Let Us Now Praise Hard Rockin' Women...

and the cultural and political change they make... (more thoughts on politics and culture)

Before we begin, I want you to listen to this and this and this.

What you’ve just heard is Birtha, Fear Itself, and Fanny. Birtha was a hard blues rock band from Los Angeles, made up of four women, who released two albums on ABC-Dunhill in 1972 and 1973. Fear Itself were a psychedelic hard rock band led by the great guitarist Ellen McIlwaine, a close pal of Jimi Hendrix, with whom she traded riffs with. Fear Itself released one album on Dot in 1968. Fanny is the most well known of the three groups. All women, Fanny were formed by the Millington sisters in Sacramento in the late 1960s. They released six albums, five on Reprise in the early 1970s. The song you listened to is a radio cut which wasn’t released until this year.

Each band you just heard are totally bad ass, made up of bad ass women, who, for the most part, were wronged by their record labels and management. Birtha’s first album is fantastic. It is also wrapped in a sleeve that makes one think that the band is a ‘50’s revival group like Sha-Na-Na. The only picture of the band on the cover is tiny, up in the corner. ABC-Dunhill thought it wise to market Birtha with the slogan “Birtha Has Balls.” The label fired the producer of their first album and hired a guy who tried to make them more safe, non-threatening, and “womanly.”

Fear Itself also were screwed by their label, Dot, who didn’t know what to do with a band fronted by a guitar god (Hendrix considered Ellen McIlwaine his equal) who happened to be female. The rest of the band, who were men, also were confounded by (and envious of) McIlwaine, again due to her gender. McIlwaine was so disillusioned by her experience that she moved to Canada to pursue a solo career.

Although Fanny had support of their label, Reprise, who released their first five albums (a final one came out on Casablanca in 1974), the band was never allowed to let go as they did in that Beat Club recording (made in 1971 or 1972). Their albums are mostly feel-good, hippie rock with absolutely no Oooomph. While Fanny is important for being an all-female band when such a thing was rare, sonically their impact was far less than what it could have been if they were given the okay to get loud and let loose.

Imagine how different things would be, in the music industry, our culture, and the world, if these three power rockers were encouraged to peg their amps to 11 and just rock out. Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie would have been recognized then as a central leader/creator in her band and not just John McVie’s sidepiece. Suzi Quatro might have been treated as more than a novelty. Heart could have escaped sugar-n-spice/male fantasy marketing, and the message “Ladys! Sex sells, so sell it!”

Mercury Records might have treated The Runaways as more than a joke, fit to be exiled to Japan, doomed to commercial failure and cult status in the US. Band members Joan Jett and Lita Ford could have refused to have their gender marketed without being pegged as “difficult women.” Same goes with Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders.

The Go-Go’s and the Bangles would not have been packaged in pretty little boxes, safe for male consumption. Wendy O. Williams wouldn’t have been framed as a sexualized freak. Female artists who had substantial success in England and Europe – Siouxsie Sioux, X-Ray Spex, The Slits, Lene Lovich, The Raincoats, etc. – could have been more than cult artists over here (at the time).

If all the artists mentioned above would have been treated as male rockers, given the same freedom to rock as hard as they wanted to without pressures to conform to either the male sexual ideal or what society said womanhood should be, well, that list would be much bigger, without any of my complaints. What is commonplace now would have been the norm back then.

Instead, it took about twenty-years for hard rocking women to make an unfiltered push into the mainstream. In doing so, they created movements that crippled gender barriers in popular music, especially hard rock & roll. However, for L7, Babes in Toyland, Hole, Bikini Kill, and others to breakthrough, they had to avoid dealing with major labels and the corporate music industry and gamble with indie labels and the DIY scene.

This new wave of female hard rockers didn’t work in a cultural or historical vacuum. They might not have known of Birtha, Fear Itself, or Fanny, but they were very much aware of how tough Quatro, McVie, the Wilson Sisters, the Runaways, Hynde, Wendy O., the Go-Go’s and others had it. They also knew how hard these women fought for space to create and how hard they rocked.

The new wave of female hard rockers knew and rejected the pressures to conform and rock like polite, acceptable women should. They upended fashion norms and gave female artists new style templates to use. In business and in culture, they went their own way, forming communities and creating movements that not only embraced hard rocking women, but twee rockers, folk rockers, Black rockers, Latin rockers, Asian rockers, Queer rockers, and wimpy boy rockers. Diversity, equity, and inclusion: In action.

The late 1970s and 1980s have been described as an era of backlash against freedom movements. We’ve been taught that advances in Civil Rights, the Women’s Movement, and Gay Liberation were reversed by a skittish America, concerned that things were “moving too fast” and that we need to return to “our traditions,” to “family,” to back when “America was great.” And, while there is some truth in the backlash narrative, musical history shows that our cultural bedrock was (and still is) solidly straight, White, and male. Some of the rules have changed but the rule-makers are the same. Still, because, many women refused to be cowed by the backlash or the existing power structure, there are cracks in that foundation, cracks which are becoming fissures, fissures that will eventually cause the old bedrock to fall into the sea.

Or that’s the hope.

Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, the Republican Party, cultural figures like Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk and his tech allies have a different vision for the future, one which references another cultural sensation, The Handmaid’s Tale. These men – and their female allies – aren’t looking to return us to tradition. They want something much more radical. Their perfect woman is little more than a pretty face, a vagina, and a womb, not just for a particular man, but for all men. Women are here to service men, to pop out babies and to fuck. And men should be able to fuck and procreate with as many women as they want, ala Elon Musk and other “pro-natalists.”

These guys don’t want chaste 1950s housewives. They want a combo of personal porn star, incubator, and slave – and that is not hyperbole. They want to beat up women during sex (or rape) – something that they try to normalize with descriptors like “rough sex” – without legal consequence. And to do this, women must be denied the same legal status as men. They must remain subservient. They have to be prevented from rocking hard.

While that last line might read trite, remember that it’s not only a metaphor but a reminder that change starts with culture. Kamala Harris could very well be our next president, not because of Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, but thanks to Kathlene Hanna, Donita Sparks, Penelope Houston, Alice Bags, Wendy O. Williams, Joan Jett, Girlschool, Suzi Quatro, Fanny, Ellen McIlwaine, Birtha, and many other hard rocking women who relentless attacked a patriarchal status quo and kept turning up the volume every time a man demanded them to “Sit down and shut up.” Politics, culture, psychology, spirit should not be subjected to barriers that prevent people from being themselves and fulfilling free lives. If the foundation of the structure we live in is sinking us – all of us – the bedrock must be destroyed and replaced with something better. And, if the soundtrack to that destruction is 4’, 11” Olivia Favela’s pound and scream, I’ll see you in the pit.  

This is the fourth Soriano’s Circus to go out on Substack. Formerly, my newsletter was called Soriano’s Comment, but, after a bit of silence, I wanted to switch things up so I came up with a new name, one that can hold whatever I put into it. Similarly, I ditched Mailchimp for Substack because I want to get paid for writing words that people want to read. I tried with Mailchimp and Patreon but that didn’t work. I am hoping that moving to Substack will put some money in my pocket. So far, so okay. I’ve got a small handful of paid subscribers, which is great. What is not great is that though there are at least a thousand people reading this, there’s only about ten who have ponied up.

To those of you have a paid subscription, thank you very much! The money helps, but compensation is also good for the morale. You value what I do and are willing to put a value on it by subscribing. The rest of you, thanks for reading, now please consider subscribing. Understand that the “free internet” is only free because you are benefiting from free labor, labor that was once compensated for, but, under the tech model, is devalued for the sake of the middleman, who creates nothing but platforms that monopolize commerce. Lord knows if we will ever tear down this horrible system but, following the examples of the women written about above, we can certainly try.

Last thing, I have a magazine called Record Time. It is about records and music. It is very well written, insightful, and entertaining. The articles it contains are unlike what appears in the music press, which tends to be profiles that benefit the music industry. In Record Time you will find pieces on pre-Stonewall drag artists, female rockers like Birtha, weirdo musical pop-art collectives, meat & potato hard rockers, jazz shamen, maniacal Krishnas, Belgian fake punkers, gospel saxophonists, and much more. You can purchase a copy of Record Time here or, hopefully, your local book/record store.