Definitely not a “Genius” mix:

1.  “Der Greise Kopf” - Bernd Weikl, from “Winterreise”, Schubert
2.  “Gafale” - Diaou Kouyate
3.  “Canceled Check” - Beck
4.  “Anchors Aweigh” - Band of the Grenadiers (?!)
5.  “I Remember You” - Charlie Parker
6.  “Kung Fu Fighting” - Carl Douglas
7.  “Purple Toupee” - They Might Be Giants
8.  “King of the Road” - R.E.M.
9.  “Route 66” - Rolling Stones
10. “Indian War Whoop” - Hoyt “Floyd” Ming & His Pep-Steppers, from “Anthology of American Folk Music”

Bonus:  “Kassie Jones Part I” - Furry Lewis, from “People Take Warning”
        “Work Song” - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra

See, this argument totally depresses and upsets me—I wish Lilith Fair had been more diverse on all fronts (music style/racially, etc), but I think laying the blame for how feminist music is perceived at the feet of women musicians is really fucked up. Part of the problem here is a certain kind of emotive music traditionally associated with women is totally stigmatized and reviled, and often unfairly. There’s plenty of boring and derivative music by women singer-songwriters (as is true for all categories & genres), but there’s also a lot of great art, and all of the language used to deride this entire category/categories of music—strident, vaginal, whiney, precious, granola, etc—is incredibly gendered, and in really disturbing ways, and I think the revulsion directed at emotive women musicians should be critiqued by feminists, regardless of whether the music is their cup of tea.

Interesting how I have seen several fashion designer-writer things lately that list Beth Ditto as a fashion leader.

But Peaches and MEN are nothing like that, of course.  So I blame Sarah MacLachlan and the Lilith Fair for these knee-jerk reactions.  Feminist music nowadays is most likely going to be accompanied by gold lame and disco balls, but we can’t shake this awful reputation.

I went to the Lilith Fair and it was boring as hell. But I don’t blame Sarah and the other musicians for the stigma about “Feminist Music.”  I think that’s like blaming Iced T or Tupac for the racists that think all black men are gansta’s.

[T]he phrase “feminist music” has all these connotations that are completely unfair:  women with acoustic guitars boring you with their earnest, pedantic music.

Sigh. Feminist music has certainly encompassed women with acoustic guitars (ranging from lesbian-feminist musicians such as Holly Near, Cris Williamson, & Meg Christian to the various acolytes of Sarah MacLachlan). Ani DiFranco, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that acoustic guitars needn’t produce earnest, pedantic music. Further, I thought that the many feminist pop punk musicians associated with Olympia, Washington (such as Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney, & Bikini Kill) definitively demolished any nonsense about what constituted ‘feminist music’. Indeed, I dismissed the Gossip years ago precisely because they seemed like second generation knock-offs of Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill (the banshee wail of Beth Ditto? Yawn… please give me Corin Tucker & Kathleen Hanna). Tell your friend he needs ‘bigger ears’ or at least a more expansive definition of the many varieties of feminist music.

I love Sarah McLachlan. Hmm, I think System of a Down is kind of boring and they are a political metal band. But they are male and rock musicians, so people probably automatically respect them more.

I WISH I knew more female musicians who made progressive political music that was also emotional. One of the things that bothered me about System was how impersonal their music seems. I still listen to them occasionally, but I want to hear about more personal conflicts. So even if it’s just acoustic/folk style acoustic stuff, I applaud female musicians who go against the grain and don’t just write love songs. It isn’t fair to blame the artists themselves.

The Gossip is awesome, though.

Oopsie that’s Ice T. How lame is that mistake?

Actually, Ani DiFranco bores me to tears. If Sarah McLachlan is the Pearl Jam of Feminist acoustic earnest guitar rock, I consider Ani DiFranco to be the Creed of the genre. Not to say I’d like to see either of them.

I see the Lilith Fair as just another genre music festival, like Ozzfest. If you don’t like that kind of music, don’t go. But Lilith Fair certainly wasn’t the only feminist music festival out there. I would have given a tit to go see Rock 4 Choice back in its heyday. And if you don’t mind a little transphobia in your music fest, by all means head off to MWMF.

I think that girls singing earnest songs and accompanying themselves on acoustic guitars is awesome.

I see concern trolling women in music is still not beneath you Amanda.  Bummer that.

1. The Magnetic Fields - Living In an Abandoned Firehouse With You
2. Wolf Parade - Fancy Claps
3. Beastie Boys - Sure Shot
4. The Soft Boys - Fatman’s Son
5. The Rogers Sisters - The Light
6. The Gaze - Anyway
7. The Octopus Project - Upmann
8. The Cure - How Beautiful You Are
9. R.E.M. - Toys In the Attic
10. Guitar Wolf - Loverock

I seem to recall that McLachlan put the tour together in the first place because women’s acts weren’t getting booked due to promoters who believed that even women didn’t bother going to see “women’s music”. So, in that sense, I admire what she did and how well she proved them wrong. Other than that, though, I don’t know that she had an explicitly feminist agenda or chose overtly feminist acts.

I don’t know whether the bands were just her friends or people she thought could draw a crowd, but it did seem to be explicitly narrowed down to a very specific style of music - the sort of acts that would get played in coffee shops, or who I associate with Ally McBeal soundtracks. I’m familiar with about half the bands on the first tour, and of those, I really couldn’t stand a further half. Most of them had had at least one long and annoying run with a Buzz video on MTV, and for the most part none of them put forward a particularly challenging or…let’s say “adult” vision of women. Was it Lisa Loeb or Juliana Hatfield who always seemed to find a way to mention that she was still a virgin anytime she got interviewed?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with liking those acts, or making that music (or being a virgin)...just that it struck me as not terribly interesting or challenging. That most of the acts kind of fell into an earth mother/eternal child spectrum interests me in contrast to the aforementioned riot grrls (who often dressed twee to make fun of how women were expected to appear or behave), or even actual twee acts (which I adore) who generally applied a punk attitude to their honest emotionalism (or, like Beat Happening, used it as a way to challenge masculinity ideals). Which is to say that I don’t think Lilith Faire type music did anything for “feminist” music other than just reinforce the stereotypes of “women’s music”.

Anyway, I was on a “rockin’ women” kick over at my blog a couple of weeks ago, if anyone wants some older, fun, punky acts that never would have been allowed at Lilith Faire.

Gaze - A northwest twee-folk-punk band that included indie goddess Rose Melberg.

Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons - A minimal, cold-wave synth band that sounded like a Teutonic Siouxsie fronting Liliput covering Devo.

Tuscadero - Just unbelievably fun and catchy.

The Rondelles - Sort of like Sleater-Kinney crossed with the Shangri-Las as a cheerleading squad.

Shitt Hottt - You really shouldn’t need any more encouragement other than that their album was called Are You There God? It’s Me, Shitt Hottt, and they wrote a song called “Tony Danza Dacestravaganza”.

Umm yeah, I don’t quite this either. You think Sarah McLachlan meant well but you blame her because of what other people say about it? Shouldn’t you be annoyed at your friend?

As an aside, if the new feminist music is mostly disco, then bring back the older feminist music.

or who I associate with Ally McBeal soundtracks.

This. Thank you. For the entire time that show aired I thought I was the only woman who didn’t like that show or the soundtrack. That’s why I went to the Lilith Fair. At 18 years old, I thought I had to go and like it to be a good feminist. Luckily I found some people in the Bay Area who knew about music that wasn’t on the radio or on TV, which blew my mind. It’s both sad and lame that it took 18 years to find music I liked.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with liking those acts, or making that music (or being a virgin)...just that it struck me as not terribly interesting or challenging.

Agreed.  My issue with the McLaughlin/Lynn Miles knock-offs (and their male counterparts) is a problem with sound, not message.  It’s the kind of music that I’d probably enjoy live, in a dim bar with beer (because there’s little live music I can’t find something good in), but doesn’t have much of an x-factor when it’s coming out of my stereo. CBC is drowning me in the stuff and I’ve been frustrated for a couple of years now. I was feeling pretty alone in my frustration with the “Black Flowers” effect until now.

I’ll be in my corner with the new Supersilent.

/avowed snob

Amanda, I genuinely love and respect your writing, and you are 110% entitled to your own opinion on your own blog; but it’s disappointing to see the knee-jerk reactions against Sarah McLachlan and Lilith Fair get traction here. McLachlan’s goal (to get multiple female performers on a bill that would be promoted well and reach wide audiences) is pretty darn feminist, even if the aesthetic is a little crunchy for some people. But K’s Choice, Queen Latifah, Sinead O’Connor, Suzanne Vega, and Liz Phair all played in ‘98, for example- the fact that the perception of Lilith Fair is that of the granola-munching, patchouli-smelling, hypersensitive chick-with-guitar variety isn’t the whole truth. Plus, McLachlan’s later tours gave local stages to local acts, trying to introduce people to the female-fronted bands in their area.

The fact that Dude Radio and Dude Nation in general was so threatened by this that, a decade later, they’re still making fun of the silly hippie girls in their beads? Really says more about Dude Nation than it does about Lilith Fair.

Oh and, re “feminist music”, make your Friday 10 up out of the work of Betty Davis (Bitch had a nice write-up about her recently).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KKLtyxqPGU&feature=related

Did any of the really good ‘90s women-fronted bands ever play the Lilith Fair? I can’t think of any. Oh, crap, I’m going to have to look this up:

Welp, Erykah Badu and Missy Elliott played it in ‘98, according to Wikipedia. Liz Phair for a couple of years but this was way after Exile in Guyville. Luscious Jackson and Aimee Mann in 1999.

But man do those lineups look like singer-songwriterville, oof.

Sarah McLachlan is pretty much on the upper end of the coffee-shop singer-songwriter scale, I think.

A.  Ani Difranco.  I went into a music store where I could usually pick up something good just by listening to what each person selected in the rotation of the music playing.  I went up to a butch girl and said, Pardon me, I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I want to hear something by some woman that is not crying and whinging but is saying somethig along the lines of, “You pull that shit again and I’ll rip that damned dick off and beat your brains out with it.”  She didnt pause, she said, “ani difranco”  I’ll see if we have a used copy of the album “Napolean.”  Don’t care for ani or her boyfriend, kiss my ancient ass.

B.  The last time that I talked to Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre, she said on stage that she had been keeping score of how many female bands played with Le Tigre and how many male bands.  She didn’t finish, afterward I walked over and paid my respects and said, you never said how many or what percentage of the openers were female.  She looked at me weird, after all 55 is not the typical age of a Le Tigre fan, but she probably dimly remembered me from her days with Bikini Kill. which I was a huge fan of.  She said, “It is less than 7 per cent.” I said, “I knew it was bad but I’m only hitting about 11 or 12 per cent in the acts that I see.

Look asshole, yeah, I’m nuts but music has held me together whether it was walking through rice paddies screaming Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” or going out to guard duty at the PX depot screaming the Fish Cheer of Country Joe and the Fish.

However you cut it, women have something to say that is totally contrary to what the men say.  I want to hear what they have to say and McLaughlin is not someone that I personally regard as above C level.

Yeah, echoing others about the mission of Lilith Fair being critical regardless of its impression and the dismissal of earnest and singer-songwriter in general is really interesting. Especially how the new folk is characterized as too feminine and weak and thus dismissable the second it was no longer male dominated.

There’s a place for earnest music out there, I still regularly put on Janis Ian and the singer/songwriter trope has put out some fantastic artists such as Regina Spektor, Nellie McKay, and Tina Dico.

Of course, I do prefer my feminist music in general to be angrier.

I still miss old-school Kittie.

Feminist Scramble List:

Liar by Rollins Band
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie by Gina Young
Do You Think I’m a Whore by Kittie
Sex Changes by Dresden Dolls
Jezebel by 10,000 Maniacs
i Am Not Your Gameboy by Freezepop
El Filosofo y El Cardinal by No Relax
Cocktease by VAGIANT
I Wanna Get Married by Nellie McKay
Scoring by Boa

Ugh.  I can’t stand Rick Rubin.  He seems to do nothing but ruin otherwise perfectly good bands.

1.  Long Time -  Bubble Boys
2. The Arrangement - Shiner
3. Future Noir - Hanin Elias
4. Into the Death - Atari Teenage Riot
5. Until They’re Clear - The Evens
6. Little Babies - Sleater-Kinney
7. Returning to the Fold - The Thermals
8. We’ve got Games at High Speeds - Pilot to Gunner
9. Ram-Faced Boy - The Esoteric
10 Decade of Decay - False Prophets

You blame Lilith Fair for those kneejerk reactions.

Okay.  I guess anything is better than blaming sexism, or your friend’s ignorance, for those kneejerk reactions.

Way to lay the blame where it belongs.

I said fuck it.  I couldn’t take it; all the acoustic guitars and earnestness.

WOOT!  FTW!

Not just Lilith, fer god’s sake, ANY music centred on acoustic guitars and earnestness.  I had to sit through ages of such folky music classes during my 70s childhood and so I very much understood Martin Blan when he said that coming out, the one thing that he knew for certain was that he wanted to kill somebody.  Enough kumbuya and earnest folk songs will turn anybody into a gun-wielding spree killer.

I fail to see why being a woman puts one beyond criticism, ice weasel. That’s paternalistic.  These women are musicians and eligible for the critical eye I apply to male musicians.

Enough people LIKE earnest acoustic guitar music that laying peoples’ reactions to Lilith Fair at the feet of “the music sucks” is non-argument. I normally am way on board with Amanda’s arguments, but I must join the chorus calling bullshit on this.

And I gotta say, earnest guitar playing by no means is equivalent to bad music. I’m not in a time in my music-listening life where I want to hear it as much, but this idea that music must be ironic/angry/practicedly detached in order to be cool enough to be worth listening to is bullshit.

There’s a lot of criticism of this kind of music (earnest, acoustic, immediate, emotional) precisely on the grounds that it’s too girly and feminine and that listening to it will make your penis fall off. THAT is the reason that people react badly to things like Lilith, not that the music sucks. People happily listen to all kinds of shitty music and go to massive festivals celebrating and playing said shitty music. And damn it, maybe the acceptance of Riot Grrl and the harder-edged music of the early 90’s that you love so much (and why not, it fucking rocks) was that men felt like they could listen to it without being emasculated. So the problem is still sexism, not bad music. Come on, how is this not obvious? Blaming the music for the failure and public distaste for Lilith is way off-base. Shame.

I don’t find myself agreeing with Amanda that often but she’s spot on here. It’s all very well to have a touring festival made up largely of soft acoustic singer-songwriters but to market it as a ‘women’s music’ festival essentially reinforced more stereotypes than it broke. Whether the music itself was the kind of stuff you liked (personally, mushc of it is the kind of music I loathe) is irrelevant - compared to say, Lollapalooza the selection of bands was VERY safe, and the political outlook relatively one-dimensional. Unless they plan to include the likes of the Gossip, Dresden Dolls, Neko Case and M.I.A., I don’t think its return can possibly be seen as good news.

And what’s with the Rick Rubin hate, the guy’s one of the few bonafide production legends. Sure his recent otuput’s been less consistent but he’s still produced System, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and International Noise Conspiracy in the last five years. It’s not his fault if he has mediocrity to work with.

I dunno, the panty-checks and ovary-superiority by Lillith Fair kinda killed it for me.

Amanda, the problem here is you’re applying a critical eye to the musicians instead of applying a critical eye to your friend.  Your friend is the one who saw one concert series (organized in response to people point-blank refusing to book female acts), decided that since those acts weren’t to his taste, no feminist bands would be to his taste, and dismissed them out of hand.

This is the equivalent of a guy saying, “I went on a feminist message board and asks some questions and they were mean to me so feminists suck.”

You, right now, are the woman standing next to him saying, “Oh, if only those mean feminists catered to my guy friend some more, it would all be okay.  Stupid feminists.”

You didn’t look at how as folk music got more female dominated, more people dismissed it.  You didn’t look at how women’s music is scorned by men because they know they’ll take a status-drop if they publicly like things that are ‘girly’, despite being happy to be associated with crappy male musicians.

Instead you decided to blame the musicians for your friend’s kneejerk sexist reaction.  That’s not a rejection of paternalism.  That’s just out-and-out sexism.

Amanda hates earnestness, or at least performed earnestness that calls attention to its own earnestness.  I think that’s a bullshit criterion for evaluation, but she applies it consistently.  It’s not like it’s a new or disconcerting thing to hear from her.

Amanda hates earnestness, or at least performed earnestness that calls attention to its own earnestness.  I think that’s a bullshit criterion for evaluation, but she applies it consistently.  It’s not like it’s a new or disconcerting thing to hear from her.

Pretty much this.  Music threads tend to devolve into people being surprised that Amanda’s musical tastes are the same as they were last Friday.

And what’s with the Rick Rubin hate, the guy’s one of the few bonafide production legends. Sure his recent otuput’s been less consistent but he’s still produced System, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and International Noise Conspiracy in the last five years. It’s not his fault if he has mediocrity to work with.

There is certainly some hyperbole on my part—Johnny Cash records were good.  It’s funny that you mentioned (International) Noise Conspiracy, though.  I loved Survavil Sickness and New Morning, Changing Weather, but thought Armed Love was a waste of the polycarbon that went into making the CD.  Don’t even get me started on the second album they did with him.  At least Sara Almgren made it out of there in time to play in The Vicious and Masshysteri.

I’m finding this funny because Heavy Cross and Set it Off are on constant rotation right now for me. I like the Fred Falke remix of Heavy Cross because it uses Ditto’s voice better, and the dance beat is nicer. I also like the Lexy & K-Paul remix of Set it Off because the dance beat is nicer. Of course, I mostly like these because the beat is perfect for jousting and PvP in Warcraft. I’ve never been killed in Wintergrasp while listening to Set it Off.

I think there’s nothing wrong with earnestness and acoustic guitars, it’s just nice to have something to dance to as well.

Music threads tend to devolve into people being surprised that Amanda’s musical tastes are the same as they were last Friday.

i don’t give a flying fuck about amanda’s musical taste. the fact that she’s swallowing and perpetuating sexist, bullshit memes—that pisses me right off.

don’t like sarah mclachlan, wev. just don’t blame her because your friend (like the many other men with snide and nasty things to say about “women’s music) is an asshole.

oh and crissa—i don’t think lilith did “panty checks”. men went. you’re thinking of michigan.

See static, I liked Armed Love. It’s not as consistent as NMCW but the singles are definitely kickass. I think it gets a bad rep because it was their ‘sellout’ album, and because of Communist Moon (which is musically good, even if it is kind of hilarious).

As for the other stuff, I don’t think Amanda’s being too unfair. Whether or not the music is any good is to some extent irrelevant. Lilith Fair took place immediately following a period in music responsible for some of the most varied, interesting and challenging female acts ever, and ignored that in order to pursue a largely homogenized, non-challenging musical direction based largely on yes, acoustic guitars and earnestness. In the process they solidifed a stereotypical idea of ‘feminist’ (as opposed to female) music in the minds of the general public which, as demonstrated, upcoming feminist acts still have to contend with to this day. In retrospect, it’s clear that the organisers had a certain idea of how an authentic expression of women’s voices could or should be expressed, and anyone who fell outside that didn’t wasn’t invited to the party.

And that’s before you get on to whether an all-female music event can be seen as a liberating thing in and of itself. I understand the concern that all-female bills can be few and far between but I’d prefer to see a collection of touring bands from a wide background of musical forms and styles, and with a significant proportion of female/gay/genderqueer artists involved. Everyone agrees that ‘women’s music’ as a concept is stupid, so why build a festival around it?

There’s a lot of criticism of this kind of music (earnest, acoustic, immediate, emotional) precisely on the grounds that it’s too girly and feminine and that listening to it will make your penis fall off. THAT is the reason that people react badly to things like Lilith, not that the music sucks.

Well, I was saying that (most of) the music sucked and that it reinforced certain stereotypes of what “women’s music” means. I adore “girly” music, and last time I checked, I still had a penis. That was most definitely not my complaint. I agree wholeheartedly that what McLachlan accomplished was both important and laudatory, but I also think that what she proved was basically that just as many women as men will pay money for boring, middle of the road music. The music of Liltih Faire had about as much to do with feminism as the Spice Girls’ version of “girl power”.

As for earnestness, I don’t even know how much of what was on display at LF even fits that. Of the first edition, I suppose you could say that The Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman were earnest. My problem was with people like Paula Cole, Jewel, Lisa Loeb, Juliana Hatfield, and Meredith Brooks, who were not so much earnest as shallow. Whose ideal of a woman’s life was owning a Carol King record, wearing a shawl, and standing around in a field of daisies during the golden hour.  It’s the Lifetime Movie version of women’s issues.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now where the hell were you ten years ago, when I was trying to articulate these ideas and everyone thought I was being reactionary.

I love Sarah Mac, a fact that constantly annoys my less-girly-than-I-am partner, and I know it wasn’t her *fault,* but I couldn’t help but be annoyed whenever I saw her talking up Lilith Fair as a feminist rock show.  Because it was a rock show themed on a subgenre of folk-rock that happened to be feminist.  Identifying it as a feminist rock show seemed like a slap in the face to Sleater-Kinney or Patti Smith or The Donnas, who would have been rather out of place there.

On the other hand, I was seventeen years old back then, and kind of a dick.  So maybe it was just me.  But thanks for gratifying a decade-old grudge.

Thirteen from the Halloween playlist:

Planet Claire - The B-52’s
Eaten By the Monster Of Love - Sparks
MACDOWELL:  Will-o’-the-Wisp - Myrtle C. Eaver
Vicki and Peter - Robert Cobert
SAINT-SAËNS:  Danse Macabre - The Philadelphia Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski
[UFO Training Film] - The Firesign Theatre
Night of the Pentagram - Robert Cobert
Laurie (Strange Things Happen) - Dickie Lee
Halloween - Screaming Fields of Sonic Love
Stand Behind Me - Lopez Sophisticates*

Moon Over Kentucky [Brixton, 7/21/09] - Morrissey
The Dream Curse - Robert Cobert
GROFÉ:  The Martian Mutants - Albert Glasser

*Hooray! 25-year-old piece gets released!  Very famous.  One Google hit.

Erm, by “her,” I’m referring to Sarah Mac, not my partner.  I am entirely comfortable blaming my partner for anything, up to and including difficulties in the convoluted struggle against patriarchy.

But see the thing is, a lot of very interesting new music was being made in the ‘90s, and a lot of women were at the forefront of making interesting new music in the ‘90s, stuff that was not stereotypically “girl” music, and the Lilith Fair did very little to bring anybody’s attention to any of that, was the problem.

Oh and also Juliana Hatfield is/was not really the same kind of animal as Paula Cole/Jewel/Meredith Brooks – I don’t really like her songs that much and Fastbacks > Blake Babies for sure, but Hatfield definitely had indie cred.

... god, on refreshing my memory with YouTube, Fastbacks >>> Blake Babies, it’s not even close.

I like festivals with different kinds of acts.  Four to six or so hours of anything gets to be too much around hour two or three.  I wouldn’t want to see heavy metal for four plus hours, and I like heavy metal.  I wouldn’t want to see women’s folk music for four hours, and I like that stuff too.  Ditto for electronica, dance, disco, pop, punk, Gothic choirs, bluegrass, Tuvan throat singers, or Sami joikers.  Too much is too much, and I’d love to see a Lilith Fair with The Pretenders, Sarah MacLaughlin, L7, Tracy Chapman, Aimee Mann, Hole, Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Evanescence, Lady Sovereign, Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Madonna, the Indigo Girls, Blondie, Annie Lennox, and Siouxie and the Banshees.  If it had half of that, I’d be there.  If it’s just a bunch of more of a lot of the same, with guest-star guitarist someone from some other band that’s a lot like them, I’m just not that interested.  Solidarity and sisterhood is great, but so is variety.

“Lisa Loeb? I thought she was Courtney Hole!” - Crow T. Robot

Genius initiator: “Le Temps de L’Amour” - April March

1. “Where Is My Mind” - Pixies
2. “Natural’s Not In It” - Gang of Four
3. “She Said” - Holly Golightly
4. “You’re Good (Diplo Mix)” - M.I.A.
5. “Chains of Love” - Dirtbombs
6. “Moonchild (Mouse On Mars Mix)” - Cibo Matto
7. “Schizophrenia” - Sonic Youth
8. “Prove It” - Television
9. “Mongoloid (Boogie Boy Version)” - Devo
10. “I Wanna Holler (But the Town’s Too Small)” - The Detroit Cobras

Bon. “Don’t Give It Up Now” - The Lyres

I very much enjoyed Lillith Fair ‘98. I also enjoy women artists who play other genres. But c’mon, saying that Lillith Fair should be more diverse musically is like saying that OzFest should be more diverse musically or that the Bean Blossom Bluegrass festival should be more diverse musically. Festivals generally feature a group of artists with a similar fan base. And, c’mon, the hipper than thou attitude is uncool.

But c’mon, saying that Lillith Fair should be more diverse musically is like saying that OzFest should be more diverse musically or that the Bean Blossom Bluegrass festival should be more diverse musically

I think the issue people have (or at least the one I have) is the music festival wasn’t promoted as an earnest female singer/songwriter festival. It was promoted as a feminist music festival. So at a feminist music festival you should expect to see a diverse group of musicians and genres.

Amanda, typically, when you write, much of the time very eloquently and powerfully, your premise is based on demonstrable facts.  You take the air out of specious arguments and deflate overblown pundits and politicians who spread lies and half truths.

Then it comes to music and you fall down.  You seem to assume you’re ultimate arbiter of good taste and then build your musical arguments based around that premise.

Amanda, you can criticize Sarah all you want but I’ll take issue with you when you I think your criticism is bullshit.  You sound like a republican when you whine about the “earnestness”.  Hey, go for hating the musical style but that by no means it’s bad or somehow she’s done a “disservice”.

A big hipster WAH to you Amanda.  It’s cool you don’t like Sarah or anyone else who has appeared on a Lilith bill but to blame for them some random “disservice” is beyond silly, it’s disingenuous.  Relax.  It’s a big tent and because some asshole thinks music made by women should fall into some category isn’t Sarah McLachlan’s fault.  Shit like that started before you (and Sarah) were born.

You’re better than this Amanda.  If you want to trash Sarah, have at it but at least be entertaining and don’t have pretense that there’s some kind of underlying feminist argument that bolsters your thesis.

As for some of the other comments here, I have to wonder if you sneer at bluegrass festivals for adhering to stereotypes or blocking out diversity?  I have to wonder if, upon hearing a classical program, do you whine that the orchestra only played music by dead people (which oftentimes, anymore, isn’t even true).  As I said to Amanda, if the stuff on Lilith or Sarah McLachlan isn’t your style and the sound of their music makes you want to scream, we have no argument.  It’s not supposed to be loved by everyone but that’s a far cry some of the shabby stereotypes being thrown around.

1. Now, I would go to Lilith Fair, but I’ve always had a soft spot for earnest, singer-songwriter, acoustic guitar stuff. Going to a concert with that kind of line-up is okay by me.

To be fair to Lilith Fair, though, in their last year they did try to expand their musical horizons. Luscious Jackson has far more in common with Gossip than Natalie Merchant; Liz Phair will never be confused with the Suzanne Vega. Mýa, Me’shell Ndegeocello, and Queen Latifah all were on the main stage in ‘99. And yes, so were Sheryl Crow and Shawn Colvin and Lisa Loeb. But there was at least an attempt made to branch out from weak-tea folk/rock. Hopefully, that’s what McLachlan aims for this time around.

2. In re: Gossip, your description reminds me of a concert I attended in 1998. My friends and I had been following a New York-based band called Soul Coughing since the middle of the decade—they had a big following in Minneapolis, but had failed to click outside of here. In ‘98, they finally got a certified hit album (relatively speaking) in El Oso, which peaked in the 40s. That year, they finally got to play the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul, which seats about 5,000, and were clearly on the upswing. The concert was fun from a fan standpoint, as it marked the end of their time in clubs and playing gigs on college campuses, and the point at which they seemed to be about to break big.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. The album, while big, was inarguably their worst artistically. M Doughty, the band’s lead singer, was addicted to heroin; within a year, the stress on the band caught up to them, and they broke up in the spring of 1999.

There is a happy ending, insofar as Mike Doughty got clean, and has managed to release a few studio albums on ATO. But I do wonder if the band would have been better served staying just a notch or two smaller. Sometimes, breaking big is the worst thing that can happen. (See Also: Semisonic, the band you know as “that band who sang ‘Closing Time.’” Unfortunately, that song became radio roadkill, and pretty much destroyed a band that was pretty damn good. The happy ending there is that band frontman Dan Wilson went on to win a Grammy for co-writing “Not Ready to Make Nice” by the Dixie Chicks. No, really.)

3. My ten:

1. “Born to Hum,” Erin McKeown
2. “Welcome to the Terrordome,” Public Enemy
3. “Elevator Music,” Beck
4. “Digging in the Dirt,” Peter Gabriel
5. “Someone’s Daughter,” Beth Orton
6. “Beautiful Ride,” Dewey Cox
7. “Paris is Burning,” Lady Hawke
8. “I’m Still Drinking in My Dreams,” Mike Doughty
9. “No Me Pagan,” Los Amigos Invisibles
10. “Steven’s Last Night in Town,” Ben Folds Five

Sarah MacLachlan puts me to sleep.  If that makes me a bad feminist, so be it…but I have to agree with Amanda that a lot of so-called “women’s music,” from the Michigan Festival on down, has been earnest white women with acoustic guitars, and a lot of it is really boring.  YMMV, of course.

I also was less than pleased when MacLachlan took Lilith Fair on hiatus because she and all her fellow buds were planning to get pregnant.  Women were still underrepresented in festivals and on tours, so why couldn’t she have found new acts to replace herself and her friends while they were pregnant or had very young children?  It really seemed to be more about MacLachlan and a few others instead of the music at that point, and that turned me off.

I still think it’s worth pointing out that although the perception of Lilith Fair is always “soft acoustic singer-songwriters” and “women’s folk music,” part of that is reality and part of that is the wider dismissal of all women’s music as hyperemotional girl-with-guitar. Lilith Fair had: The Pretenders, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Juliana Hatfield, Joan Osborne, Antigone Rising, Erykah Badu, Cowboy Junkies, Missy Elliott, K’s Choice, Liz Phair, Queen Latifah, Bonnie Raitt, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Luscious Jackson, Monica, Mya, Dance Hall Crashers, Bif Naked, Aimee Mann, and that’s not even getting into the local bands that got to play on the smaller stages. Lilith Fair had jazz, folk, ska, rock, alternative, hip-hop, pop, funk, and country. Just because every male critic’s review at the time referred to the birkenstocks and hairy legs and mocked the earnestness of some of the artists, doesn’t mean there wasn’t some damn fine talent on display.

That said, nobody has to like Lilith Fair. To be perfectly honest, I went once when I was fifteen and was like “this is nice, but there’s not enough melodic screaming.” But I’m just trying to argue that women getting pigeonholed into the singer-songwriter category isn’t the fault of Lilith Fair, considering their work to incorporate a lot of performers and their pretty groundbreaking approach.

So whose fault is it ? It’s the fault of the radio stations, concert promoters, and record companies who looked at the success of a women’s music festival and, instead of saying “man, women love to buy diverse music and go to shows, let’s push women artists in all categories,” shook their heads and said “man, women dig that weepy folkie shit, let’s further ghettoize their taste and change nothing about our programming.”

BTW, this is not a “knee-jerk” reaction.  Attempts to characterize an opinion held—-after much continuous thought—-over a decade by someone who spends way too much of her time thinking about music, performance, and stereotypes as “knee-jerk” is unfair, and attempt to put your own tastes above someone else’s criticism.  Why not try to do what I do when someone tells me my taste sucks?  Laugh in their face and do exactly what you like!  The world is far too boring a place when everyone pretends they like something they don’t because it hurts someone’s feelings. 

I’ve found in general that I’ve had a lot of success luring straight guys to be more comfortable into female- or queer-dominated spaces by getting them into music that’s upbeat, danceable, or rocks. This probably has less to do with some inherent quality to straight maleness, than it has to do with my taste is music, and the sort of friends I collect because of it.  But it does get me to thinking about how much more value you get out of using the carrot over the stick when it comes to making change.  Rather than guilt-tripping someone over something they don’t like, like tedious soft rock, why not put the message in places where people’s pleasure centers are lighting up?

This was a big thing for George Clinton.  If you listen to a lot of his lyrics, they’re often actually pretty fucking subversive.  This was no accident.  Clinton believed that you get people off their asses and dancing, and then you can hit them with a political message, and they’ll be in a better mental space to listen, because they’ll be so happy.  I think he’s got a point, and I see artists like The Gossip and Peaches avoiding the trap of insularity and reaching out to people who might not otherwise be interested.

other orange, the way to fight back against negative stereotypes is to, you know, fight back. 

I don’t disagree that male promoters, etc. are to blame.  I’m not sure where people get the impression that just because I didn’t state the obvious means I don’t believe it.

But Sarah MacLachlan went out of her way to prove their beliefs right, even as she claimed she was fighting them—-that women are weak, women like shit that’s non-offensive by definition, that we’re all strumming our guitars and weeping and shit.  I remember reading a lot of reviews of the Lilith Fair that pointed out that the Dixie Chicks were easily the best set, because they got people on their feet and dancing.  If I were a promoter for other concert tours, I would take one look at the Lilith Fair and conclude that all my prejudices were right.

I think there was a lot more value in L7 and the Breeders and Hole going on Lollapalooza.  I say this as someone who is coming at it from a pro-music angle as opposed to a political one.  You couldn’t get me to the Lilith Fair as a young woman, but you’ll bet I was at Lollapalooza, and my ears were way more open to the feminist message, because it was packaged in a way that’s appealing. I saw all these women rocking out, and I saw what I wanted my life to be like, and it was very motivating for me.  I made a point after that not to go to college in a town with no discernible punk rock scene, and went instead to Austin.

The Beastie Boys, too!  Mustn’t forget them.  They actually had the most overtly feminist message of the day at Lollapalooza when I was 16.  They passed out a comical flier about the rules for slam dancing, and a lot of it was about how women are at shows to dance and have fun, not be groped.  That men could choose to be women’s allies in such a public way was a revelation to me.

The reality of the Lilith Fair is this: It emerged during a period when women’s gains in music were being scaled back by reactionary forces.  In the early 90s, women were intergrated, as my experience at Lollapalooza shows.  By the late 90s, however, shitty cock rock from Limp Bizkit to Creed was dominating the airwaves, women were being pushed out, there were rapes at Woodstock, etc.  And MacLachlan’s reaction to this was to confirm every negative and untrue stereotype of female musicians that was used as an excuse to push women out.  She isn’t to blame for the initial pushout.  But she didn’t help.  The irony here is that my friend actually listens to a lot of music I’d call “feminist” music.  He’s as big an L7 dork as I am, bigger probably.  The only point is that “feminist music” got so defined in the popular consciousness as girls with acoustic guitars—-for various reasons, sure, but including the Lilith Fair—-that people can hear L7, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, etc. and it never occurs to them that this is feminist music.  Even though L7 started Rock For Choice.

“insularity”?  You really don’t get it, do you?

It was a cheap shot and if you’d just admit that, I could accept it.  When talking about music, a little cheap shot here and there can be entertaining but you keep trying to couch your personal taste in some larger, legitimate criticism that just doesn’t apply.  What’s more, you would never do it to another artist that you liked.

As for Clinton’s subversiveness, there’s no question about his influence, his overall insanity or his subversive nature.  That said, it’s not a huge reach really for Clinton to perform catchy dance music with subversive lyrics most people can’t quote.  Gossip is much more subversive in the truest sense of the word but even they are hardly the first their ilk. Remember Debora Lyall?

More women performing is a good thing.  And as someone who was inside a very male dominated music business in the 80’s and 90’s, Sarah broke a lot of ground and demolished a lot of barriers that you seem to take for granted.  If Sarah’s style isn’t yours, that’s fine.  But don’t diminish what she’s accomplished because it seems to fit some stereotype that some asshat friend of yours casually tossed in your face.

Amanda, I think the ‘94 lineup at Lollapalooza was amazing… how much did I love having all my favorite bands on one t-shirt? Unfortunately, having that many female artists on the same bill never really happened again for Lollapalooza. Elastica was on in ‘95, and Sonic Youth, and the very next year was fucking Metallica, and I don’t remember seeing a female-fronted band on the lineup until the Donnas, like a jillion years later. (In other words, your timeline about the pushout against women artists is spot-on.) I think it was an awesome, powerful time to have women at the forefront of a major rock festival, but I wish I could say it changed more.

I still can’t bring myself to say that MacLachlan confirmed “every negative and untrue stereoype,” though. I think she put together a bunch of women whose music she liked, and in fact tried to get Lauryn Hill and Hole on the 1999 lineup. That would have been awesome, and probably would have changed the legacy of LF.

And your friend sounds like an awesome person for his taste in music (this is sometimes all I need to know about somebody, ha.) But if he’s a big L7 fan, how come he doesn’t think of it as feminist music? L7 are explicitly feminist, as are Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill, etc. The Lilith Fair crowd are obviously pro-women, but I would say most of the artists don’t loudly self-define as feminists, whereas the former examples do. (Though I guess, on the other hand, LF raised millions for RAINN, which is pretty explicitly feminist.) It’s an example of the sad state we’re in that even someone who is out there, already listening to feminist music, can’t separate the LF-girl-with-guitar marketing strategy from actual self-identifying feminist bands.

When one’s talking about earnestness, acoustic, emotional, etc., we should be careful to distinguish between things like that in and of themselves (valid, sometimes wonderful, worth listening to) and, well, having too much of a good thing.  An emotional, acoustic ballad on folk guitar is fine… Lining them up one after the other after the other after the other can be—to put it kindly—draining and dispiriting.

And there’s nothing that says that folk guitar can’t be fun, too.  Hell, look at Christine Lavin.  She strums on a guitar and can sing a sad song with the best of them but she doesn’t limit herself: “Regretting what I said”, for example, is a song that’s every bit as funny the 99th time you hear it as the 1st.

To be honest, your friend sounds like somebody who loves feminism until it does something he doesn’t like, and then suddenly it’s all about ugly chicks making his penis wither. As usual.

Perhaps that’s mean, but come on here. Why should feminism be Sarah Maclachlan not being allowed to like what she likes or to describe herself and her actions as feminist, because it makes the men get all upset? Strikes me as the same thing as deriding the women who play in the WNBA because immature male assholes insist on treating them as a joke. Can feminist pop culture be allowed to be about something other than winning over the men?

Amanda, I’m confused.  In your main post you say it’s just a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction.  Then when people point out that it’s sexist and unfair of you to blame a musician for your friends ignorance, it’s not a knee-jerk reaction.

You started the post with a critique saying that you just didn’t like Lilith Fair’s kind of music.  Now it’s more about the political scene of the 90s.

You realize we can still read that post, right?  The direct contradictions you add in the comments are pretty obvious attempts to cover the blatant sexism of that post with a thin skin of moralism.

Own up.  You said something sexist.  It happens.

I was going to make the connection between Lilith Fair and the fiasco of Woodstock ‘99 too.  But I checked, and Lilith Fair was before Woodstock ‘99.

But, Amanda, you write

MacLachlan’s reaction to this was to confirm every negative and untrue stereotype of female musicians

and that opens onto one of the longest-lasting divides in feminism, back to Wollstonecraft if not before.  If emoting is stereotypically feminine, or deemed as such by some kind of dominant culture, what’s to be done?  Is rejecting the equation between emoting and femininity a feminist act?  Or is it an anti-feminist act because it echoes the stigmatization of “girlish” emotion?  You have answered that question in one way, but the alternative is also possible, and neither is self-evidently correct.

FlipYrWhig ...
I wouldn’t say emoting is classically feminine.  “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is an emotive song.  It’s just that there’s a difference between a song like that and then listening to songs like that coming not as single spied but in battallions.

When I first heard that Lilith Fair was coming back, I tweeted my wishlist, and here it is:

Santigold
Kid Sister
Macy Gray
Allison Iraheta
Yael Naim
Sia
Lady Gaga
Diane Birch
A Fine Frenzy
Corinne Bailey Rae
Le Tigre
Regina Spektor
Nicole Atkins
Kerli
Nellie McKay
Adele
M.I.A.

I don’t necessarily love everyone on this list, but I’d pay to see them if they were all at the same festival.

Amanda, I think the ‘94 lineup at Lollapalooza was amazing… how much did I love having all my favorite bands on one t-shirt? Unfortunately, having that many female artists on the same bill never really happened again for Lollapalooza. Elastica was on in ‘95, and Sonic Youth, and the very next year was fucking Metallica, and I don’t remember seeing a female-fronted band on the lineup until the Donnas, like a jillion years later. (In other words, your timeline about the pushout against women artists is spot-on.) I think it was an awesome, powerful time to have women at the forefront of a major rock festival, but I wish I could say it changed more colocation hosting.

I still can’t bring myself to say that MacLachlan confirmed “every negative and untrue stereoype,” though. I think she put together a bunch of women whose music she liked, and in fact tried to get Lauryn Hill and Hole on the 1999 lineup. That would have been awesome, and probably would have changed the legacy of LF. managed hosting

And your friend sounds like an awesome person for his taste in music (this is sometimes all I need to know about somebody, ha.) But if he’s a big L7 fan, how come he doesn’t think of it as feminist music? L7 are explicitly feminist, as are Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill, etc. The Lilith Fair crowd are obviously pro-women, but I would say most of the artists don’t loudly self-define as feminists, whereas the former examples do windows hosting. (Though I guess, on the other hand, LF raised millions for RAINN, which is pretty explicitly feminist.) It’s an example of the sad state we’re in that even someone who is out there, already listening to feminist music, can’t separate the LF-girl-with-guitar marketing strategy from actual self-identifying feminist bands.