Since its beginning, rock music has been a male dominated affair. Women, such as Wanda Jackson, were not just anomalies but curiosities. By the '60s there were plenty of girl groups, female soul singers and a few female-fronted rock bands, but the few actually female-dominated rock bands like Ace of Cups, Fanny, The Girls, Goldie & the Gingerbreads (the first all female rock band to sign to a major label) and even the Shaggs aren't exactly household names. That seemed to change in the '70s, when Suzi Quattro and The Runaways seemed to lessen the shock of seeing girls wielding instruments. Whether he was joking or not, Roger Ebert took credit for the girl rock revolution by creating the Carrie Nations in his screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Things really began to change with onset of the new wave of the late '70s. Not only were there female-fronted bands like Siouxise & the Banshees and Blondie, but there were also bands integrated in various ways, like Talking Heads and later The Mekons, Gang of Four, &c. Now, although you could still listen to the radio for a year without hearing an all-female rock band, it's not entirely out of the question. These bands aren't all entirely comprised of women, but they definitely broke the mold.
The unsung heroines of Punk/Post-Punk/No Wave/New Wave
women's history month music
Crime & The City Solution -and- Simon Bonney
Criminally underrated bands part 1
1977: Crime & the City Solution formed in Sydney. It seems that almost from their inception they were cursed to never be spoken of without a mention of famous Australian Nick Cave. Their original line-up included vocalist Simon Bonney (the band's only permanent member), Don McLennan on drums, Harry Zanteni on guitar, Phil Kitchener on bass and Dave MacKinnon on soprano and tenor saxophones. Simon Bonney, whilst born in Australia proper, had grown up on a remote farm in Tasmania where his family grew wheat, barley and opium poppies before he moved to Sydney.
Shortly after their formation, Crime & the City Solution relocated to Melbourne and the line-up changed with Dan Wallace-Crabbe taking over guitar, Kim Beissel replacing Dave MacKinnon, Lindsay O'Meara handling bass and Chris Astley joining on keyboards. The band recorded a handful of demos and some live performances are available; the recordings are interesting. Simon Bonney's distinct, moaning vocals are immediately recognizable. The music sounds very much of its time- kind of a dark, brittle post-punk with saxophone that makes it sound vaguely Roxy Music. It's a bit raw but miles ahead of the contemporaneous Boys Next Door, who aside from their cover of the Young Charlatans "Shivers" were pretty awful. [Note: If you have the Young Charlatans' demos, please let me know]
The Boys Next Door, by their second album, 1980's Birthday Party, pursued (thankfully) a sound very different from the bland predecessor of the previous year, Door, Door. Now the band careened through a cacophonous terrain owing a lot to The Cramps while taking a bit from Crime & the City Solution's post-punk take on The Doors as well. The Boys Next Door moved to relocated to London, signed to the 4AD record label and got huge. Meanwhile, Crime & the City Solution remained silent. I'm tempted to make the analogy of the story of Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis but, to be fair, The Birthday Party were an amazing band with a lot of talent... and a lot of ego. Rowland S. Howard, The Birthday Party's guitarist and writer of some of the band's most amazing songs and Nick Cave disbanded the group in 1984.
Shortly after their formation, Crime & the City Solution relocated to Melbourne and the line-up changed with Dan Wallace-Crabbe taking over guitar, Kim Beissel replacing Dave MacKinnon, Lindsay O'Meara handling bass and Chris Astley joining on keyboards. The band recorded a handful of demos and some live performances are available; the recordings are interesting. Simon Bonney's distinct, moaning vocals are immediately recognizable. The music sounds very much of its time- kind of a dark, brittle post-punk with saxophone that makes it sound vaguely Roxy Music. It's a bit raw but miles ahead of the contemporaneous Boys Next Door, who aside from their cover of the Young Charlatans "Shivers" were pretty awful. [Note: If you have the Young Charlatans' demos, please let me know]
The Boys Next Door, by their second album, 1980's Birthday Party, pursued (thankfully) a sound very different from the bland predecessor of the previous year, Door, Door. Now the band careened through a cacophonous terrain owing a lot to The Cramps while taking a bit from Crime & the City Solution's post-punk take on The Doors as well. The Boys Next Door moved to relocated to London, signed to the 4AD record label and got huge. Meanwhile, Crime & the City Solution remained silent. I'm tempted to make the analogy of the story of Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis but, to be fair, The Birthday Party were an amazing band with a lot of talent... and a lot of ego. Rowland S. Howard, The Birthday Party's guitarist and writer of some of the band's most amazing songs and Nick Cave disbanded the group in 1984.
WHAT IF IAN CURTIS HADN'T HUNG HIMSELF?
And spill a lil on da curb for Andre Hicks (R.I.P.)
One recent afternoon, while ambling through the rock vinyl aisles of Amoeba Berkeley, my eye caught that great Joy Division album cover Unknown Pleasures. Wow, I thought, just how perfect is that cover artwork that was actually taken from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy? And how even more perfect is that whole album -- originally released on June 15th, 1979? I could listen to it and everything by Joy Division a million times over and never get tired of hearing it. Even the over-played and over-covered "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (released a month after Curtis' suicide) never ages in my head. Perhaps part of the greatness of all this music is that it is frozen in time, never having to be matched by later releases from a band that came to an abrupt early end after the tragically troubled lead-singer Ian Curtis had literally kicked the bucket -- instantly making him and Joy Division stuff of music legend, to be forever admired and romanticized in pop culture from afar.
But what (let's just imagine) if Ian Kevin Curtis hadn't hung himself back on May 18th, 1980, at the young age of 23? What if instead, he had kept on living and making music with Joy Division (meaning, of course, that there would have been no New Order), cranking out (increasingly weaker and weaker) albums throughout the eighties and up until an ugly break-up in 1997, followed by Ian Curtis completely disappearing for many years up until, let's again pretend, in 2004 when the producers of VH1's Band Reunited track him down. What if they find him old, fat, bald, bitter and living in a bedsit in Birmingham? Then, encouraged by VH1's intervention, he officially pulls himself together, temporarily kicks his age old habit, and tours small clubs with a new Joy Division lineup doing at best average covers of his old songs. Not pretty, eh? Not compared to the perfectly preserved, romantically tragic Ian Curtis that is the pop culture icon today.