Out There, Every Day:
Singing of the Lives of Lesbians, Dykes, Queers, Gay Women...
by Sue Barrett
No longer afraid/Of being who I am
(Maxine/Max Feldman — 'Angry At this')
In August, America lost a music trail blazer — Maxine/Max Feldman. After being "banned" from the Boston music scene for being queer, Feldman ended up in Los Angeles, writing the song 'Angry Atthis' just weeks before the 1969 Stonewall riots.
Fuelled by the women's movement, gay liberation and political and social activism, the 1970s marked the beginning of a powerful, on-going wave of songs with openly lesbian lyrics.
Songs such as 'Influenced by Queers' (Judy Small), 'Butch in the Streets' (Tribe 8), 'Woman-loving Women' (Teresa Trull), 'Bulldagger Swagger' (Phranc), 'Lesbian Code' (Alix Dobkin), 'Dykes' (Lynn Thomas), 'Drag King Bar' (Bitch & Animal), 'Rhonda the Lesbo Reindeer' (Lisa Koch, Venus Envy), 'Darling Companion' (Nancy Vogl, Berkeley Women's Music Collective), 'I'm Illegal' (Team Dresch), 'Dyke March 2001' (Le Tigre), 'Honeymoon' (Cris Williamson/Tret Fure), 'Gertrude + Stein' (The Butchies), 'This Memory' (Nancy Reinhold, The Wyrd Sisters), 'Singing for Our Lives' (Holly Near), 'F.A.Q.' (Ember Swift), 'Ode to a Gym Teacher' (Meg Christian), 'No Closet' (Jamie Anderson), 'Radical' (Catie Curtis) and 'The Teacher's Song' (Deborah Romeyn).
Also, from the 1970s, seemingly aided by entrepreneurial enlightenment amongst recording studios/companies, songs with openly lesbian lyrics began being recorded in unprecedented numbers, beginning with singles like Maxine/Max Feldman's 'Angry Atthis' and Madeline Davis' 'Stone Wall Nation' in 1972 and albums like Lavender Jane Loves Women (Alix Dobkin/Kay Gardner/Patches Attom) and A Few Loving Women (distributed by Lesbian Feminist Liberation) in 1973.
According to one music industry veteran:
"The '60s were not good for women trying to break through into recording on any level...Things began to change in the '70s, slowly but surely, when studios finally figured out the independent artist might be able to finance recording and production. And there were companies that had representatives with recording equipment nationally who would sell their services, from recording to product, to schools, churches, anyone who could pay for it. They also would take a tape from someone, process it and manufacture the disks and jackets for a price."
So with the songs, came new record labels, including Olivia, Redwood and Women's Wax Works.
Accompanying the record labels came organisations specialising in the distribution and/or sale of music by women, including Goldenrod and Ladyslipper.
And, along with the songs and the records, came female sound engineers/record producers, women-focussed music magazines (Paid My Dues, HOT WIRE, BITCH), music festivals, radio shows and more.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Paula Walowitz was a member of the Chicago band, Surrender Dorothy. Paula is now a psychotherapist and freelance writer/editor.
"Women's music in the 1970s was radical, exciting, funny, pissed off, political, uplifting, and romantic. For many women, it was the first time they'd heard anything resembling their own lives in songs. It's such a cheap shot to look back on that time and make fun of the girls with guitars writing songs that may have been light on musical skill (my own included) and heavy on 'womyn energy'. If you weren't there, you can't fully wrap your head around a time when just saying or singing 'lesbian' from a stage was enough to make women cry or rise to their feet and scream.
"There was plenty of discord too, when the rules started spreading about who was and wasn't lesbian enough, what constituted 'safe space', and what constituted 'womyn-only space', which, of course, is still at issue today. But the thing I remember most is the excitement and the feeling that something very new was being born — which it was."
Since the 1970s, a large and important body of music has been created that tells of lesbian lives. Many of the people who have written, sung and recorded this music are themselves lesbian. Some are bisexual. Some are heterosexual. Some, including Fred Small, Steve Goodman, Eric Schwartz and Si Kahn, are male.
Songs with lesbian lyrics have entertained, comforted, healed, enlightened and inspired. Songs with lesbian lyrics have changed lives, saved lives and influenced and molded communities. And songs with lesbian lyrics have helped document social and cultural history.
Earlier this year, the Executive Director of Chicago's Estrojam Music and Culture Festival, Khyentse James, was quoted as saying that Estrojam exists "so that people can come together, people who think about things differently and who don't hear their voices represented in mainstream culture".
And despite the talent, energy and innovation of performers in women's music, queercore, riot grrrl and other genres, the lesbian voice is a voice that is, to a significant extent, missing from mainstream music culture.
Many people can name a few high profile lesbian performers in popular music. Far fewer people know any songs with openly lesbian lyrics.
Most of the recordings with openly lesbian lyrics have been on independent labels (with Robert Christgau, Village Voice, 25 July 1989, claiming Phranc to be the "first uncloseted lesbian to bed down with a major label since Isis [mid-1970s]."
And few of the recordings with openly lesbian lyrics have made an impact on the music charts.
Bonnie J Morris, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at George Washington University, has been writing about women in music for many years, including in her book, Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women's Music Festivals.
"By the late 1980s, there were [women's music] festivals around the United States and in at least eight other countries, and a devoted fan (with money) could fill a year-round calendar with these events; but no artist could truly earn a living JUST playing festivals — many venues offered little more than work exchange, especially for unknown performers...And as more/younger women decided they, too, could aspire to be onstage, the result was multiple artists vying for a few headliner spots at the one or two fests which paid well. To attract bigger audiences, festivals might hire a 'big name', someone who had made it in the mainstream — say, Jill Sobule, who had a quick hit in 1995 with her novelty song 'I Kissed a Girl'. But critics might point out that hiring essentially straight artists whose work supports lesbians is similar to the primarily gay male news magazine The Advocate's pattern of putting straight celebrity 'allies' on its covers. We need and applaud allies, but granting additional exposure to straight/bi celebrities who have already attained household-name success further limits exposure of 'our' artists, radical dykes who may never get airplay due to their very refusal to make a product aimed at male approval."
Nine female performers recently shared their thoughts about music that tells of the lives of lesbians, dykes, queers and gay women...
Madeline Davis (Buffalo, New York) worked her way through college by singing in coffee houses. In 1972, she released one of the first openly lesbian recordings.
Read interview here
Skim (Los Angeles, California) performs "hip hop-mellow-live-gangsta-soul-korean-rythm-folk-blues". Her debut album, For Every Tear, was released in 2006.
Read interview here
Gretchen Phillips (Texas) became involved with the punk scene after moving to Austin in 1981. Gretchen has subsequently performed solo and in bands (including Girls in the Nose and Two Nice Girls).
Read interview here
Ripley Caine (Chicago, Illinois) joined her first band at 15. She currently performs a blend of acoustic, electronica, rock, alternative music and is founder/co-coordinator of Cake Chicago (a monthly queer showcase).
Read interview here
Nedra Johnson (Bronx, New York) is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who plays R&B/acoustic/funk. In 2006, she won the Outmusic Award for Outstanding New Recording — Female.
Read interview here
Bernie Bankrupt (Montreal, Canada) is a member of Lesbians on Ecstasy, a four member band that makes "electronic music of the lesbian variety". The group's album, We Know You Know, was inspired by 1970s women's music.
Read interview here
Ferron (Michigan) was born in Toronto, grew up in Vancouver and now lives in the USA. She appears on the Better Than Chocolate soundtrack and Sweet Honey in the Rock performed her song 'Testimony' in the 2nd season finale for The L Word.
Read interview here
God-des (and She) (Brooklyn, New York) are a Hip Hop duo — with God-des rhyming and She singing. They performed their song, 'Lick It', on The L Word's 3rd season finale.
Read interview here
June Millington (Massachusetts) was a founding member of Fanny — the first all-female rock band to be signed by a major record label and to gain international recognition. June co-founded The Institute for Musical Arts and is currently working on her autobiography.
Read interview here
SUE BARRETT is an Australian music writer, with a special interest in women in music. She witnessed "the incident" at a Cris Williamson/Tret Fure/Judy Small concert that prompted Judy to write a coda for the song, 'Lesbian Chic'.
c. 2008
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