How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History

 

Book review: How Women Made Music by NPR Music 

This book from the US-based public service broadcaster is a spin-off from a longstanding project aimed at putting women musicians centre stage. It proves its point with a rich, readable and revolutionary overview of numerous women musicians who have earnt their place in history.  

NPR is a public service radio network, and they are doing a public service with this book, appropriately subtitled A Revolutionary History. But the book is only a small part of what they are doing. In 2017 they launched a multi-platform series called Turning the Tables; this book is a selection of material from its various strands, supplemented with fifty years’ worth of coverage of women musicians.

The coolest woman in pop: review of Neneh Cherry's memoir

Book review: A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry

This memoir by the Buffalo Stance star is a story about identity and roots as much as a story about music. And threaded through all these strands is a lifelong relationship with creativity.

David Bowie’s 1972 appearance on Top of the Pops singing Starman has gone down in history, making him a role model for many fans. But Neneh Cherry’s appearance on the same programme in 1988, singing Buffalo Stance, must go down in history as equally groundbreaking. Full of boldness and style – and unignorably, unapologetically pregnant – she was a new kind of role model for women.  

Mary Weiss, voice of the Shangri-Las (remember)

Mary Weiss from the Shangri-Las died on Friday, and I spent the weekend on YouTube remembering how good she was. 

I first heard the Shangri-las in 1972, when Leader of the Pack was re-released and became a hit again. I was 14.

I knew it was a “classic” because the Radio 1 DJs told me so. I knew I liked it.  I knew enough about pop music by then to know that the death-disc angle was corny, but I loved the girl-gang opening “By the way, where d’you meet him?” (As if that’s the first thing you’d say to someone with a dead boyfriend.) And I loved Mary Weiss’s hard, hurt vocal on the answer. 

Ear-altering sounds and personal stories

Book review: Sound Within Sound by Kate Molleson

This is the latest in my series of reviews of music books by women, specifically those that were longlisted for the 2022 Penderyn Music Book Prize. I think this going to be the hardest to write, because it’s outside my field of knowledge, but the book wasn’t hard to read because it is so well written.

I suspect that some books get listed (particularly in the case of memoir) because they tell a good story rather than for the quality of the writing. Sound Within Sound, though, qualifies as literature; Kate Molleson used to be a music critic, and her descriptions of how things sound are precise and poetic. But she tells a good story too – in fact, many good stories.

The forgotten women of Factory Records: a different history

A review of I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women At Factory Records by Audrey Golden

We all know that the history of popular music – like the history of most things – is a tale told by men. I’ve also read enough books about Factory Records and the Hacienda to know that their history has largely been told by men, too. This is the antidote.

P P Arnold: Soul Survivor - book review

On the one hand, P P Arnold’s memoir is quite a hard book to read. Because it’s set in the music business in the 1960s and this, from the point of view of a very young, very naive black girl, was a hard place to thrive in.

On the other hand, it is a good read. Because it’s set in the music business in the 1960s and full of interesting tales. Specifically, a big part of it is set in Swinging London where Pat Cole (her real name) hung out with the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces and Jimi Hendrix. 

The Penderyn Music Book longlist: let’s hear it for the women

 

The winner of this year’s Penderyn Music Book Prize has just been announced. It’s a man. 

I’m a bit disappointed in this because this year nearly half the books on the longlist were by women (and nearly half of those on the shortlist, too). But Bob Stanley is a very well respected music writer and I’m sure he deserved it.

Nonetheless, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the women on the longlist.  

Women Who Rock: a review

When I heard that Jessica Hopper had directed a TV series about women musicians, I knew it would be good. 

Jessica is a music critic turned author, producer and director. Her first book was aimed at teenage girls and called The Girls’ Guide to Rocking: How to Start a Band, Book Gigs, and Get Rolling to Rock Stardom. Her next book was called The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic. And she once co-compiled a list of books about music by women, describing it as “writing on popular music that takes place outside the usual heteropatriarchal frame”. 

She is, to borrow a word from some of her interviewees, “badass”.

Punk rock and feminist as fuck

Book review: Why Patti Smith Matters by Caryn Rose

This is one of those books that when you’ve finished you think to yourself “I’m GLAD I read that.”

And not just because I agree with the title. To the extent that I wrote a blog post with the same title many years ago. 

It’s because, I think, it’s life affirming to hear from someone who really loves the artist they are writing about, and makes you feel the same about them. And at the same time, someone who has the skill to go above and beyond fangirl stuff. 

Generous geekiness: The sound of being human

 

There’s a lovely line in Jude Rogers’ new book, The Sound of Being Human, as she remembers how she papered her teenage bedroom with pictures of pop stars. She describes: “faces that made my connection to music human, faces that I stared at like a baby, trying to understand the new realms they represented.”

I don’t think a male music writer would have thought of "stared like a baby” but it’s a great simile. And as a female music lover (and one time music writer) it makes me happy to see women writers doing things in a distinctively female way.

Ways of listening: Glastonbury, new music and old age

Too Much Stuff

I turned on the television last weekend and Supergrass were on stage at Glastonbury singing “We are young”. I remembered buying that song when it came out, and how much that line – the cheek and celebration of it – meant to me. They were about 20 and I was in my 30s, but I felt young because of new-found freedom. 

I realised that Supergrass are older now than I was when I first heard that song. A lot older.

Book review: She Bop

Last year, a friend posted on Twitter: “I’d like some big sprawling pop history books written by women now, please.” Obviously, it caused a bit of a discussion.

And it made me wonder. I like books, and I particularly like music books written by women, but I don’t think I like sprawling books. And I wondered if I actually like the word “sprawling” either. It feels like a male word. A word for people who are used to taking up space, regardless. More space than is actually necessary. Maybe a sprawling book is the literary version of manspreading. I can’t think of many books by women that do that. 

There are some long pop history books by women, but that’s not the same as being sprawling. She Bop (25th Anniversary Edition) by Lucy O’Brien is one example. It’s 423 pages long and it’s the opposite of sprawling. Because there’s a lot to fit in, so it has to be concise.

A rock’n’roll woman: Nico in a hundred interviews.

Book review: You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike.

Music, time and place

 

Where were you when you heard that the Everly Brothers had split up? I remember exactly where I was. Sitting on a train en route to a family holiday, reading the news pages in a pop music magazine. I don’t remember what the magazine was. It could have been Fab 208 but I think, because it had actual news pages, it might have been something more gender-neutral. 

Anyway, that shows how spurious the “music and memories” thing is, because that memory is not significant in my life.

Bunnyman: a review

 

I don’t often write about music books written by men, because there are plenty of other people to do it, and I’d rather promote women’s history of pop. But I’m going to make an exception for Echo and the Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s memoir Bunnyman, because I Was There.

Not, like Will, growing up in a council flat, closer to Kirkby than Liverpool. Not going to a comprehensive school that decided who was thick. Not getting a dead-end job in 1970s Liverpool. But I was at Eric’s, the punk-era music club that grew Echo and the Bunnymen, and many more post-punk Scouse stars. I remember it as a golden era, and Will’s book confirms it.

Fragments of time: art for lockdown

Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Derek Jarman's old home.

There’s a research thing about Covid that I take part in and every month they ask you to fill in a questionnaire about how you’re feeling. I like doing it because there’s a question about how much you trust the government to manage Covid and I can put the biggest tick ever next to “not at all” (or as big as you can when it’s an online check box).

Anyway, this month there was a question about what things you are missing. And I wanted to put the biggest tick ever next to “everything”. People. Travel. Going for a coffee or a drink. And the one that said “art and culture”. I wanted to put a big tick on that, because I grieve for it. 

Book review: Face it by Debbie Harry

“That’s very heavy” said the librarian as she scanned in my book. She was right. It looks like a normal hardback but it’s twice the weight. I still haven’t worked out why.

Appearances can be deceptive, as Debbie Harry knows. She was never “Blondie”, as the book makes clear: that was always a character. Debbie’s own character is harder to make out, even after reading this book. She has a lot of stories to tell but she tells them deadpan.

Too old to rock’n’roll?

Last night I went to my first proper gig since I can’t remember when. The first one in a rock venue and not an arts centre or upstairs in a pub. I didn’t know if I’d still like it.

Books and booze and rock’n’roll

Photo by Andy Pidge

Last week I went to see Viv Albertine at the Walthamstow Rock’n’Roll Book Club. Everyone should have a rock’n’roll book club. It’s a brilliant idea and I wish there was one where I live. But luckily I have a friend in Walthamstow and she invited me along.

The club is (usually) in an old cinema, which feels like a suitably rock’n’roll venue. A bit vintage, a bit shabby, hanging on to some glamour. (Aren't we all?) The central ticket booth is now a cocktail bar, which I thought was pretty cool.

The Vinyl Revival and the Shops that Made it Happen: book review

 A few years ago I wrote a blog post about vinyl: about how it will last for ever, and about how young people didn’t get it. Well, I was right on one count.