On this blog I will talk about Rock´n´Roll women that I love. From Blues and Rockabilly, to Punk passing through 60s Garage Punk and 70s Glam, this is my tribute to the wonderful women of the Rock´n´Roll underground.
Please note that suggestions are welcome but there is no guarantee that I will publish it as this is a personal project.
Ana Matawhaura Hato (30 December 1907 – 8 December 1953) was a New Zealand singer of Māori descent (Ngāti Whakaue and Tūhourangi). She and her cousin Deane Waretini, Snr. were two of the first New Zealand singers to be commercially recorded in the late 1920s, and the acoustic recordings are prized by collectors and historians. In later life, she frequently sang at public occasions and took part in some of the earliest radio broadcasts featuring Māori music.
Hato was born on 30 December 1907 at Ngāpuna, a suburb of Rotorua. Her father was of Ngāti Whakaue descent, and her mother was of Tuhourangi descent. She grew up in the tourist destination of Whakarewarewa. Both her parents were singers who performed traditional Māori music. The singing classes she took at the local primary school, from Mrs Banks, the wife of the headmaster, were the only formal music lessons she ever had. Her cousin Waretini also attended these lessons, and together they sang at community gatherings, church and for tourists.
By the age of 16, Hato was a member of the Māori concert group run by Guide Rangi, and regularly performed solo at public occasions. She was a soprano and, although she did not read music, had precise pitch and played the ukelele. She toured New Zealand with Maggie Papakura in the early 1920s, and toured Australia as a soloist with a small concert party in 1925. By 1926, Waretini considered her the best soprano in New Zealand.
In 1927, aged 20, she performed for the Duke and Duchess of York, in the old Tūnohopū meeting house at Ōhinemutu, singing with Waretini, with pianist Te Mauri Meihana and with the Rotorua Māori Choir. The performance was recorded by technicians from the Australian branch of Parlophone Records, using small portable acoustic recording equipment. She and her cousin travelled to Sydney afterwards where further recordings were made of songs such as "Hine E Hine" and "Waiata Poi", and thousands of copies were sold in New Zealand and Australia. In total, Hato and Waretini made fourteen recordings together.
In the last eight years of her life she suffered from cancer, but continued to travel and perform until she was forced to give up singing in 1950. She died at Rotorua on 8 December 1953, and was buried at Whakarewarewa. In 1996, some of her recordings with Waretini were released on CD, although the original fragile recordings are still prized by collectors and historians.
Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell CC (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell's songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings about romance, womanhood, disillusionment, and joy. She has received many accolades, including nine Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Mitchell started singing with her friends at bonfires around Waskesiu Lake, northwest of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Her first paid performance was on October 31, 1962, at a Saskatoon club that featured folk and jazz performers. At 18, she widened her repertoire to include her favourite performers, such as Édith Piaf and Miles Davis. She continued to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. She sang at hootenannies and made appearances on some local TV and radio shows in Calgary. In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be a folk singer in Toronto, and she left western Canada for the first time in her life, heading east for Ontario. On the three-day train ride there, Mitchell wrote her first song, "Day After Day". She stopped at the Mariposa Folk Festival to see Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Saskatchewan-born Cree folk singer who had inspired her. In 1965 she moved to the US.
While Mitchell was playing one night in 1967 in the Gaslight South, a club in Coconut Grove, Florida, David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. She accompanied him back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends. Soon she was being managed by Elliot Roberts, who, after being urged by Buffy Sainte-Marie, had first seen her play in a Greenwich Village coffee house. Eventually she was signed to the Warners-affiliated Reprise label by talent scout Andy Wickham. Crosby convinced Reprise to let Mitchell record a solo acoustic album without the folk-rock overdubs in vogue at that time, and his clout earned him a producer's credit in March 1968, when Reprise released her debut album, known either as Joni Mitchell or Song to a Seagull. Mitchell toured steadily to promote the LP. The tour helped create eager anticipation for Mitchell's second LP, Clouds, which was released in April 1969. This album contained Mitchell's own versions of some of her songs already recorded and performed by other artists: "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", and "Tin Angel". The covers of both LPs, including a self-portrait on Clouds, were designed and painted by Mitchell, a blending of her painting and music that she continued throughout her career.
The following month, Reprise released her third album, Ladies of the Canyon. Mitchell's sound was already beginning to expand beyond the confines of acoustic folk music and toward pop and rock, with more overdubs, percussion, and backing vocals, and for the first time, many songs composed on piano, which became a hallmark of Mitchell's style in her most popular era. Her own version of "Woodstock", slower than the cover by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was performed solo on a Wurlitzer electric piano. The album also included the already-familiar song "The Circle Game" and the environmental anthem "Big Yellow Taxi", with its now-famous line, "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Ladies of the Canyon was an instant smash on FM radio and sold briskly, eventually becoming Mitchell's first gold album (selling over a half million copies). She made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint. The songs she wrote during the months she took off for travel and life experience appeared on her next album, Blue, released in June 1971.
Blue was an almost instant critical and commercial success, peaking in the top 20 of the Billboard albums chart in September and also hitting the British Top 3. The lushly produced "Carey" was the single at the time, but musically, other parts of Blue departed further from the sounds of Ladies of the Canyon. Simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions ("All I Want", "A Case of You"), while others such as "Blue", "River" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment.
In the late 1970s, she began working closely with noted jazz musicians, among them Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny as well as Charles Mingus, who asked her to collaborate on his final recordings.[13] She later turned again toward pop, embraced electronic music, and engaged in political protest. In 2002, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards. Mitchell is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her work in the 1970s. A blunt critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of original songs in 2007.
Special Interest is a queercore band from New Orleans, Louisiana. They consist of Alli Logout on vocals, Maria Elena on guitar, Nathan Cassiani on bass, and Ruth Mascelli on synthesiser and drum machine. Special Interest present a precise and deranged vision of punk, an
apocalyptic celebration, a step forward into a perverse and uncertain
landscape.
The band combines elements of no wave, glam and industrial music. In 2016 they put out a demo on cassette. Four of the tracks were early versions of songs that would appear in slightly more refined form on their debut album, 2018’s Spiralling. The tape included a cover version of Italian new wave band Chrisma, raging opener “Disease”, the over-saturated shoegaze-punk of “ATC” and comedown lament “I’ll Never Do Ketamine Again”.
The band’s second album The Passion Of (2020) was widely acclaimed and appeared in many album of the year lists. It was recently followed by a companion album of remixes on Boy Harsher’s Nude Club label, with all profits going to NOLA charity House Of Tulip.
In May 2021 a reissue of the demo tape was released on vinyl with the title Trust No Wave and includes a 8 page risographed zine.
Felipa Graciela Pérez y Gutiérrez (August 23, 1915 – April 7, 2010) was an Afro-Cuban singer of Latin jazz. She was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in the Afro-Cuban Jesús María neighborhood. A pioneer in music she opened doors for all those who followed her.
She performed around the world, recording and sharing the stage with her adoptive older brother, Frank Grillo (known as Machito), who encouraged her to sing. They played alongside Mario Bauzá (originator of the genre of Afro-Cuban Jazz) in the orchestra Machito and the Afro-Cubans. Graciela was known for her tremendous voice, risque and sassy stage presence and sexy double entendre lyrics. She could sing a jazzy guaracha as easily as handling the most romantic boleros. Though her last names were Pérez Gutiérrez, she was only known by her first name, Graciela.
She was summoned to New York City in 1943 by Mario Bauzá, when Machito was drafted into the army. She joined the orchestra as lead singer until Machito returned in 1944 and from then on the three shared the stage together until their split in 1975. For thirty-two years, they traveled the United States and the rest of the world and performed at the Palladium Ballroom from 1946 until its closing in 1966. Besides the Palladium, they would perform at the Royal Roost, Birdland, the Park Palace, the Corso and the Apollo Theater on a yearly week-long gig—and many other clubs and theaters in New York. Graciela and the orchestra also performed on a yearly basis in Hollywood—specifically at the Crescendo nightclub. Graciela and the band were also a favorite of the disc jockey Symphony Sid Torin who had them on his weekly program several times a year. They were also the summer headliners in the Concord Resort Hotel, in the Catskills Mountains, for more than twenty years.
From 1952 to 2004 she recorded 10 Lps from which her best-known recordings include "Esta es Graciela", "Íntimo y Sentimental" and "Esa Soy Yo, Yo Soy Así". Felipa Graciela Pérez y Gutiérrez died at the age of 94 at New York Cornell-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on April 7, 2010.
Leila and the Snakes was an American rock group based out of San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s.
The group was led by Jane Dornacker (alias "Leila"), who had previously toured with The Tubes. Other members of the group were Pamela Wood on bass and Scott Free on drums, who were later replaced by the brothers Hilary and John Hanes (who billed themselves with the surname "Stench"). (Also featured was guitarist Miles Corbin, who went on to form the surf instrumental band the Aqua Velvets.)
The band only produced one official release, a single on the ADP label in 1978. Produced by Roger Clark (of Little Roger and the Goosebumps) and arranged by Dick Bright, the record features "Rock and Roll Weirdos" (written by Dornacker), with "Pyramid Power" (written by Dornacker and Clark) on the flip side. Also featured on the record (which cheekily showed the group's bare buttocks on the back of the sleeve) was Pearl E. Gates, who was also part of the Snakes' live act. Eventually, Pearl would quit the group, taking with her the Stench brothers, in order to front her own band, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions.
The band also recorded an album produced by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers. No final mix was done, however, and tracks remained unreleased until 2006, when Corbin self-released them as a 12-track album, "Leila and the Snakes".
Post-Leila, Dornacker became a prominent radio personality in San Francisco as well as played Nurse Murch in the 1983 motion picture The Right Stuff. In 1985, she moved to New York to become a traffic reporter on WNBC radio; tragically, she died the following year when the helicopter she was reporting from crashed into the Hudson River, live on-air.
Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidadian-born jazz and classical pianist, singer, and actor. She was a critically acclaimed performing artist and an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. She used her influence to improve the representation of Black Americans in film. Born in Port of Spain, Scott moved to New York City with her mother at the age of four. Scott was a child musical prodigy, receiving scholarships to study at the Juilliard School when she was eight.
In 1933, her mother organized her own "Alma Long Scott's All-Girl Jazz Band," where Scott played the piano and trumpet. By the age of 16, Hazel Scott regularly performed for radio programs for the Mutual Broadcasting System, gaining a reputation as the "hot classicist".[7] In the mid-1930s, she also performed at the Roseland Dance Hall with the Count Basie Orchestra. Her early musical theatre appearances in New York included the Cotton Club Revue of 1938, Sing Out the News and The Priorities of 1942.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Scott performed jazz, blues, ballads, Broadway and boogie-woogie songs, and classical music in various nightclubs. Thanks to the vision of Barney Josephson, the owner of Café Society, to establish a venue where artists of all races and ethnicities could perform, from 1939 to 1943, she was a leading attraction at both the downtown and uptown branches of Café Society. Her performances created national prestige for the practice of "swinging the classics."
In 1950, she became the first black American to host her own TV show, The Hazel Scott Show. Her career in America faltered after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950 during the McCarthy era. Scott subsequently moved to Paris in 1957 and began performing in Europe, not returning to the United States until 1967. By this time the Civil Rights Movement had led to federal legislation ending racial segregation and enforcing the protection of voting rights of all citizens in addition to other social advances. Scott continued to play occasionally in nightclubs, while also appearing on daytime television, until the year of her death.
On October 2, 1981, Hazel Scott died of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. She was 61 years old.
To celebrate 300 entries on this blog, today I'm going to talk about one of my favourite bands formed by people I love very much. Fresh from the centre of the earth and eating it all up.... LAS CARCOMAS!!!!
The band was founded around 1998 in Valencia by Manolo Borbone (Los Fartones, Royal Canin, Ulan Bator Trio and Borbones) on drums, Vanne Tocabajos (Tracy Turbo) on bass, Virgi Carcomaturbo (Tracy Turbo) on guitar and another Vane on vocals. After a while Satu (Wau Y Los Arrrghs!!!) joined on guitar. For a few years they neglected the band a bit until 2001 when Manolo, Virgi and Vanne Tocabajos got back together and a couple of years later they recruited Dora Carcoma as the singer. Also for a while they had Claudia Tocaórganos (De Nadies, Los Loosers, Pissmakers, the first line-up of Wau Y Los Arrrghs!!! and Wild Savages).
In 2003 they recorded Bizarre Rock n Roll, 5 tracks, all equally dirty and low-fi, pure punk-garage-trash-old school, of which "Zorri" is a cover of "Sorry" by the Easybeats and "Bésame El Culo" is another cover of "Kiss My Ass" by the Cramps.
In the third deformation of the band they were joined by Carmen on drums and Alex on guitar and they have played with bands such as Demented Are Go, and at festivals like Pipeline Fest and Funtastic Dracula Carnival.
Screamin' Sirens was an American all-female band from Hollywood, California that recorded from 1983 to 1987. The band combined country music, punk rock, rockabilly and a dash of funk to create an eclectic wild party music.
Screamin' Sirens were formed in Hollywood, California in around 1983 by vocalist Pleasant Gehman and drummer Diane Dixon (aka Boom Boom Laffoon). Laffoon had for three years previously been a member of the band Keith Joe Dick and the Goners. Two different guitar players joined, but soon left. Then the band added guitarist Rosie Flores, namesake of the band Rosie and the Screamers, with whom Laffoon was acquainted from her time with Keith Joe Dick and the Goners. The trio added bassist Laura Bandit, a veteran of the minor punk bands One Doesn't Swallow and Hard as Nails, Cheap as Dirt. A fifth member of the group, Marsky Reins, played fiddle in addition to guitar, helping the band to achieve a signature punked up country and western sound.
Sporting cowboy boots and western skirts, the band delivered a high energy live show. They released two albums, Fiesta! (1984) on Enigma Records and produced by Michael Reid, Greg Humphrey & Brian Ahern. Voodoo came out in1987 on Restless Records and was produced by Ethan James. They also released two singles "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" in 1984 on Beach Culture Records and "Fiesta!" in 1984 on Enigma Records.
The band had several lineup changes over the course of their existence, adding Miiko Watanabe and also Fur Dixon on bass as well as former Pandoras drummer Casey Gomez. They portrayed The She-Devils in Max Tash's film The Runnin' Kind, which took its name from a song written by sister and brother Diane Boom Boom Dixon and Gary Dixon (Fur Dixon's husband). Original drummer and songwriter Diane 'Boom Boom' Dixon went on to play with the Baloney Heads and the Real Dixons in Austin, Texas. Pleasant Gehman became a writer and editor, professional dancer and a member of the Ringling Sisters. Rosie Flores went on to have a successful solo career in the alternative country and rockabilly scene. Genny Schorr, the original guitar player, was also in the original line-up of all girl band Backstage Pass and was involved in The Masque. She later owned Rock clothing store Strait Jacket. Miiko Watanabe went on to play with American Girls. Fur Dixon went on to play in The Cramps, The Dixons, Fur Dixon and Blow Up, Fur Dixon and Steve Werner, and a new band she formed in 2015, WTFUKUSHIMA!
Fifth Column was a Canadian all-female post-punk band from Toronto, formed in the early 1980s. The band is formed by Caroline Azar, G.B. Jones, and Beverly Breckenridge and took their name Fifth Column from a military manoeuvre by fascist Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, in which Nazi-aligned nationalist insurrectionists within besieged Republican Madrid, called 'the fifth column', aided the four columns (north, south, east and west) outside the perimeters.
Soon after forming, the group became involved in the Cassette culture of the 1980s. Their first release was a selection of songs on the cassette compilation Urban Scorch released by Some Product in 1981. GB and Caroline along with Candy Parker released their own underground xerox art/ social commentary zine named Hide (5 issues) which, after its first issue, came out with audio cassettes that were compilations of music by their punk, post-punk and experimental contemporaries, like Anti-Scrunti Faction, The Dave Howard Singers, Mydolls, The Party's Over, Really Red, Rongwrong, and Michael Phillip Wojewoda, as well as Fifth Column. Their first vinyl release was the 7" Boy-Girl EP produced in 1983 by Voicepondence Records.
The name of their first full-length recording To Sir With Hate was a play on the theme song from the British school film, To Sir With Love, performed by Lulu. Produced by Michael Phillip Wojewoda, it is now considered a classic of Canadian music; at the 2016 Polaris Music Prize it was named a shortlisted nominee in the 1976-1985 category for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize, the 2017 Polaris Music Prize, and the 2018 Polaris Music Prize. A song from this LP, "The Fairview Mall Story" was based on true events concerning media publication of the names of men arrested after being entrapped by police and was instrumental in paving the way for the emergence of the queercore scene. Their live shows often included films played overtop of the band and a 'go-go' boy dancing. They were frequently accompanied by guest musicians who played instruments as varied as saxophone, trumpet, flute, or violin. Independent-minded, they released their recordings, including their second full-length recording All-Time Queen Of The World, themselves. A video for the song "Like This" from the album was directed by Bruce LaBruce with the band. The band also appeared on a number of compilations.
In 1992 they released a single, "All Women Are Bitches", on the independent record label K Records. "All Women Are Bitches" was produced by Walter Sobczak and Fifth Column.[1] Despite being controversial and receiving little airplay, the recording was reviewed by Everett True and voted "Single Of The Week" in the UK music publication Melody Maker. This song was included as well on their last full-length recording, 36C, released in 1994. That same year a video for the song Donna was also released. It was the flipside of the 1992 single and was also on the album. The band's last recording was released in 2002, on the Kill Rock Stars compilation, Fields And Streams.
In 2012, a documentary film by Kevin Hegge, called She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column was released featuring interviews with band members Caroline Azar, G.B. Jones, and Beverly Breckenridge, with commentary on the influence of Fifth Column by Toronto artist John Brown, Vaginal Davis, Kathleen Hanna and Bruce LaBruce.
Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments. As a teenager, she began learning saxophone and joined an eight-piece instrumental group Bologne, run by composer Andrew Dickson. She was also a guitarist with folk duo the Polekats, with whom she wrote some of her earliest material.
In January 1991, following her departure from Automatic Dlamini, Harvey formed an eponymous trio called PJ Harvey with former bandmates Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. The trio released two studio albums called Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993) before disbanding, after which Harvey continued as a solo artist.
As Harvey embarked on her solo career, she explored collaborations with other musicians. In 1995 she released her third studio album, To Bring You My Love, featuring former bandmate John Parish, Bad Seeds multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and French drummer Jean-Marc Butty, all of whom would continue to perform and record with Harvey throughout her career. The album was also her first material to be produced by Flood. Simultaneously a more blues-influenced and more futuristic record than its predecessors, To Bring You My Love showcased Harvey broadening her musical style to include strings, organs and synthesisers. Since 1995, she has released a further nine studio albums.
Among the accolades Harvey has received are both the 2001 and 2011 Mercury Prize for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Let England Shake (2011), respectively, making her the only artist to have been awarded the prize twice. She has also garnered eight Brit Award nominations, seven Grammy Award nominations and two further Mercury Prize nominations. Rolling Stone awarded her three accolades: 1992's Best New Artist and Best Singer Songwriter, and 1995's Artist of the Year. Rolling Stone also listed Rid of Me, To Bring You My Love, and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea on its list of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution To Music at the NME Awards. In June 2013, she was awarded an MBE for services to music.
