At the moment I'm engrossed in an increasingly immense and complicated durational study of newspaper reports, books, films and advertising between the years 1975 and 1995 to assess how punk was written about, used, portrayed and how the written accounts, use of punk, and portrayals shifted and changed over time.
I haven't discovered what I expected to discover, it's been much more random and unexpected than that.
Mary Timony, formerly of US riot grrrls Helium, and more recently of post riot grrrl supergroup Wild Flag, has an exciting new musical project on the go.
They are called Ex Hex, and comprise of Timony, Laura Harris and Betsy Wright. They will be releasing their debut album, Rips, in October.
In the meantime, here is an excellent sampler track, 'Don't Wanna Lose', which makes me nostalgic for the Go-Go's, Magnapop and Bratmobile.
Many books not to mention articles have been written over
the decades on the theme of The Modern Girl. In such reports, the Girl tends to
be a problem that needs to be solved rather than agent of her own destiny, and
this is still sadly the case today.
That young women, teenage girls, young girls today are
heavily scrutinised and frequently judged is not a new observation is not a new
observation, but what makes Carol Dyhouse’s excellent book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, so refreshing is
that way that it takes a long view of female emancipation and changing roles
over a century, but that it could also be considered to be a specifically
female history of both adolescence and the moral panic in Britain.
Drawing on a wealth of material from newspaper archives,
autobiography, and historical, sociological and statistical research to popular
culture such as music, film and literature, Dyhouse eschews the obvious and
takes the reader on a journey through the backgrounds of social history, a
journey that is as refreshing and exciting as it is readable and innovative.
As a historian Dyhouse’s account is neither feminist polemic
nor sociological study, though it does borrow from and acknowledge both
disciplines. Instead it is remarkably straightforward in tone, and can be
enjoyed on both an academic and non specialist level.
The book hooks the reader in with a chapter dedicated to the
exploration of the Edwardian period panic about the White Slave Trade (what we
would now call trafficking), which was fuelled by a series of lurid novels,
films, pamphlets and newspaper articles alongside a smaller number of much
reported trials and court cases.
The chapter begins in 1913, at a time when women’s suffrage
had been in the public eye and public conscious for twenty years, and was about
to be put into a sort of political stasis by the outbreak of the First World
War. In what becomes a clear pattern throughout the book, the reduction of
young women to frail blossoms, innocent and in need of protection from a
specific evil at a time when women were demanding, and getting, positive social
change was no accident.
The follow up chapter ‘Unwomanly Types’, which explains how the
White Slave Trade panics came directly after the late Victorian New Woman and
ran concurrent with suffragist and suffragette campaigns, not to mention the
rise of the bluestocking, sets much of the previous chapter in a wider
historical and social context.
Chapters themed around, variously, flappers, Good time
girls, beat girls and dolly birds, permissiveness and women’s liberation, and
ladettes take us all the way from the Victorian New Woman, with her bicycle and
bloomers to the modern day, concluding with a brief discussion of Slutwalk.
What is encouraging is that Dyhouse strongly resists the
narrative of victimhood while also acknowledging that terrible things do
happen. She interrogates cultural myths, such as the rise of anorexia in young
women throughout the 1990s (a period when, statistics suggest, anorexia was in
decline but bulimia was increasing), and provides shrewd analysis of popular
culture (Ronald Searle’s original 1940s drawings of the St Trinians Girls
portrayed them as “daemonic, calculating little monsters and subversives”
whereas the film depictions of the St Trinians girls have, between 1954 and
2012, become increasingly sexualised) and does not seek obvious answers.
Dyhouse argues that, at times of great social upheaval for
women: the 1890s through to 1914, the inter war years (1919-1939), World War
II, the 1960s and 1970s, and the 1990s, particular female stereotypes and folk
devils have been created and used as a way to belittle and undermine women’s
achievements and emancipation, and in this sense both the flappers of the 1920s
and the ladettes of the 1990s are part of a chain going back all the way to the
New Woman of the 1890s.
What I love about this book is that, not only does it make
me excited about social history, but it also sparks off interest for further
research and, as an ardent fan of British female middlebrow novels, provides
context to innumerable stories and characters. From Cassandra Mortmain’s brief
fears of White Slave traders while waiting in a London cornerhouse late at
night in Dodie Smith’s I Capture The
Castle, to Laura’s descriptions of the revolutionary impact of the bicycle
on women’s travel and freedom at the tail end of the nineteenth century in Flora
Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford, to
the gloriously vivid descriptions of London beatniks and coffee houses in
Stella Gibbons’ Here Be Dragons.
Girl Trouble also
makes a good companion to Jon Savage’s history of the teenager, Teenage, although its themes and
concerns can be quite disparate at times. And it’s also good to see Marek Cohn’s
excellent book Dope Girls getting a
mention, a brilliant study of flappers, cocaine and Britain’s first drug panic.
Hollie Cook began her musical career as the teenage
keyboardist in the final incarnation of legendary punk y reggae band The Slits.
While this isn’t always obvious in her solo career, what is clear is that Cook
shares with the late Ari Up a love of reggae and dancehall.
A sophisticated and assured piece of work, Cook’s second
album Twice manages to weave a
complex combination of instrumentation around a central sound and mood that is
both vivid and highly atmospheric. While her debut album was almost girl next
door London lovers rock, Twice is
dancehall as art form and lovers rock as filmic soundtrack.
Cook’s debut self titled album was dedicated to the Slits
frontwoman, and Twice opens with ‘Ari
Up’, an atmospheric slice of ska which begins as a hymn like eulogy with its
proclamation ‘Come, let her fire blaze on’. Of all the tributes written to Ari
Up, this salute from protégée to mentor is surely the sweetest.
The slow tracks such as ‘99’, the single ‘Looking for real love’ and album teaser ‘Twice’ mix strings with loping bass, brooding tension
and sweetly sad vocals, with ‘99’ and ‘Looking for real love’ reflecting a
shift in mood from earlier post break up song ‘That Very Night’.
By contrast, ‘Desdemona’, ‘Tiger Balm’ and ‘Superfast’ are
playful ska infused high quality pop songs whereas ‘Win or Lose’ features
harmonised layered vocals over a loping bass line. It manages to be spacey and
brooding while remaining sparkling.
Of the up tempo pieces, ‘Postman’ is a particularly good
track. It begins enigmatically with a disembodied voice saying, soothingly,
‘You are awakened by sun in the distance’ against a delicate riffle of steel
drums and strings. The use of steel drums alongside the ska bass and strings
makes this it very danceable to, not to mention a good choice for a future
single. It is crowned in its perfection by a particularly delightful drum roll
at the end.
But the standout track has to be the title song,
‘Twice’.A gorgeous slow burner, the
delicately mournful strings and slow brooding groove combine with the slow,
seductive vocals to build an atmosphere of evening sultry heat. ‘I try
everything once,’ purrs Cook, ‘twice if I like it.’
This is a grower that
rewards with repeated listens, and builds on the impressive experimentation
established by the spacey, dubby ‘Sugar Water’ on Cook’s debut album. ‘Twice’ is perhaps the most experimental and
textured piece on the album and, while it is complex in structure; it still
feels spacious rather than crowded by orchestral swirls and occasional guitar
fuzz.
Sophisticated and atmospheric, with a central cohesion and
mood, Twice is an accomplished album
by an artist still testing her wings in many ways. Having yielded at least two
possible contenders for song of the year, the album is in a strong position for
album of the year.
I haven't been doing much, blog wise, recently because I'm in the throes of writing a new section for the punk women project I (innocently) started in 2009. It was, at the time, to be a stand alone piece for the F-Word, but it grew into a behemoth that was serialised in six parts and has never really stopped growing, even after the initial six parts were published.
One day it will be finished, but not yet.
The new section is on fanzines and fanzine writers, and writing it has reminded me of the extent to which I increasingly need a soundtrack when writing.
I am perhaps unusual in that I still write in longhand then, depending on the state of the first draft when it's been gone over/mauled by biro, I either re-draft by hand or type it and edit/re-draft as I go. This is a bit time consuming, but it works for me. One of the advantages of typing from a paper draft is that, if I find something a waste of time/too dull to type then I know it shouldn't go in and, as such, discard it.
Previously, the only really huge things I wrote were fiction and, as such, soundtracks made a lot of sense in terms of developing characters: I still have mixtapes I made of songs I was listening to when writing both Touch Sensitive and Screaming In Public, in the latter case, by the end of it, each character had their own soundtrack.
But when I'm writing about music, I can't listen to the music I'm writing about while simultaneously writing about it. As such, when I wrote my chapter on the music of riot grrrl for the Black Dog Publishing book Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! I wrote it to a combination of the first Rasputina album and Miranda Sex Garden, interspaced with New Order's 'Touched by the hand of God' and Joan Jett's 'I love rock'n'roll'. The latter two were for dancing to whenever I got a bit of a mental block with the writing.
The first version of the punk women series, by contrast, was written largely in silence but I had a mixtape for listening to inbetween writing stints and for when I hit a mental block. The mixtape had a lot of Santigold, Kate Bush and Florence + the Machine on it, along with bits of the Xena, Warrior Princess soundtracks, mainly all the amazon bits. It made a kind of sense at the time.
The handwritten draft was typed to Blondie's greatest hits, but that was coincidence because it was Boxing Day when I started typing, and I'd got it for Christmas. I also typed it to two mix CD's friends had made me, so my two 'pause and dance' songs were The Flirtations 'Nothing But A Heartache' and Architecture In Helsinki' 'Heart It Races'. 2009 into 2010 was a very cold, very snowy winter, so 'Pause and dance' was employed more often than usual as my feet regularly needed warming up.
In terms of the new section, it has been drafted to a mixture of Tommy James and the Shondelles, Spanky & Our Gang, Mediaevael Baebes, and the Aisler's Set. Writing is done in the living room/bedroom (it's a studio flat, so it's both) and typing is done in the kitchen, where the soundtrack is laptop and digital radio derived. So it is currently being typed to what I have in Spotify but, in a minute, I shall get the tape player and plug it in so I can type to my old mixtape from 2009 with the Xena Amazon bits, Santigold, Kate Bush and Florence + the Machine....
Recently I interviewed Suzy Varty, who has been making comics since the 1970s, about comics, fanzines, Birmingham Arts Lab and punk.
When discussing the growing respectability of comics as an art form, and the phenomenon of the graphic novel, we touched on the work of Mary and Bryan Talbot.
The Talbot's, along with artist Kate Charlesworth, have created Sally Heathcoate: Suffragette, a graphic novel, which tells the story of votes for women in Edwardian Britain. The novel is published on 1st May and on Saturday 17th May, they will be talking about the novel at the Cartoon Museum in London, which is also currently hosting what looks like a fantastic exhibition/celebration of all things Spitting Image.
I really love the idea of a graphic novel about the suffragettes, not just because I think it will make a great story, but because it's great on an educational level and because I think it will make history feel more real, much as the likes of Oh! What A Lovely War!, re-published compendiums of The Wipers Times, and the recent BBC film on The Wipers Times all add extra perspective to popular histories of World War I.
In 2018, it will be the 200 year anniversary of the Peterloo massacre and the 100 year anniversary of the extension of the franchise to women (though women aged 21-30 had to wait until 1928 for the vote). In 2019, it will be the 100 year anniversary of the end of World War 1, an event inextricably linked to the granting of the franchise. I hope that none of these anniversaries will be forgotten, and in fact, in that respect, Sally Heathcote: Suffragette is definitely arriving at the right kind of time.
Sometimes when you review an album, you find yourself liking it for rather different reasons than you think you would.
So it has been with the debut album by Swedish band Vulkano. Their press releases touted them as a riot grrrl band, but when you listen to them the strongest influences appear to be mid eighties synth pop and post punk. Which is not to say that there aren't any gender politics discussed, because there are - there are songs about being followed home and internet trolls - but the whole album comes across like a sophisticated post punk pop post riot grrrl confection.
