Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 8, 1994 TAG: 9404080209
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GARY GRAFF KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For a change.
In previous years, every time a female performer made a blip on the rock 'n' roll scene it was a cause for celebration. It was the beginning of a movement. The male-dominated, guitar-drenched music world was about to give way to a new legion of women who can get as down and dirty as the guys and who might even have a few different things to say.
Problem is, the movement kept not happening.
All of the pioneers - Heart, Pat Benatar, The Go-Go's, Tracy Chapman, even the highly regarded new wavers Patti Smith and Debbie Harry of Blondie - now seem like musical curios. Precious few have been able to maintain their critical regard or commercial standing.
But that could all be about to change. There's a new movement happening with a sense that female rockers have arrived and a sense that they're going to stay.
Female rockers occupied four of the top five spots in the lauded Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics Poll: Liz Phair topped the list for her bold and sexually explicit debut album, ``Exile in Guyville,'' and she was followed by British songstress PJ Harvey and the women-fronted brand the Breeders.
Rock fans are also tuning in these days to Sheryl Crow and Melissa Ferrick. Other current female rockers include Tori Amos, Juliana Hatfield, Kristin Hersh, the bands Belly and Bettie Serveert, Jane Siberry, Me'Shell NdegeOcello, Aimee Mann and Iris Dement.
And that's not to mention female musicians who are members of hot groups such as Smashing Pumpkins and White Zombie, or singer-songwriters such as Mary-Chapin Carpente who is treading a line between country and pop.
``I'm happy Liz Phair is on the planet, all these younger women,'' says Bonnie Raitt, a rock veteran who has managed to avoid being tagged as part of any kind of movement. ``It just blows me away that there are so many women making music now. And it's really good, really smart music, too.''
Adds singer-songwriter Crow: ``The respect level now is completely different. We're being treated as artists and not just as females.''
Why the explosion of female artists during the past year?
``I've always heard it,'' says Phair, 26. ``It was there before I did `Guyville.' It just hadn't gotten America-ready, or something like that. I got through a crack that has since become a pretty prominent crack, but it was always there.''
The striking feature of the new women's rock is its content, both lyrical and musical. These are girls with guitars who are willing to crank 'em up loud through the amps - just like the boys. They're not afraid to sing about sex and play with the same swagger as their male counterparts. Nor do they feel a need to apologize for their more tender emotions.
``What we have here is the consummation of what a lot of male critics said they were waiting for ... women who knew how to come on strong,'' the Village Voice's Robert Christgau wrote in summing up the Pazz & Jop results.
Phair contends that these women have been around for a while, too, but that their music took time to seep into the pop consciousness.
``We hadn't developed an attractive image of womanhood that incorporated crassness,'' she explains. ``There was no sense of sophisticated crass for women. Men could have their locker room and pool table talk and turn around and be gentlemen ... before they accepted that women could participate in the same deceit with equal grace.''
That's what made Phair's ``Exile in Guyville'' so special. She set out to make a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones' libidinous 1972 album ``Exile on Main Street,'' adopting the perspective of every woman Mick Jagger & Co. wagged their tongues - and other extremities - at.
Phair wound up with something greater, a study of being a woman in male society - Guyville, a phrase coined by her friends in the band Urge Overkill.
Phair's songs are both blunt and delicate, never denying the complexities and contradictions of her feelings. Some of her sexual revelations would light up the pages of Penthouse Forum, but in a song such as ``[bleep] and Run'' - a lament about indiscriminate sex - she sings, ``I want a boyfriend/The kind of guy who tries to win you over/I want a boyfriend/The kind of guy who makes love because he's in it.''
``That's the kind of record I wish I had when I was in high school,'' says Rae Cline, a music aficionado who's now promotions director of modern rock station CIMX-FM in Windsor, Ontario. ``I totally relate to the things she writes about, but at the same time, it's funny, not whiny.''
Atlantic Records President Danny Goldberg, who signed both Phair and Ferrick to his label, notes that even the first wave of so-called alternative rockers was as guilty as its predecessors of barricading women from the rock ranks - even though bands such as Sonic Youth and the Pixies boasted female bass players.
``The first wave was all men - R.E.M., Nirvana, the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Henry Rollins - overwhelmingly male-dominated,'' Goldberg says. ``That had to be remedied. That's not the way talent is spread around by the creator. ... You had a lot of pent-up energy out there, and eventually these people were going to emerge.''
On the other hand, those male artists - with songs and practices that counter sexism and homophobia - may have laid the foundation for their female colleagues.
``A lot of those alternative superstar bands are very feminine bands,'' says Cline of CIMX. ``Not only do they not exclude women in a way a lot of cock-rock bands of old did, but they actually invite women and are able to write songs in a real feminine way, with some understanding and open-mindedness.''
For Crow, the attitudinal change runs deeper than the music. ``I think it's due in part to the political climate changing,'' says Crow, 31. ``The respect level towards women in business and politics is changing. And there are more women on the radio and in other media.
``While it's irritating that five years ago we could have made these same records and no one would have heard them, it's still great that it happens. Every time a viable artist comes out ... it helps the cause. And with so many of us around now, I think it's going to be awfully hard to ever push us back again.''
by CNB