clockwise, from top left - Les Reines Prochaines, Gaggle, Disband, Pulsallama

Today I’m highlighting women’s collectives, specifically the whimsical, cunning sounds of arty female musical troops featuring the likes of Ann Magnuson, Barbara Ess, Dianne Torr, Barbara Krueger, Pipilotti Rist and Valie Export.

In New York City, between 1979 - 1982, artists such as Ilona Granet, Donna Henes, Ingrid Sischy, Dianne Torr, Martha Wilson, Barbara Ess, Daile Kaplan and Barbara Kruger came together as Disband and performed clever confrontational acapella ditties to gallery crowds.

Around the same time, in the same city, Pulsallama was also gathered gusto and performed for two years, from 1981 to 1982, as a twelve piece (later seven-piece) bass/percussion/vocal troop featuring Ann Magnuson, Wendy Wild, Jean Caffeine, Stacey Elkin, Charlotte Slivka, Katy K, Min Thometz, Judy Streng, Andé Whyland, Dany Johnson, Lori Montana, Kim Davis and April Palmieri.

Meanwhile, over in Switzerland, Les Reines Prochaines, has been on a mission since 1987 to bring multi-language, multi-instrumental feminist show spectacles to the continent. Over the past 20+ years, core member Muda Mathis has worked in various formations with Pipilotti Rist, Sus Zwick, Fränzi Madörin, Michèle Fuchs, Barbara Naegelin, Gabi Streiff, Sibylle Hauert, Teresa Alonso and Regina Florida Schmid.

The next level of female frolic is the 22 member strong Gaggle choir, formed in 2008 and based in London. They bring the circle back around - contorting the traditional choir concept at the same time as they honor the inherent fortitude  and beauty of women’s voices singing in unison.

Witness below a video of their remix of “The Brilliant and the Dark,” a cantata for women’s voices first performed by 1000 women volunteers at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969. Then enjoy this 40 minute mixtape of collective female nonsense!

Track listing:
Disband- Missiles and Pistols
Gaggle - Hidden Army
Pulsallama- Oui Oui
Pulsallama - The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body
Gaggle - I Hear Flies
Disband - Sad
Inflatable Boy Clams - I’m Sorry
Les Reines Prochaines - Opfer Dieses Liedes
Disband - Everyday Same Old Way
Valie Export & Monsti Wiener - Bananen
Les Reines Prochaines - Der Urwald
Gaggle - Crows
Pulsallama - Ungawa Pt. II (Way Out Guiana)
Les Reines Prochaines - Evening
Disband - Look at my Dick

DOWNLOAD: Collective Female Nonsense mixtape.mp3 (40 minutes / 92 MB)

top: Autoclave, bottom left: Ruby Falls, bottom right: Corndolly

Recently I was asked to submit a mixtape - an actual cassette -  for a an archive project at the Double Double Land Gallery in Toronto, Canada. I immediately pulled out my box of dusty tapes looking for one I might be able to dub over and send across the pond. In the search among techno rave compilations (go speed racer go!) and numerous personalized mixes, I found an unlabeled mystery cassette and popped it on the deck. It turned out to be a disjointed collection of riot grrrl era songs and interviews including a mid-90s BBC interview with Jo from Huggy Bear, some L7 and a bit of Hole.

Using this as a starting point I pieced together a 90 minute, 90s era, mix of feminist words, music and meta-commentary. If you’re curious to hear it, you’ll have to cross on over that 49th parallel, venture to the gallery, don some headphones and dedicate an hour and a half of your time.

However, in the process of preparing the Double Double Land mix I rediscovered several singles and compilation tracks from often quite short-lived, regionally specific bands. So I’m sharing some of these riffy, bouncy pop-rock songs here as small consolation for any of you who won’t be trekking to Toronto.

Download the 30 minute mix below and check out The Rogers Sisters when they were Ruby Falls, Autoclave’s line-up of D.C. indie stars including Christina Billotte and Mary Timony, Kathleen Hanna before Bikini Kill and the most idolizing track ever penned for V.I. Warshawski…

Tracklist:
Helium - American Jean (7″)
Ruby Falls - Let Me Go (Why Do You Think They Call it Pop? 10″)
Autoclave - Dr Seuss (s/t LP)
Rubbermaid - Entrepreneur (7″)
Corndolly - After School Special (7″)
Twig - Airplane (Why Do You Think They Call it Pop? 10″)
Growing up Skipper - V.I. (7″)
Bratmobile - Girl Germs (Kill Rock Stars compilation)
Scrawl - Clock Song (International Pop Underground compilation)
Helter Skillet - The Look Out (Teenbeat 50 compilation)
Heavens to Betsy - The Factory (s/t cassette)

DOWNLOAD: American Girl Poprocks mixtape

I’m thrilled about Mother Festival - three days of wowmen’s music in London on the 20.21 and 22 May 2010. Following up on my blog post a few weeks ago I’ve now made a mixtape of some of the sounds of some of the bands (and some bands related to the bands) that will be performing live at the event. From no wave to new folk to soundscapes and noise explosions - it’s all there.

Here’s the tracklist and my comments for the 48 minute, 13 song mix. Enjoy and see you in a few weeks!
p.s. get your tickets for days one, two and three now!

DOWNLOAD: MOTHER FESTIVAL MIX

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1. Wetdog - Wymmin’s Final
This threesome is my favorite thing about London.

2. Maria and the Mirrors - From Egypt With Love
This threesome is my second favorite thing about London.

3. Molly Nilsson - We’re Never Coming Home
Molly says this song is inspired by a poem from Swedish poet Bruno K. Öijer. I can appreciate that. I can also appreciate that synth beat.

4. Rhythm King and Her Friends - Front of Luxury
Rhythm King are not performing at the festival, they broke up. Pauline’s new band Normal Love will premiere there though. Precarious sex. Precarious work.

5. Iori’s Eyes - I Said You and I Grow Old
I just saw the Italian film “I am Love” and this band must have seen that film too because they sound like the movie looks - lovely.

6. Phoebe Jean & Kirikoo Des - Cover Girl
Baltimore is nothing like Paris. Phoebe Jean is like nothing else, slow glass candy melts…

7. PENS - B.I.L.K.S.H.A.K.E.
Yes! Lo-fi and kicky! Love this stuff.

8. Mary and the Baby Cheeses - Years
Like if the Flying Lizards were back again, can’t go wrong there.

9. The Konki Duet - Punk’s Dead
I think there are actually three of them, so it’s really a trio but don’t let that contradiction distract you from their beautiful sound.

10. Sonora - Brains
Sonora was a short lived band featuring Beatrice Dillion, Melissa Castagnetto and some other folks. Now these two have paired up again for something new. It’s another premiere at the Mother.

11. Kelli Rudick - Darling
My weekend mornings often start with long breakfasts to a soundtrack of René Aubry or Ethiopian jazz. Now I will add Kelli Rudick to the mix.

12. Vera November - Our Last Night Together
Electrelane’s music gives me goosebumps and Verity’s solo songs are just like a sigh caught in the chest.

13. Music for One - Wind From the Irish Sea
Music for One is Sherry and sometimes she gets together with other clever talented folks to make sounds. For Mother Festival she comes together with Melissa Castagnetto as the Tourrists.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my neighborhood for a bit of a good time. The MOTHER Music Festival is happening on 20, 21 and 22 May 2010 in London and will  feature the wow sounds of female led punk, pop and rock from across the UK and Europe. Alongside the musical evening programme, we are also working with the East London  curatorial project space, FormContent, on a visual/audio collaborative exhibition.

website |   facebook |  myspace

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THURSDAY 20 MAY 2010
The New Empowering Church | 1a Westgate Street, London E8 3RL | (£12) TICKETS |
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Wetdog (London)
Molly Nilsson (Berlin)
Normal Love (Berlin)
Iori’s Eyes (Milan)
Maria and the Mirrors (London)

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FRIDAY 21 MAY 2010
The New Empowering Church | 1a Westgate Street, London E8 3RL | (£12) TICKETS |
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Mary and the Baby Cheeses (Berlin)
Phoebe Jean & Kirikoo Des (New York/Paris)
The Konki Duet (Paris)
PENS (London)
Melissa Castagnetto + Beatrice Dillion (London)

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SATURDAY 22 MAY 2010
Cafe OTO |  22 Ashwin St, London E8 3DL  | (£10) TICKETS |
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Kelli Rudick (New York)
Vera November (London)
Tourrists (Sherelana Ostano Ono Vonobitch & Meltfisto Chavez Chicoma) (London)
Sonja Cvitkovic (Berlin)
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MOTHER is an independent traveling project dedicated to wowmen’s contemporary music and art. It has neither a residence nor an institutional form. This d.i.y. project consists of a series of three festivals over three years, each one in a different country, culminating in a navigation of the world in the form of an ephemeral triangle. MOTHER was created by Dafne Boggeri and Noga Inbar, the edition 2010 is curated with the support of Nicole Emmenegger (aka DJ Jenny Woolworth).
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VVV

There are three kids in London making beautiful noise together - Charlie Mahony, Crystabel Riley and Kiera Fox - known collectively as Maria & The Mirrors. Their live set consists of Kiera and Crystabel banging out syncopated tribal rhythms on their dueling drum kits while Charlie tweaks and manipulates a set of electronic devices to emit a fabulous cacophony of sound, folding all together under shrieking vocals. With a new 7″ single  (”Omar” b/w “From Egypt With Love”) released in February 2010 on Parlour Records, these three are set to storm the scene with their psykick musical invocations.
I managed to corner Charlie and Kiera and here’s what they had to say to my standard three queries:

JW: What is one of your favorite sounds and what does it mean to you?
KF: I am unsure what my favourite sound is, I like lots of sounds…

CM: I think my favourite must be the sound of a Guinea Pig squeaking…significance = fun is on the way! I love Guinea Pigs, they’re an evolutionary dead-end for us to enjoy! One day I hope to go to Paraguay and make friends with a Capybara.

JW: Tell me about one of your most cherished records and why it is so important to you.
KF: ‘Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’ on vinyl because it was a surprise gift and quite rare and I love the soundtrack to that film.

CM: Ooooh well I used to say my favourite records were John Coltrane ‘Meditations’ & Scott 4 by Scott Walker but since I can’t listen to either of them without crying horrid tears that leaves ‘Perverted by Language’ by The Fall! The best Fall album - two drummers! An amazing stripped down careening dirge to a Glitter band stomp and amazing lyrics of a fantastical Pynchonesque nature…and you can dance to most of it too, it’s so much fun! Oh and my favourite 7″ of all time would be George McCrae ‘Rock Your Baby’, it’s incredible, a cry for love over leaden disco beat that intensifies every couple of bars, the hi-hats sound amazing, no verse/chorus just build build build! And the drum machines are as good as any Cabaret Voltaire! And the organ drone shows La Monte Young where to step off! Ah

JW: Who is a woman that has inspired you in your life, musically or otherwise?
KF: My grandmother

CM: Eliane Radigue is amazing! I’ve never quite heard anything like her music…plus I have a repellently short attention span so I find the idea of her hunched over an ARP 2600 for hours, hours and hours an aspirational beacon of how one can focus!

DOWNLOAD: Omar mp3

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers and daggers out there! The Hungry Hearts, a multi-media, pin-up performance band from Oslo, Norway, are here to give as all a bit of lesbian love advice.

The group consists of seven ladies: Tonje Gjevjon, Line Halvorsen, Ingeborg Kolle, Edith Roth Gjevjon, Amina Bech, Henriette Høyskel and Mona K and “they are singing about kisses waiting to be found and about high-heeled shoes walking on the streets where car-doors open.” Intrigued, I wanted to know more about this sexy bunch of Nordic dames, so I trekked through snow and ice to reach them and here’s what I found out from the honey-voiced troop leader Tonje Gjevjon:

JW: What is one of your favorite sounds and what does it mean to you?
TG: Hammond organ is a nice sound, it reminds me of good music and crazy songs.

JW: Tell me about one of your most cherished records and why it is so important to you.
TG: David Bowie, Ashes to Ashes, because the song is about me.

JW: Who is a woman that has inspired you in your life, musically or otherwise?
TG: Frida Kahlo, because of her paintings, beauty,  pain and stubborness.

Now, watch the video below for “In Your Face (The International Lesbian Anthem),” learn the Lesbian Hasuki dance, follow the steps and impress your girlfriend to no end! Check out their other songs and videos here.

The Runaways film premiered last week at the Sundance film festival - it follows the titillating adventures of  teenagers Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Cherie Currie and Sandy West as they band together to form one of the greatest and sexiest heavy rock/punk/pop groups ever, all under the watchful eye of producer and svengali, Kim Fowley.

From the beginning of his career as a music producer and songwriter in the 1960’s, Kim had a soft spot for girl groups (especially the jailbait set…) starting with the likes of The Murmaids, through to Althea and the Memories and leading up to the harder sounds of The Runaways and Venus and the Razor Blades in the 70s. Download here a mix of Kim Fowley’s travel through the girl group sound and see below for a clip from the eye candy experience of The Runways on film…

DOWNLOAD: Kim Fowley girl group mix

Track listing:
Murmaids - Popsicles and Icicles
Althea and the Memories - Worst Record Ever Made
The Runaways - I Wanna Be Where the Boys Are (live in Japan)
The Runaways - Cherry Bomb (live in Japan)
The Runaways - American Nights (live in Japan)
Venus and the Razor Blades - I Wanna Be Where the Boys Are
Venus and the Razor Blades - Finer Things in Life

I thought it fitting to end the year - and the decade - with a riddle of a band. I hope Frau Siebenrock Combo will leave you pondering into the new year and inspire the continued search for obscure women’s music in all it’s forms…

Cassettencombinat was a West Berlin based cassette only record label active in the late 70s and early 80s  started by Kiddy Citny of  the band “Sprung Aus Den Wolken.” One of the bands, or at least a one-off musical project that the label promoted, was the Frau Siebenrock Combo. Cassettencombinat released their cassette “Zäh wie Gold” in 1981, of which three songs are ready for download below.

I haven’t found out much about them, except that Leffi Leffringhausen was somehow involved. Any further insights are most welcome! Until then enjoy these songs and see you in the new decade…

DOWNLOAD: Frau Siebenrock Combo

1. Franz - 2:52
2. Die Stolzen Frauenherzen -  1:00
3. A La Discotheque - 3:50

Sara Jaffe and Mia Clarke are best known as musicians performing with Erase Errata and Electrelane, respectively. With both bands currently on hiatus, Sara and Mia came together to reflect on a central element of band life - touring. 

The result is a beautiful 7″ square book with accompanying DVD called The Art of Touring published by Yeti Publishers and featuring contributions from the likes of Emma Gaze, Elizabeth Sharp (Ill Ease), Johanna Fateman, Carla Bozulich, Jean Smith, Sara Marcus, Cynthia Nelson and many more.  As a preview of the greatness within, here’s the charming contribution from Tara Jane ONeil as featured on the DVD:

I caught up with Sara recently and grilled her on band life. She started her illustrious punk rock musical career in 1997 with the The Cakecutters in Portland, Oregon followed by a stint with the Pyrodydacts in Middletown, Connecticut in ‘98 and ‘99. She formed Erase Errata in San Francisco in 1999 with Bianca Sparta, Ellie Erikson and Jenny Hoyston and played guitar with the foursome until 2004.  Between 2001-2004 Erase Errata was on tour perhaps a quarter to a third of the year with the longest road trip in the fall of 2001 slouching across Europe for six weeks.

JW: What are some of the tactile memories you have of being on tour? Sounds, smells, sights or feelings that you’ve experienced on your road trips as part of Erase Errata?
SJ: Well, it’s been awhile now, but here’s some… The little sleeping pallet that we made between the two back seats in a rented Sprinter on one European tour.  Some of the best naps of my life there.  The little plastic-y cups you get hot chocolate dispensed into from machines in Italy.  Opening a hotel room window in Paris and having rose petals floating down from above.  A pug dog that spun around in circles as if it was possessed, in Denton, TX.  Another dog peeing on my sleeping bag (while I was in it) in Indiana.  Delicious Dutch-Indonesian-squatter fusion food prepared for us by our host in Amsterdam.  Reckless drivers in Athens.  Walking across the River Clyde at dawn in Glasgow.  Seaweed fights on the beach on Victoria Island.  How hot it was once at playing at the Unitarian Church in Philly that the Ex were shorting out their guitars from their own sweat.

JW: What promises/hopes/aspirations did you have as a band when you first started?
SJ: As cheesy as it sounds, I think we really just had fun playing music together and realized we’d hit some kind of “spark” with our sound, so we wanted to keep doing it.  Put out a record?  Sure!  Go on tour?  Yeah!  Eventually, what one had to do to keep a band sustainable–constant touring, primarily–became a bit too much for me, which is when I left the band.

JW: What does playing in a band mean to you?
SJ: I think one way of thinking about it might be to think about what, specifically, I miss, after a few years of not really doing anything band-like on a regular basis.  I miss the community that accrues from playing shows regularly, with like-minded (musically, politically, whatever) people.  I miss the feeling of participating in a collaborative creative endeavor, where it felt like we were making up the rules together as we went along.  I miss the public loudness.

JW: How did you discover punk rock?
SJ: A combo of college radio, the Bennington College July program, zines, and my straight-edge hardcore friend in highschool.

JW: Who is a woman that has inspired you in your music, either as a band or personally?
SJ: Can I make a list?  So many!  Most definitely incomplete, and drawing on various eras of my life… The Raincoats, The Slits, Delta 5, LiliPUT, Team Dresch, The Quails, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Talk Normal, Sleater Kinney, The Need, Yoko Ono, The Passions, all the women on No New York, Sandy Denny, my former bandmates, Sta-Prest, Mary Timony, Beth Ditto, Joni Mitchell, Alice Coltrane, and my longtime childhood piano teacher Irene Taylor.

I picked up this compilation Kopf: Hören! a few years back from a merch table laid out at concert in a squated house (Kalki in Zürich), where the beers where cheap (Sprint for 2CHF), the music loud (thanks Archie), the bands passionate and the audience loving and enthusiastic (all fifty of us).

The sampler was released sometime in 2002 on a German record label called frequenzpark, founded by Isabella Krebs.  I haven’t seen it around anywhere before or since so I think it’s fallen the way of obscurity. It is a decent, honest and hard working little compilation worth a good listen.

Makes me wonder how many other great lost local samplers of women’s punk are out there just waiting to be rediscovered…

Side A:
Amtrak - 0-50m
Below - Dress the Fuzz
Brustkrebs - The Secret Sex of the Nuclear Bomb
Kochen mit Glas - Brütende Kälte

Side B:
Rhythm King and Her Friends - Copie-moi je veux voyager
Kokoshka Heroine - ∞ Planlos
Mahlzahn - Au-Pair
Schlampen Ficken Besser - 13
The Flamingo Massacres - Cowboy Angst

DOWNLOAD: Kopf: Hören! Side A
DOWNLOAD: Kopf: Hören! Side B