That Rolling Stone Cover

I've been disappointed to find so little nuanced discussion over Rolling Stone's cover story on the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, even from people I usually respect. This post from Amanda Marcotte (and the discussion that follows it) is one of the better ones.

Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists: Guess What's Missing?

Maura put best with this headline that came across my Tumblr yesterday afternoon: "Breaking: panel overwhelmingly made up of white men is really into the artistic output of other men."

Rolling Stone published their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All-Time . At this point, do I even need to say it? Two. Two of the hundred legends and icons great enough to be called "the greatest" are women: Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, respectively.

I never really wanted this site to be a collection of posts detailing yet another aspect of the music industry where women are underrepresented, but this is getting kind of old. And I don't entirely fault Rolling Stone for picking the same artists who've been topping lists for decades: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hedrix, et al... because girls are still too rarely encouraged to play guitar, but their panel of experts should, at least, be hip to the fact that some great guitarists exist outside the Beck-Clapton-Hendrix trifecta. And some of those guitarists are women.

Yes, it's a boy's game and all. This is a fact, and not something that's about to change anytime soon. It dovetails nicely with what I wrote yesterday: women aren't seen as masters of their craft. Women may be topping the charts, but lack the respect male artists get.

Greatness and Respect

Rolling Stone's updated version of its 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time hits stores this week, and not much has changed.

The Beatles, as to be expected, have twenty-three songs on the list, more than any other artist. Dylan and the Rolling Stones also feature prominently, and duh, it would be naive to expect anything less. The "youngest" song in the top ten is Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," nearly two decades old. There were some interesting additions since the 2004 version. Amy Winehouse's "Rehab," and M.I.A."s "Paper Planes" scrape the bottom, but having finally seen the list, it's mostly the same songs that have been appearing on best-ofs since cavemen carved the first list: lots of dude bands and dude songwriters. When women do figure prominently, it's as singers rather than producers or songwriters.

Bitch's Susan Glen said of women's exclusion and the concept of "greatness" in the original 500 Greatest:

"... mainstream rock is judged on some similar measure of its maleness, and this maleness is what constitutes greatness. This is why it's so important to focus on who actually write the songs on these best-of lists. This could explain why more female vocalists than songwriters appear on these lists. In an ironic twist on the usual maternal riff, woman are praised not for creating, but merely interpreting a man's creation." (Bitch #28)

As a longtime Rolling Stone reader and music fan, I think I have a pretty good understanding of how songs are chosen for these "best-ofs." Greatness is often confused with influence. And a song has to be old enough for its influence to have been filtered through popular culture; hence, the mostly twenty, thirty, and now forty-year-old songs. Rock music, as a medium, is nearing its AARP years, and like so many baby boomers is grumbling its way through the 21st century, resistant to change. It would be easy to make this a case of discrimination, but it's not as simple as that. Glen adds:

"This isn't about a blatant conspiracy, it's about a culture so inundated with sameness that when faced with difference it can do little more than throw up its hand in fear and confusion."

I know people get angry when I or other bloggers continually point out  women's abscence in various facets of pop culture, but sexism doesn't have to be blatant or overt to be, well, sexist. Most people, rock critics included, don't question who gets the respect, the accolades. I'm reminded of Silvana said at the end of her post for Tiger Beatdown's Ladypalooza series:

"I don’t have a pat lesson or theory to take from all this. But I think it’s important to remember that what you’re doing when you assert your taste in music, when you choose women artists, or choose to make music yourself, you are acting as an authority, and are therefore subverting male authority. Think about that. And then do it more."

Maybe one of these days we'll be making the lists.

Women in Rock, or women in... something else?

Aka, the one in which I deconstruct back issues of Rolling Stone. Not being a regular reader of Rolling Stone, I first saw this on Lists of Bests a few months ago: "Rolling Stone's 50 Essential 'Women In Rock' Albums."

It's not a terrible list, as far as lists compiled by the editors of a mainstream magazine go, but have you noticed, um, not everything on there is really "rock." Sure there are some fantastic (albeit overly familiar) albums on that list made by women in country, women in soul, and women in hip-hop, but shouldn't a list that calls itself "The 50 Essential Women In Rock Albums" be just that? Or am I getting hung up on semantics again?

Something similar happened when the members of a forum I frequent were asked to name the "best rock voices." After seeing Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce, et al., popping up on each list, I finally pipped up, "Hey, where are the women?" In my experience, male rock fans are more than happy to name their favorite female artists when prodded, and their lists were just as varied as the RS one. But save for Joan Jett, not a lot of "rockers."

I think this quote from Juliana Tringali's 2005 Bitch article, Love, Guns, Tight Pants, and Big Sticks , says volumes women's exclusion in the rock and roll canon:

While female musicians found success in the rock scene, they were more often than not regarded as novelties. Heart’s “Barracuda,” for instance, is arguably one of the greatest songs of the ’70s, but its popularity at the time was tempered by critics’ claims that bandleaders Ann and Nancy Wilson were lesbians—as if that, and not the quality of their lyrics and riffs, were the real issue. The Runaways—self-proclaimed Queens of Noise—featured Joan Jett and Lita Ford, both formidable guitarists. (Ford would later be the first woman inducted into Circus magazine’s Rock Hall of Fame.) A band of Hollywood teenagers assembled by industry provocateur Kim Fowley, the Run aways attracted an audience largely consisting of screaming teenage boys, dispelling the notion that male fans had a more rational appreciation of music and women were the ones who went into fits. But because of both the band’s gender and its provenance, male critics met the Runaways with predictable contempt. (One review opened simply with “These bitches suck.”) Jett recalled these reactions to her band in a 1998 interview in the Onion AV Club: “First, people just tried to get around it by saying, ‘Oh, wow, isn’t that cute? Girls playing rock and roll!’ and when we said ‘Yeah, right, this isn’t a phase; it’s what we want to do with our lives,’ it became ‘Oh! You must be a bunch of sluts! You dykes, you whores.’”

Daughters of Watts: Women Who Drum

It's pretty sad when of the most iconic female drummers is a fictional character, but looking at Rolling Stone's Weekend List of the Best Drummers, it doesn't shock me that there's not one woman mentioned.

(Geez, a couple commenters even listed Animal. He's a freaking muppet!)

I came up with a baker's dozen with the help of my iPod (and a bit of googling) this morning: Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney), Mo Tucker (Velvet Underground), Meg White, Shelia E., Cindy Blackman (Lenny Kravitz), Honey Lantree (The Honeycombs), Stefanie Eulinberg (Kid Rock), Palmolive (The Slits, The Raincoats), Molly Neuman (Bratmobile, The Frumpies, Peechees), Tobi Vail (The Go-Team), Gina Shock (The Go Gos), Debbi Peterson (The Bangles), and Lori Barbero (Babes In Toyland).

I didn't think that was hard, considering I'm not a drummer myself.