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.
Carla Ragin Bozulich (born December 24, 1965) is an American musician based in Los Angeles, known as the lead singer, lyricist and founder of The Geraldine Fibbers and Evangelista as well as a founding member of Ethyl Meatplow and Scarnella.
Her musical career began at age 17 in a garage in Lawndale, California, with her first band, The Neon Veins. Under the name Carla Noelle, she also contributed to a recording by artist Gary Kail titled "Zurich 1916", which was released in 1984 as part of the album Creative Nihilism. The Geraldine Fibbers recorded two albums for Virgin Records.
Bozulich's Evangelista project began in 2006. The album was under her own name and titled Evangelista. The album was released by Montreal, Quebec-based Constellation Records and was that label's first release by a non-Canadian artist. Various members of Godspeed! You Black Emperor contributed to arranging, recording and additional collaborative songwriting. The line-up of Evangelista changes each time they play or record. The Hello, Voyager album features 14 musicians over various pieces.
Bozulich has used the name Bloody Claws for one-off concerts and tours, including 45 International concerts with Francesco Guerri, with whom she toured Europe in 2009. She has also contributed to recordings by Mike Watt, Hadda Brooks and Lydia Lunch. She has performed live with Watt, as well as with Thurston Moore, Christian Marclay; Carla Kihlstedt, Wayne Kramer, Wilco, Agathe Max, and Italian guitarist Simone Massaron. On August 16–17, 2009 she performed live with Marianne Faithfull and Marc Ribot in Düsseldorf as part of the 2009 Ruhrtriennale. Willie Nelson performed on her 2003 album The Red Headed Stranger, a song-by-song cover of his album of the same name.
The Belles were a garage rock group from Miami Beach, FL who released two singles on Tiara. Is one of the slew
of mysterious, mostly forgotten all-girl beat groups and garage rock
crews predating hard rockers and proto-punks like the Shaggs, Fanny and
the Runaways.
Formed in Miami Beach, the Belles played dances and an area Air Force Base, garnered a local newspaper feature and some radio appearances and recorded two 7" inches on Hollywood, Florida-based label Tiara.
The A-side, version of Them’s
“Gloria” with the genders swapperd for a boy named Melvin; the B-side,
the raucous “Come Back,” written by 14-year-old guitarist Debbie
Teaver.
The Pussywillows were a group that featured Elinor Blake, Lisa Dembling and Lisa Jenio. Their recordings have appeared on the Kill the Moonlight soundtrack, and the Rutles Highway Revisited album.
The Pussywillows were originally from New York City. It consisted of three friends—Elinor Blake, Lisa Dembling and Lisa Jenio—who liked singing together girl-group style. Through Todd Abramson of the Telstar label they got some gigs, which led to them recording Spring Fever!, released on Telstar. The tracks on the album were, "The Boat That I Row", "Come On Now", "Don't Say He's Gone", "Turn Her Down", "Everyone Will Know", "My Baby Looks But He Don't Touch" and "Baby Baby (I Still Love You)". With "The Boat That I Row", the song was written by Neil Diamond and became a hit for Lulu. Another song they covered was "Turn Her Down". It was recorded by girl group The Cupons in the 1960s and released on the Impact label.
The group also did some recordings with Raunch Hands. A big fan of the group was Ronnie Spector who would one day have them backing her on a set of recordings. In December 1990, they played at the Funhouse in Bethlehem covering songs like Neil Diamond's "The Boat That I Row" and "My Baby Looks But He Don't Touch". In January 1991 with their backing band, which included guitarist Ward Dotson on guitar, Will Rigby on drums and Spike Priggen on bass, they played at the CBGB club in Bleecker Street, Manhattan.
Blake moved to LA and by 1991 was using the name April March. Lisa Jenio became a member of and bass player for Candypants and The Liquor Giants.
Joyce Olivia Green (born March 2, 1940) is an American rockabilly musician. She is best known for her song Black Cadillac.
Joyce learned to play guitar from her brother, Glenn, at age nine. The Green siblings frequently performed together in church. Joyce participated in various talent competitions, which she often won. She made her radio debut in 1957 with fellow musician Jimmy Douglas. She continued to perform with Douglas on the radio and at local Arkansas establishments. She was hired by Leon Gambill to perform regularly at Oasis Club in Bald Knob, Arkansas and soon began touring locally.
In 1959, Joyce wrote the song Black Cadillac with her sister Doris. She played the song for Arlen Vaden who arranged a recording session for her at KLCN in Blytheville, Arkansas. Joyce sang and played rhythm guitar on the record which included the song Tomorrow on the A-side and Black Cadillac on the B-side. The other musicians on the record included Tommy Holder on guitar, Teddy Redell on piano, Scotty Kuykendall on bass and Harvey Farley on drums. The record was released on Vaden Records in March 1959. Joyce embarked on a promotional tour with Larry Donn and Carl Perkins to support the record. The record was never commercially successful and Joyce did not record again until the 1970s. These later recordings were lost in a fire.
Joyce's record later became highly sought after by Rockabilly collectors. In 2006, Rhino Records released Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly, a four-disc box set that included Black Cadillac.
Amy Rigby (born Amelia McMahon, January 27, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter. After playing with several New York bands she began a solo career, recording several albums.
Rigby was born in the Pittsburgh suburbs and moved to New York City in 1976. During the late 1980s and early 1990s recorded with New York bands such as The Shams and Last Roundup. Rigby released her first full-length recording under her own name, Diary of a Mod Housewife, in 1996. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau praised the album, calling it "concept album of the year". Spin voted Rigby "Songwriter of the Year" for 1996. Middlescence and The Sugar Tree (like Mod Housewife, recorded for Koch Records), also were well received by critics and listeners. Koch also released Rigby's compilation album, 18 Again.
In 1999 Rigby moved to Nashville to pursue a publishing deal, and continued to record and tour. After leaving Koch, she recorded for the Signature Sounds label, and also sold live CD and DVD material through her website. Til The Wheels Fall Off, with its opening track, "Why Do I," produced by Richard Barone, was released on Signature in 2003, and Little Fugitive in 2005.
Rigby met Eric Goulden, also known as Wreckless Eric, in Hull, England, where she was performing one of his songs. She later relocated to Cleveland Ohio, and in late 2006 she and Goulden moved to France. In the fall of 2011 they moved back to the USA, settling in a town in upstate New York. Rigby and Goulden collaborated on albums.
Skeeter Davis (born Mary Frances Penick; December 30, 1931 – September 19, 2004) was an American country music singer and songwriter who sang crossover pop music songs. One of the first women to achieve major stardom in the country music field as a solo vocalist, she was an acknowledged influence on Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton.
During her junior year of high school, Skeeter and Betty Jack won a local yodeling contest, whose prize was a time slot singing on a local daytime television show. The two were billed as the Davis Sisters, with Skeeter adopting Betty Jack's last name, despite their being unrelated. Their appearance on the local program led to them receiving singing opportunities on the Detroit radio station WJR's program Barnyard Frolics. After graduating from high school in 1949, Davis relocated to Detroit with Betty Jack, where they completed demonstration recordings for Fortune Records; among these were the song "Jealous Love", which was released as a single in 1953. Between 1954 and 1956, The Davis Sisters released a total of nine singles for RCA, which they recorded in New York City and Chicago, and toured the United States as a part of the RCA Caravan of the Stars alongside Minnie Pearl, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Chet Atkins, among others. The Davis Sisters formally disbanded in 1956.
In the late 1950s she resumed performing as a solo act, touring with Ernest Tubb, and co-wrote and recorded the song "Set Him Free" for RCA, produced by Chet Atkins.In 1958 Davis recorded "Lost to a Geisha Girl", an answer song to Hank Locklin's hit "Geisha Girl", which reached the country number 15 and became her first solo hit. She subsequently co-wrote and recorded another top-20 hit called "Homebreaker", which peaked at number 15 on the Hot Country Songs chart in November 1959. The same year, Davis joined the Grand Ole Opry. From 1960 to 1962, Davis had top-10 hits with the songs "(I Can't Help You) I'm Falling Too", "My Last Date (With You)", "Where I Ought to Be", and "Optimistic". "(I Can't Help You) I'm Falling Too" marked Davis's first entrance as a solo artist onto the Billboard pop charts in 1960 and resulted in her being invited to perform on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The song went all the way to the top 40, unheard of for a female country singer at the time. In 1961, she scored a second pop hit with a lyric version (written by Skeeter) of Floyd Cramer's instrumental country pop smash "Last Date" called "My Last Date (With You)" which did even better, making the top 30 on the pop charts. Both of these songs did exceptionally well on the country charts, peaking at number two and number five, respectively.
In 1963, Davis achieved her biggest success with country pop crossover hit "The End of the World". The song just missed topping the country and pop charts that year; however, it did top the adult contemporary charts. The single sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Davis's success continued with "I'm Saving My Love" and 1964's Gonna Get Along Without You Now. In 1967, Davis was back in the top 10 with "What Does It Take (To Keep a Man Like You Satisfied)". Davis only achieved two other major country hits the rest of the decade, "Fuel to the Flame" (written by Dolly Parton, to whom Davis paid tribute with an album called Skeeter Sings Dolly in 1972), and "There's a Fool Born Every Minute". In 1970, Davis had another top-10 hit with "I'm a Lover (Not a Fighter)". The following year, she had a hit with the autobiographical "Bus Fare To Kentucky". Subsequently, however, her chart success began to fade. Davis returned to the recording studio in 1976 with a brief stint on Mercury Records, which produced two single releases, including her last song to make the national charts, 1976's "I Love Us". In 1978, she recorded the first of several albums for minor record labels which she did on occasion into the 1990s. She recorded the album She Sings, They Play with bassist Joey Spampinato and his band, NRBQ.
She died of breast cancer in a Nashville, Tennessee, hospice on September 19, 2004, aged 72.
Martha Elaine Wash (born December 28, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and producerknown for her distinctive and powerful voice.
Wash first achieved fame as half of the Two Tons O' Fun, who sang backing vocals for the disco singer Sylvester including on his signature hit "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". After gaining their own record deal, they released three consecutive commercially successful songs which all peaked at number two in the dance charts.
The duo was renamed the Weather Girls in 1982 after they released the top-selling single "It's Raining Men", which brought them to mainstream pop attention. The Weather Girls released five albums and were heavily featured on Sylvester's albums. After disbanding in 1988, Wash transitioned to house music as a featured artist on several successful songs. Her success on the Billboard dance chart has earned her the honorific title the Queen of Clubland, with a total of fifteen number-one songs on the chart to date.
Wash is also noted for sparking legislation in the early 1990s that made vocal credits mandatory on CDs and music videos. Starting in the late-1980s, her studio vocals were used in several successful dance songs without her permission or proper credit. Models lip-synced to her voice in music videos and during live performances, obscuring Wash's contributions and hiding Wash's size as a full-figured woman. As a result, she was denied credit and royalties for many of the songs she recorded. This included platinum-selling song "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)". Subsequently, in Rolling Stone, music critic Jason Newman described Martha Wash as "The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the '90s". In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 58th most successful dance artist of all time.
Tina Marie Bell (February 5, 1957 – c. October 10, 2012) was an American singer, songwriter and front woman of the Seattle-based band Bam Bam. The band with Bell was considered one of the founders of the grunge music scene. Bell is considered an early grunge pioneer and dubbed as "the Godmother of Grunge" and "queen of Grunge".
She got her start as a singer by singing at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle, and her first experience on stage was performing with the Langston Hughes Theater, also in Seattle. When looking for a French tutor so that she could sing French lyrics in a Langston Hughes Theater production, she met guitarist Tommy Martin. Bell and Martin formed Bam Bam in 1983. The band also included bassist Scott Ledgerwood, and drummer Matt Cameron (the latter went on to join Soundgarden and then Pearl Jam). Cameron was later replaced by Tom Hendrickson.
Although Bam Bam were courted by punk rock label C/Z Records, they opted instead to independently release their EP Villains (Also Wear White) in 1984. This was the first grunge record made at Reciprocal Recording studio, the location where later Nirvana made their demos for the Bleach and Incesticide albums. With songs written by Bell, Ledgerwood and Martin, and with Hendrickson on drums, Bam Bam recorded an album's worth of material at Reciprocal Recordings, including the material on the EP. Eight more of the tracks from the Reciprocal sessions were remastered and released in June 2019 as Free Fall From Space, produced by Martin and Hanzsek. An expanded version of Villains (Also Wear White) was released in late 2021 on Bric-a-Brac Records.
Later that year, Bam Bam released the album Bam Bam House Demo '84, which included earlier home recordings of some of the songs recorded at Reciprocal Recording. The band also released a video of the song "Ground Zero," written by Bell, Martin, Ledgerwood and Cameron and taken from the Reciprocal sessions. The song contains lyrics written by Bell about the threat of nuclear war, inspired by living near the Naval Submarine Base Bangor, a home port for Trident nuclear submarines. After the mid 80's, both Ledgerwood and Hendrickson left the band, but Bell continued to front the band with a new rhythm section, along with Martin on guitar. In the late 80's and early 90's, Bam Bam performed in concerts with popular bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.
After not receiving the local recognition of the other emerging "Seattle Sound" bands, Bell and the band left Seattle for London in the late '80s, hoping for success in Europe. This, unfortunately, did not garner the intended recognition and resulted in deportation back to America during an immigration enforcement dragnet in the Netherlands. Bell left Bam Bam in 1990, and eventually quit music entirely. She died in her Las Vegas apartment of cirrhosis of the liver at age 55 on October 10, 2012.
Carol Hedges (born 22 December 1945) who was known professionally as Billie Davis, is an English singer who had hits in the 1960s, and is best remembered for the UK hit version of the song, "Tell Him" (1963) and "I Want You to Be My Baby" (1968).
After winning a talent contest in which she was backed by Cliff Bennett's band, the Rebel Rousers, she cut some early demo records with the Tornados for record producer Joe Meek. However, her first commercial success was "Will I What", released in August 1962, on which she performed as a foil to Mike Sarne, rather as Wendy Richard had done on Sarne's chart-topping disc, "Come Outside". This reached number 18 in the UK Singles Chart in September 1962.
In February 1963 Davis had her biggest success with a cover version of The Exciters' "Tell Him". Written by Bert Russell (also known as Bert Berns), this song was covered in the sixties by a number of artists, including Helen Shapiro and Alma Cogan, and in the 70s by Hello. Davis' recording reached number ten in the UK chart, and was followed by "He's The One", which crept into the Top 40 in May 1963.
In 1966, Davis paired with Keith Powell (Keith Powell and the Valets) as "Keith (Powell) and Billie (Davis)" under the Piccadilly record label. They released three singles including "Swingin' Tight", which while popular did not make the chart and the short lived pairing was dissolved. In the late 1960s, Davis returned to Decca, with former Ready Steady Go! presenter Michael Aldred as her producer. Recordings included Chip Taylor's "Angel of the Morning", in 1967, on which she was backed by, amongst others, Kiki Dee and P. P. Arnold. Arnold later recorded the song herself and had the bigger hit in 1968. Davis' final chart entry was a Northern soul version of Jon Hendricks' "I Want You to Be My Baby", originally recorded by Louis Jordan in 1952, which reached number 33 in October 1968.
Davis left Decca in April 1971 after a stay of eight years. She continued to record into the 1980s and was popular, in particular, with audiences in the Spanish-speaking world. Her cover of Burt Bacharach's "The Last One to Be Loved" appeared on the compilation album Trains & Boats & Covers (1999). A retrospective collection of her recordings for Decca was released in 2005.
In 1982 a Thrash-a-billy band called The Dummy Club crashed onto the
midwest music scene with a drive and vengeance that's rarely seen.
Despite the fact that the Psychobilly, Thrash-A-Billy and Core-A-Billy
was a very small underground scene, Frankie 'Stoney' Rivera and Janna
Blackwell kept pounding out a sound that drew the audience onto the
dance floor. In 1985 the band signed a recording contract with Zensor
Records in Berlin and released the EP 'Ballad of a Lady Gunslinger'. The
EP stayed on the charts in Europe.
After Europe, Frankie and Janna went their separate ways in 1989. After
extensive travels and soul searching, the songwriting Bass/Vocal team
decided to regroup and form the Psycho Bunnies, again brandishing their
own style of Hardcore Psychobilly. Janna's ripping, thumping bass lines
and Frankie's wailing, soulful vocals are the presence and power that
makes the Psycho Bunnies the wildest entity to come out of America's
heartland. They are urban street girls with a hard edge, hard drive and
philosophy straight from the heart.
In 1991 Janna and Frankie hooked up with Reverend Johnnie Leisure, a
lead guitarist with a sound of his own and an attitude to match. Take
the Reverend's machine gun riffs and mix it with Janna's rapid-fire
bass, Frankie's screamin' siren vocals and Mick Weber's primal drum beat
and you have the Psycho Bunnies.
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all-women's band in the United States. During the 1940s the band featured some of the best female musicians of the day.[1] They played swing and jazz on a national circuit that included the Apollo Theater in New York City, the Regal Theater in Chicago, and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. During feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in America, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became popular with feminist writers and musicologists who made it their goal to change the discourse on the history of jazz to include both men and women musicians.
The original members of the band had met in Mississippi in 1938 at the Piney Woods Country Life School, a school for poor and African American children. The majority who attended Piney Woods were orphans, including band member Helen Jones. In the 1930s he was inspired by Ina Ray Hutton's Melodears to create an all-female jazz band at Piney Woods. Having been an entrepreneur when it came to fundraising, in the early 1920s Jones supported the school by sending an all-female vocal group called the Cotton Blossom Singers on the road. After that she formed the Swinging Rays of Rhythm led by Consuela Carter. The band toured throughout the eastern U.S. to raise money for the school.
In 1941 the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became a professional act and severed connections with Piney Woods. The band settled in Arlington, Virginia, where a wealthy Virginian supported them. Members from different races, including Latina, Asian, Caucasian, Black, Indian and Puerto Rican, lent the band an "international" flavor, and the name International Sweethearts of Rhythm was given to the group. Composed of 14- to 19-year-olds, the band included Pauline Braddy (tutored on drums by Sid Catlett and Jo Jones), Willie Mae Wong (sax), Edna Williams and thirteen others, including Helen Jones Woods. Anna Mae Winburn became bandleader in 1941 after resigning from her position leading the Cotton Club Boys in North Omaha, Nebraska, which featured guitarist Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson. Winburn led the band until her retirement.
The venues where they performed were predominantly, if not only, for black audiences. These included the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theatre in Chicago, the Cotton Club in Cincinnati, the Riviera in St. Louis, the Dreamland in Omaha, the Club Plantation and Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm performed in 1948 with Dizzy Gillespie at the fourth annual Cavalcade of Jazz concert at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles on September 12. They also performed at the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 1, 1952 when Anna Mae Winburn was leading. In 1980, jazz pianist Marian McPartland convinced the organizers of the third annual Women's Jazz Festival in Kansas City to reunite the Sweethearts. Included in this interview were nine of the original members as well as six of the band's later members.
Clara Reisenberg Rockmore (9 March 1911 – 10 May 1998) was a Lithuanian classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso performer of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.
Early in her childhood she emerged as a violin prodigy. At the age of four, she became the youngest ever student at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where she studied under the prominent violinist Leopold Auer. In 1921 the family moved to the USA, where Rockmore enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music. As a teenager, tendinitis affected her bow arm, attributed to childhood malnutrition, and resulted in her giving up the violin. However, after meeting fellow immigrant Léon Theremin and being introduced to his electronic instrument, the theremin, she became its most prominent player. She performed widely and helped Theremin to refine his instrument.
Rockmore made orchestral appearances in New York and Philadelphia and went on coast-to-coast tours with Paul Robeson, but it was not until 1977 that she released a commercial recording called The Art of the Theremin. The album, which was produced by Bob Moog and Shirleigh Moog, featured Rockmore's theremin playing with piano accompaniment by her sister Nadia. Rockmore's approach to theremin playing emphasized physical and emotional control.
Rockmore's classical training gave her an advantage over the many other theremin performers of the time. The intonation control she acquired as a violinist and her innate absolute pitch were both helpful in playing the instrument. She had extremely precise, rapid control of her movements, important in playing an instrument that depends on the performer's motion and proximity rather than touch. She developed a unique technique for playing the instrument, including a fingering system that allowed her to perform accurately fast passages and large note leaps without the more familiar portamento, or glide, on theremin. She also discovered that she could achieve a steadier tone and control the vibrato by keeping the tips of her right-hand thumb and forefinger in contact.
By the time Rockmore was playing large scale public concerts, such as New York City's Town Hall in 1938, she was becoming increasingly known for impressing critics with her artistry of the theremin during a time in which much of the general public had come to rather negative conclusions of what was possible on the instrument.
She died in New York City on May 10, 1998, aged 87.
This is the 500th entry on this blog, so to celebrate I am featuring a band very close to my heart, my own band The Inserts.
The Inserts' story began around new year’s eve 2009 when singer Elli and bass player Nanke (both from former Crumpets) met guitar slinging Gabriale and cataclysmic Kathistrophe on drums for their first rehearsal.
The Crumpets had split up some months before and Elli and Nanke agreed that Gabriale and Kathi were the ones amongst Kreuzberg’s creatures to start a new project, although not really knowing them. After more than a few liquor soaked nights, besides a new friendship the new lineup was finally cemented when Gabriale and Kathi decided to take over on guitar and drums. With its new lineup solidified, the band was just starting to hit its stride and six months later, the four girls played their first show, moving full steam ahead ever since. In late 2012, Kathi decided to leave Berlin heading towards Los Angeles – not before having cut the drums for The Inserts’ debut 7" on the legendary Hundemann Records.
Shortly afterwards, Marina joined in at full throttle. In late 2013, with Marina on drums and the debut single at hand, the band could finally hit the road and play some new shows.
Oihane Follones joined the band on drums in 2017 while they recorded their first LP that came out in 2018 on Hundermann Records. The band played a few shows around Germany in 2019 , a show with The Shocks and The Briefs being one of the highlights on that year. They recorded a second LP in a boat at the Spree in Oct. 2021 but they are still looking for a label to put it out.
Carla Olson (born July 3, 1952) is a Los Angeles-based songwriter, performer and record producer.
Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Olson moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1978 where she formed the Textones, whose debut album Midnight Mission entered the Billboard 200. An early version of the Textones consisting of Olson, Kathy Valentine, Markus Cuff, and David Provost, played the late 1970s punk/new wave scene in Los Angeles and toured the US and Europe. They also released an EP in the UK and a single in the US. Their debut album for A&M Records, Midnight Mission, consisted of Olson along with George Callins, Joe Read, Tom Jr Morgan, and Phil Seymour. They also toured the US and Europe. The record charted at 76 on the Billboard 200, and both singles, "Standing in the Line" and "Midnight Mission", were featured videos on MTV, and received radio airplay as well. The second Textones album, Cedar Creek, was released in 1987 by Enigma Records.
Olson has received critical acclaim for her work as a solo performer, band leader, and producer. In varying capacities she has worked with former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, Percy Sledge (Sledge has recorded five songs that Olson has written or co-written), Ry Cooder, Gene Clark, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, John Fogerty, Mikael Rickfors, and many others. Her musical partnerships in the 1980s included former Byrd member Gene Clark (which resulted in a duet album, So Rebellious a Lover) and Mick Taylor. The Carla Olson and Mick Taylor band included George Callins on guitar, Jesse Sublett on bass (Sublett had previously played with Olson and Valentine in Austin in a band called the Violators), Tom Jr Morgan on saxophone, and Rick Hemmert on drums. Their live album Too Hot For Snakes added Ian McLagan (Small Faces, Faces) and Barry Goldberg (the Electric Flag, the Rides) on keyboards. Varying combinations of these musicians also appear on the subsequent Olson studio albums Within An Ace, Reap The Whirlwind, and The Ring Of Truth.
Since 2001 Olson has concentrated most of her energies on music production, but has continued her songwriting and co-writing activities. She has written music for lyrics (or poems) by Sterling A. Brown, George Callins, Cream lyricist Pete Brown, Allan Clarke, George Green, Rick Hemmert, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison. (The latter collaboration was released in December 2019 on the expanded release of True Voices ie Ode To L.A. While Thinking Of Brian Jones, Deceased as performed by Johnny Indovina of Human Drama.) She has also written with Barry Goldberg, Kathy Valentine, Mikael Rickfors, Danny Tate, Danny Wilde and Pete Brown.
In 2013, after not releasing an album of her own since The Ring of Truth in 2001, Olson recorded Have Harmony, Will Travel, which is an album of cover songs with guest vocalists on each track including Rob Waller, John York, Richie Furay, Juice Newton, James Inveldt, Scott Kempner, Peter Case and Gary Myrick. May 26, 2015, saw the re-release of the Textones albums Midnight Mission and Cedar Creek by Omnivore Recordings. Both albums were expanded editions with additional studio tracks, live recordings, photos and newly written essays.
Norah Findlay is a US born rock singer and guitarist, who was based in Madrid where she played with The Pleasure Fuckers, Las Víboras, Sin City Six and Commando 9mm. She also opened the Rock Palace in Madrid in 1995.
In 1988 during a garage rock concert in a small club in Madrid, guitarists Mike Sobieski and Norah Findlay were dumfounded when two hundred and fifty pound Kike Turmix commandeered the microphone and belted out “The Crusher”. The crowd went wild and Mike and Norah knew they had found the Singer they had been looking for. Two years later with the addition of Barnaby Bowles on bass, The Pleasure Fuckers became Spain´s most notorious punk rock band and continue to leave audiences screaming for more. The band began touring Spain and France after the publication of their first LP “Loud, Lubbed and Live”. The Pleasure Fuckers have more tan five hundred concerts, four European tours, one USA tour, and five LPs under their belt. When the group disbanded, Mike Sobieski and Nora Findlay formed Sin City Six. Their singer Kike Turmix died in Madrid on 17 October 2005.
In the early 90s, Norah also played in the Garage band Vivoras. They put out 2 albums, "Spanish Fly" in 1992 and "Hello boys!" in 1995, and two singles, "I Wish You Were Beer" in 1992 and "By Myself" in 1996. From the ashes of Pleasure Fuckers Sin City Six is born with Norah on rhythm guitar, Mike Sobieski on lead guitar, Barnaby Bowles on bass, Ángel Ramos on drums) and Lee Robinson on vocals.
In 2004 Norah joined Commando 9mm with Manolo UVI, Ixma on bass (La Broma de Ssatán, 4Teen Killers), Jota on drums, and they added a trumpet player, Juan.
