believe me… and watch his eyes glaze over, but it is a different sort of scene.)

Who would these grandmothers be? Bonnie Rait, who personifies tough and whom I often see playing a benefit concert in Sedona that has also hosted Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin carpenter and Trisha Yearwood. These strong women of rock stick together, huh? Joan Armatrading has to be mentioned, even though she is pretty hoity toity with the Queen now, but she certainly taught more than a few late booming women how to lay it on the line lyrically. And we cannot forget Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde, lest the gods of rock strike us dead. I am enchanted with a writer friend's description of Patti in concert in Ljubljana a few months back, "At times she broke the frenzied rock anthem pace by donning a pair of half-glasses and reading from one of her books, one of her poems or one of William Blake's, aging in an instant into a rude bohemian grandma, then shucking the props and transforming back into the ageless rock-poet avatar in blue jeans." Geesh, such poetry! I wanna grow up to be a rude bohemian grandma… I wanna never compromise the essential core... at least half of late boomer women do, I'm sure. But there are multiple styles of expression and there are some of us who at times still like to listen to (or perform) songs about love and lacy thoughts and owe a great deal to Stevie Nicks for showing us all that you can keep your identity and autonomy while being one of the most well recognized sex symbols of an era. Then there are Linda Rondstat and Joni Mitchell who showed us that you can be successful but that it is more important, ultimately, to do your own thing whether it be jazz or mariachi.

Of course there are a few who defy such dichotomous classifications as grandmothers or aunties… and as any scholar knows one should always be suspicious of dichotomies… such as Laurie Anderson who is definitely to be grouped agewise with the aforementioned women but who made performance art and spiky haircuts almost mainstream with many of her younger compatriots. And Debbie Harry defies classification too… does anyone still appreciate the crossover quality of Rapture (not to mention playbunny to new waver)? And what of Annie Lennox and Pat Benatar .who almost qualify for late boomer status, but not quite as they were born early mid 50s? I do understand that hard and fast classification is impossible. We're talking trends here, okay?

It's not that the late booming women born from the mid-50s and to the mid-60s can lay claim to any radical creation, although the women of punk, along with the rest of the punk scene, certainly tried, but they can lay claim to riding out a storm with a determined patience that really shows how much stamina women have. Like any group of cast-a-ways, they had to individually ride out waves that started continents and lifetimes away. We all do. Nothing is without antecedent. But these women certainly represent, and in many ways typify, how many boomer women have met and dealt with the struggles, obstacles, and confrontations encountered at the edge of this rapidly expanding system or landscape. Big labels just don't promote women through time. Well hyped, hyper-funded one hit wonders come and go, as do teen voices behind the implants, navels, and bootay that record execs so love, while incredible performers and lyric spinners like Natalie Merchant are push to the side or back burner. Check out her "official" website and compare it to the one listed below, if you don't believe me. These officious sites never capture the essense of the woman they represent. But these women are not giving up. They continue to play their hearts out into their 30s and 40s whether they've made it big or not… and in many instances making it big doesn't translate to making big money.

I like to mentally place people into the same three types of groups as cell cultures I've heard about (okay, I went through a nerd phase and hung out with some scientist types): cells that stay at home right where they were formed, cells that venture out to new territories and then migrate back with news of outside conditions, and colonists that venture out never to return as they start their own colonies. Later born boomer women musicians were freer to be reporters or colonists. While their older sisters were often restrained or simply barred from the vessels that set sail for the distant newly discovered lands rumored to be populated with such with such wild and mythical beasts as rock and roll, psychoactive drugs, reliable contraception, instantaneous world wide communication and strange and wonderful new technologies -- the younger sisters simply built their own boats and set sail to explore these mythic lands in their own way, at their own pace, christened with their own names, and their own music. 

One interesting thing is that a segregation of sorts occurred, probably driven by women and not in an accidental fashion. Many female musicians were found to be "doing it for themselves" or with a single male partner -- the "it" in this instance being music, keep it clean here, okay? -- in order to do what they wanted, liked and needed to do when the opportunities for women in the rock world consisted at best of being primarily singers, occasionally songwriters (probably uncredited), and rarely instrument playing musicians, but always eye candy and regarded with little more respect than groupies. So small labels and independent record (remember that word?) pressings were viewed not as a stepping stone to a big label, but as an end in itself… getting the music out there to people who care. The true counter cultural practice of doing it anyway and outside the system survived in the musical world and was fed to a large degree by women's efforts. Women are used to working outside the male system and accomplishing much, that's how the majority of children are raised and impossibly small budgets stretched to feed and clothe families. When women are passionate, anything is possible.

This is merely a cursory view of boomer women and music that hardly scratches the surface of all the things women musicians were doing between the 70s and now. Look at the world of celtic music which is rife with women artists upon whom Enya's success is interlaced. Enya is a late boomer by the way. Trisha Yearwood is a new country late boomer, but she like many contemporary country performers have some pretty deep roots in rock.
So if you haven't taken a little trip to your local independent music store lately to peruse indy performers , shame on you. Go do it right now. There are incredible performers out there; all of the ones mentioned herein can be found at major music outlets - but that wasn't always the case in these women's muscial past. There are a wealth of great women bringing women's thoughts and women's views to us musically that are on small indy labels. Get out there and support your thinking, feeling, vibrant singing sisters (or mothers, or daughters...) and thank them for keeping non-homogenized, inspirational music alive!

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Melissa Etheridge
Born: 29 May 1961
Leavenworth, Kansas
Read her autobiography.

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Joan Osborne
Born: 8 July 1962
Check out her magazine! Oprah it ain't, thank heavens.

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Tracy Chapman
Born: March 1964
Okay, so she has a major label behind her. Don't begrudge her that okay. She's from Ohio and studied anthropology - so she's okay in my book - the girl has done all right for herself.

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Carrie Newcomer
Born: 25 May 1959
Indiana
Carrie believes we late boomers live in an age of possibility - an "indy" performer if there ever was one. Check out audio of I Heard an Owl - written and recorded only 2 days after the Sept. 11th tragedy.

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Mary Chapin Carpenter
21 February 1958
For a while you can check out a video of her at PBS's Austin City Limits site. Her appearance on ACL is scheduled to appear on Nov. 3, 2001.

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Suzanne Vega
11 July 1959
California
She's no "Marlena on the Wall> any longer, in fact she's on tour with her 2001 release of "Red and Gray."

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Indigo Girls
aka Emily and Amy
Emily Ann Saliers
22 July 1963,
New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Amy Elizabeth Ray
12 April 1964,
Decatur, Georgia, USA
They have this Verde Valley School Benefit connection too... what gives?

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Shawn Colvin
10 January 1956,
South Dakota, USA.
Credits Jackson Browne (deja vu all over again) with "discovery" of her recorded music. Didja know that both she and Annie Lennox are featured on the soundtrack of the movie "Serendipity?"

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Kate Bush (Catherine Bush)
30 July 1958
Bexleyheath, Bexley, London, England, UK
What other late booming woman has a holiday named after her?

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Enya
Eithne Ní Bhraonáin
17 May 1961,
Gaoth Dobhair, Donegal, Ireland
It is NOT muzak!

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K D Lang (Kathryn Dawn)
2 November 1961
Consort, Alberta, Canada
Did you know she hosts ROADIE CHEFS II on the Food Network?

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Joan Jett aka Joan Marie Larkin
22 September 1960
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Do check out her site for a view of patriotic punk!

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Sheryl Crow
11 February 1962,
Kennett, Missouri
Tried the traditional route of playing with and for guys as a backup singer for artists such as George Harrison, Joe Cocker, Stevie Wonder and Rod Stewart but no one" knew who she was" until she "broke through" in the 90s. Gotta appreciate her stamina! She's on Stevie Nicks' new single, too,ya know?

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Natalie Anne Merchant
Born at 10/26/63 in Jamestown, N.Y.
See Natalie's "Nowhere Man" September 14, 2001 performance on TNT's "Come Together" Benefit and John LennonTribute.

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Trisha Yearwood (Patricia Lynn)
19 September 1964
Monticello, Georgia, USA
And she also has played at the benefit concert for Native American scholarships, guess where? Yep. Verde Valley. Those late booming women musician threads running deeper than "rock" or "country" classification. 

A Lifetime of Violence: Terrorism, Rates of Information Flow and Baby Boomers

One of the trends that distinguishes Baby Boomers, especially the later born Boomers, from other cohorts is the unique role senseless violence, in general, and terrorism, in particular, played in the development of our psyches. People born in the late 50s and early 60s grew up with an intimate, personal relationship with violence that was blessedly unavailable to former generations. National televised news expanded to 30 minutes from 15 minutes when we were very young. It then brought a host of real crime and horror, in living color, directly into our homes and our still forming worldviews. These experiences have colored the lenses through which we interpret the world. But they have not made us callus or accepting of such violence. Instead it readies us to respond with a just determination that indeed the whole of the United States of America, and perhaps most of the free world, now shares.

Most Americans when asked about terrorism before the September 11, 2001 bombings, would have mentioned Pan Am Flight 103, Atlanta's Olympic Park bombing, the Uni-Bomber and of course the Federal building in Oklahoma City. But these are only the recent wounds... We cannot forget the specific events etched on our impressionable minds: 1972 Munich Olympic games terrorist attack and abduction lead to the death of 11 Israeli athletes before our eyes, Carlos the Jackal, Entebbe, Black September and Abu Nidal ring clearly in our minds.

The oldest of the later born Boomers came of age - in US culture that meant getting a driver's license - during gasoline rationing and the oil crisis. Middle Eastern conflict didn't seem remote to us when it impacted our contemporary rites of passage. Skyjacking entered our minds as a possibility before we ever flew. Our cohort went on our first dates with knowledge of the likes of the Zodiac Killer, we saw war on the TV every night as we grew up. Those of us fortunate enough to grow up in circumstances that allowed European backpacking trips left our country to visit countries where terrorist acts were common. Is it any wonder our generation was noted to have remarkably high rates of depressive disorders by the late 1970s?

At Late-Boomers.com we hope all the generalized angst we have sheltered inside ourselves, for most of our lives, can emerge from the vague shadows, dust, and debris of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States of America and take concrete form against which we can fight.

We've lived with such vague enemies throughout our lives. While some of our country has had some difficulty with the concept of not have a geographic enemy to fight, we Boomers have never seen a concrete sustained enemy. Not that we haven't paid attention to and even lost members of our cohort in specific battles fought around the globe during our lifetimes. But there has been no coherent enemy for most of our lives, the enemies change with frequency, only a generalized dread of nuclear war, communism or capitalism (take your pick), environmental degradation, and political corruption have remained constant. Even the death of JFK remains clouded in suspicion that the Warren Commission covered up something, but what? While most of us do not delve into the world of paranoid conspiracy theories, there is a part of most of us that processes far beyond our control rules our lives. In fact we may be the first generation for quite some time to understand that we cannot control the world. Processes of life and earth far beyond our scale of understanding are at work, it doesn't require conspiracy or dalliance with schizophrenic ideology to accept that we have tried to control a system of which we are a mere part.

This vague understanding has probably readied us to respond to an amorphous enemy. I believe we will rise to the challenge and will in fact emerge strengthened and revitalized when we realize that our generational perception that the world was harboring unseen enemies of an unknown form was real. We no longer have to try to blame the CIA or the KGB. It was both and none, in fact human culture was simply growing new cancers, in response to the unchecked, not extremely well thought out, interaction of all the mixed signals that was the political context of our childhood and youth -- the same context that allows former CIA operatives to attack the financial heart and hiding in the country during which the KGB spent much of its resources during its war with Afghanistan and sees those enemies banding together against it -- hopefully we now understand that just like cancer cells that could ultimately destroy the entire world will be formed when there are errors in replication, when deceit clogs informational channels.

The world that created the terrorist cells that changed our world forever this past Tuesday is the same world in which we grew up. Many of us have wondered many times along the way to the present what the 21st Century would be like. Wondered what the world would be as we became its leaders. We now know. It is a world where the machinations of the KGB and CIA of our youth have come back to bite us. Where we will see the two former opponents and their intelligence communities working together sharing information, and the people of most of the world will support that union. This may be very good if honesty and integrity can be restored to the governments of the world.

Perhaps this will finally allow the people of the world to see that with the increased pace of information flow and the much faster rate at which the entire world system interacts that we cannot live with the delusion that the world is a predictable place and that any one group can beat the system and manipulate outcomes. Impacts and effects of political, financial, social tinkering once took generations to play out. We can no longer pretend we are outside the equation. We are a variable in the equation. We now see those responses and consequences within a lifetime. The nature of the world is not changing but response time that allows us to view cause and effect has sped up dramatically.
The opportunity to act and react without attempts to control or expectations that we will know the consequences is here. Of course we will react to remove the cancer that attacks us. We also now know enough to know that we cannot predict whether the excision will allow us continued life. Certainly life for us all will change.

SOME SELECTED REFERENCES RELATED TO TERRORISM AND HISTORY
NOTE: Many of these sites, in fact most sites with the word terrorism associated with them, will log your IP address and such when you visit. If you have privacy concerns about this procedure, then don't go to these.

For information on basic systems concepts, click here to go to an article I wrote on the subject.

Probably the best place to start a net search on terrorism: http://www.terrorism.com/index.shtml

An extensive site with excellent information on various types of potential emergency, crisis, and terrorist situations, current situational analyses, and accounts of recent events. http://www.emergency.com/cntrterr.ht

Interested in what the US government has funded per counter terrorist programs and initiatives in the last few years? Check out this site for an accounting. http://www.cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/terfund.htm

Abstracted information of the nightly news broadcast stories starting in the late 60s. Looking for a date for a particular hijacking or incident. Check here. Great for understanding the context of an event through other news stories of the day. http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/search.html

Federation of American Scientists site containing papers on government intelligence. No oxymoron jokes, please. One paper that really caught my attention was the analysis of the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics. http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/index.html

Gilda's Gift of Laughter

Gilda Radner would have been 55 years old on the day I wrote this article, June 28 2001. In a retrospective piece we stroll back to the rich, dynamic and rapidly evolving world of the comedy of women in 1970s television that she and a select group of comediennes created for us before our very eyes. Laugher shapes a generation and these were the women who shaped our generational concept of humor.

Happy Birthday Gilda!
Gilda Radner would have celebrated her 55th birthday this week. Ovarian cancer took her from us at far too early an age. Born June 28, 1946, she was one of the oldest boomers and had a tremendous influence on the wealth of female comedic talent that burst onto the comedy club seen in the 80s and 90s. So, today I'm meandering down memory lane of women's humor in the 70s in honor of the wonderful woman who taught a generation of women that riotous free spirited laughter was a "good thing." Just think of the fun she'd have had goofing on Martha Stewart!
"Well it just goes to show you, if it"s not one thing, it's another." To put the comedy of the women, women who actively created comedy and did not just interpret scripts, of Saturday Night Live were doing in perspective is to remember the wasteland into which Jane Curtain, Lorraine Newman, and Gilda Radner ventured. Less than ten years before SNL, Phyllis Diller and Mary Tyler Moore displayed the entire range of the repertoire allowed to women in televised comedy. You could play off a man by being a dingy helpless creature a la Mary Tyler More on the Dick Van Dyke Show, or you could be the ugly witch a la Phyllis Diller (and I have to confess that I absolutely loved her as she was right at the edge of the PC filter.) By the 70s the sterotypes had gained a significant bit of breadth with the good girl Mary Tyler Moore being showcased in her own show that featured several other comediennes such as Betty White, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachmanand Georgia Engel.
Lily Tomlin broke ground on Laugh In1968-73 than did Ruth Buzzy, Judy Carne or Joanne Worley, or even Goldie Hawn who eventually dwarfed the others mentioned her with her comedic, dramatic and production success. Tomlin's character that allowed women a wry, nonconformist voice through a little girl persona of Edith Ann that probably wouldn't have been tolerated from an adult character. But the success of the wacky comedy show was built on predictable characters in predictable situations. The comedic element of the show that is often overlooked in retrospective analysis is its incorporation of a significant number of comediennes in a day where "variety" televisions shows at best featured one female comic. The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour, while groundbreaking in the depths to which it took political humor, primarily showcased male talent.
The realm of political comedy and satire was not long left to the men once the ball got rolling. Eventually SNL filled the bill in sketch comedy, but before that was Maude, starring Beatrice Arthur, was a groundbreaking sitcom for women which dealt with the issues of divorce, abortion, and a host of other politico-religious issues. This show was also significant in that it gave Esther Rolle a platform to give a woman of color voice to some knee jerk, but fairly well rounded pronouncements on the issues of social idiocy, race and class. And it acted as a stepping stone for Rolle to get her own show in the late 70s. Maude spun off from All in the Family with Jean Stapleton and Sally Struthers playing fairly predictable stereotypic roles but with some of the the best sitcom casting ever done. Other shows that show cased great talent and writing but were not necessarily the offspring of women's creativity included Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in which the dysfunction of the world of the 70s was charicatured in Fernwood by Louise Lasser and crew. And perhaps no sitcom character's growth illustrates the changes in women's roles in comedy and television better than looking at the transformation of Loretta Switt's character Hotlips into Margaret on M*A*S*H* (1973-1983). Gilda wasn't alone in her expansion of women's comedic presence in television, but she certainly personified the integration of a woman comic into the total fabric of televised comedy. She wasn't just in front of the camera, she was the first ensemble cast member selected for the show, so in many ways the selection of the now classic team of The Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast for the original Saturday Night Live were anchored on Gilda's talent. Women focused sketch comedy of the 60s often centered on sex roles or gender based expectations as in Ruth Buzzy's spinster hitting Artie Johnson with a purse, or Lily Tomlin's gossipy phone operator. Gilda's characters, such as Emily Latela or Roseanne Roseanna Danna, were female, sure, but their comedic essence lay in their humanity not in their femininity.
Women's comedy of the late middle 20th century, of course, could not have existed without the classic work of Lucillie Ball and Carol Burnette. These groundbreaking comediennes, really the grandmother and mother of the comedy of the early 70s continued doing comedy through the rapidly changing 70s. In a 1980 article in People Magazine Lucille mentions Carol Burnette, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler as being among her favorite comediennes of the day. Lucille Ball's mention of Bette Midler makes the point that women who could stand a life of constant travel did find venues prior to the 1970s. During the 70s, the queen of the well established nightclub circuit, the venue for comics before the days of comedy clubs, was undoubtedly Bette. In the 70s she took live, adult-oriented comedy out of the clubs and brought it to the attention of a much larger audience, while she in no way submitted to domestication. No discussion of comedy in the 70s would be complete without her. She stretched some very traditional schitck and formats to new limits.
Stretch marks are largely women's territory and our generation certainly enjoyed the liberating mindset of broad ranging comedy that was a trademark of the 70s. Without these great ladies contemporary comedy of Ellen Degeneres, Elayne Boosler, Paula Paundstone, Rita Rudner, Sandra Bernhard and many many other funny women would not have found as many doors open to them as they have. Without Gilda we wouldn't have Rosie O'Donnell who first ventured into stand-up after doing a magnificent impression of Gilda Radner's Rosanne Rosannadana in a high school follies production. Thank you Gilda, your legacy continues to bring us laughter and joy.


Gilda links: If you haven't had enough of memory land those of us that spent most saturday nights at home in the 70s, can read an interview with Gilda from Crawdaddy's pages, or buy her autobiography It's Always Something or find out more about Gilda's battle with ovarian cancer Gilda's Disease listen to her work on cd Live from New York, or watch a video Gilda Live (1980).