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.
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.
Byrdie Green (occasionally credited as Birdie Green) (1936 – April 26, 2008) was a jazz and R&B singer from Michigan.
Byrdie Green was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1936. The daughter of a Baptist minister, she sang first in her father's church. Later she went to New York City and performed in clubs, and at one time was a protege of Ruth Brown. She was the first artist signed to Perri Records, who debuted with Green's single "Now is the Time For Love" b/w "Be Anything." She began recording with End Records and 20th Century Fox Records, cutting singles "How Come" b/w "Tremblin'" and "Get a Hold of Yourself" b/w "Don't Take Your Love From Me" in the early 1960s. The song "Get a Hold of Yourself" is a blend of blues and gospel, and Billboard calls it "a slew rockaballad" and "her strongest item." Green performed at many popular venues, including The Apollo, Baby Grand, The Cookery and Pier 52, as well as Rutgers University, in Boston and in Bermuda. Around 1965, she was hired by organist Johnny "Hammond" Smith and signed with Prestige Records. Smith's The Stinger Meets the Golden Thrush was released in 1966, with Green singing on "They Call It Stormy Monday" and "If I Ruled The World."
That same year Green released her first solo full-length The Golden Thrush Strikes at Midnight, featuring Smith on organ on "Goin' Out of My Head," "The Shadow of Your Smile" and "Hurt So Bad." She released two more albums, I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) in 1967, which featured Smith, Houston Person, Thornel Schwartz and Jimmy Lewis, and Sister Byrdie! in 1968. The same year, she appeared on a Nipsey Russell TV show, and, at a performance in New York, was asked by Frank Sinatra to sing an extra set of songs.
After a nine year break, Green returned to perform at Carnegie Recital Hall in a show entitled Byrdie Green Sings the Blues on March 7, 1975, and continued to work on tour with The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. In the 1980s she sang at Lickety Split, Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, Sutton's and at Jimmy Weston's, sometimes accompanied by Walter Bishop Jr.
Green died from a chronic illness at St. Luke's Hospital on April 26, 2008, and was eulogized at Mt. Neboh Church in New York City on May 3, 2008.
The Lijadu Sisters (born 22 October 1948), Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu (died 9 November 2019), were identical twin sisters from Nigeria who were a music duo from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. They achieved success in Nigeria and had modest influence in the United States and Europe. They were notable mixing Afrobeat sounds with jazz and disco.
The twins grew up in the Nigerian city of Ibadan, and were inspired musically by various artists including Aretha Franklin, Victor Olaiya and Miriam Makeba. Their music was a mix of Jazz, Afrobeat, Reggae and Waka. Sometimes they sang in English and other times in African languages. One of their first songs was arranged with assistance from jazz saxophone player Orlando Julius. They released their first album Iya Mi Jowo in 1969 after winning a record contract with Decca Records. They worked with the late Biddy Wright on their third album Danger (1976). They recorded Sunshine in 1978 and Horizon Unlimited in 1979.
The sisters were top stars in Nigeria during the 1970s and 1980s. During these years, they branched out to America and Europe and found modest success. They performed with drummer Ginger Baker's band Salt at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games in Munich at the World Music Festival. In 1984 Shanachie Records released Double Trouble in the US which was a compilation of their previously recorded material from their albums Horizon Unlimited and Danger. Their song "Orere Elejigbo" was included on a double CD entitled Nigeria 70, Africa 100, and was added to the Roots & Wings playlist in 1997.
The sisters moved to Brooklyn. They performed in various venues including the lower Manhattan club Wetlands and in Harlem with King Sunny Adé's African Beats as their backing band. They performed with the Philadelphia-based band Philly Gumbo. They were featured in the music documentary Konkombé by English director Jeremy Marre, and their music was featured in the Nigerian instalment of the 14-episode world music series entitled Beats of the Heart which aired on PBS during the late 1980s.
On 1 April 2014, they appeared live at an all-star tribute, the Atomic! Bomb Band, for reclusive Nigerian musician William Onyeabor at the Barbican Centre in London. They sang some of their own tracks including "Danger", as well as providing backing and lead vocals on William Onyeabor material. They also performed with the Atomic! Bomb Band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and on tour dates in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles in May 2014.
On 9 November 2019, Kehinde suffered a stroke and died on the same day, at the age of 71.
The Charmaines were an American female vocal trio of the 1960s. Supported by Irene Vinegar and Dee Watkins, the group's lead singer and sometime lyricist was Gigi Jackson. Born Marian Jackson, and later known as Gigi Griffin, Jackson had started her career in a family band called the Jackson Sisters. On certain recordings Watkins was replaced by Gigi's sister Jerri Jackson who later recorded in her own right.
The Charmaines were considered Cincinnati's leading female R&B trio in the early 1960s, notably as a backing unit for many better known artists on the King label including Conway Twitty, James Brown, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Little Willie John, Bobby Freeman and Gary U.S. Bonds. As a group in their own right, The Charmaines' first single was Rockin’ Old Man (late 1960) with lyrics by Jackson and backed with If You Were Mine. The nearest they came to a hit was #117 on the billboard chart in 1961 with What Kind Of Girl (Do You Think I Am) which out-sold a rival version of the same song by Erma Franklin.
It was in the time left over at the end of one of their King recording sessions that fellow Fraternity artist Lonnie Mack got the opportunity to record his first improvised hit Memphis. The Charmaines went on to appear on Lonnie Mack's best-known album Wham of That Memphis Man as well as recordings of comedian-singer Jack Larson. They would also record for Columbia and other labels - including two Canadian labels, Red Leaf ("Hypnotized" / "The One For Me") and RCA Canada (backing Lynda Layne on "I'm Your Pussycat") - when they were based out of Toronto ca. 1965.
In 2006 a 28-track compilation of the trio's 1960s recordings was issued on Ace Records and described by Record Collector as a delight for Northern fans and all girl group collectors. In 2012, NME celebrated The Charmaines as one of the unfairly forgotten girl groups of the 1960s. On the death of Lonnie Mack in April 2016, The Charmaines were one of the groups featured in a Lonnie Mack special on Classic 21's radio show Dr Boogie.
Katrina and the Waves were a British rock band widely known for the 1985 hit "Walking on Sunshine". The band's earliest incarnation was as the Waves, a group that played in and around Cambridge, from 1975 to 1977. The Waves featured guitarist Kimberley Rew and drummer Alex Cooper. This incarnation of the Waves did not issue any recordings, and broke up when Rew left to join the Soft Boys.
A more direct ancestor of Katrina and the Waves was the band Mama's Cookin', a pop cover band from Feltwell. This band, founded in 1978, featured American Katrina Leskanich on vocals and keyboards, and fellow American, Vince de la Cruz on vocals and lead guitar. By late 1980, Alex Cooper had joined the band on drums, with Bob Jakins on bass. Mama's Cookin' proceeded to gig steadily in England over the next two years.
When The Soft Boys broke up in 1981, Rew contacted his old Wave-mate Cooper to see about renewing their musical partnership. Cooper convinced Rew to join Mama's Cookin', and the five-piece group (Leskanich/Rew/Cooper/de la Cruz/Jakins) was quickly renamed the Waves after the band Rew and Cooper had been in together in the mid-1970s. Over the first year of the Waves' existence, Rew began to write material for Leskanich to sing, and she was soon the primary vocalist. A year later bassist Jakins left the band, and de la Cruz took over on bass. Now a quartet, the Waves issued the single "Brown Eyed Son" in the UK in August 1982 before permanently renaming themselves Katrina and the Waves.
In early 1983, the fledgling band recorded, at their own expense, an album of their original material designed to be sold at gigs. The album was shopped around to various labels, but only Attic Records in Canada responded with an offer. Consequently, although they were based in England, Katrina and the Waves' first album Walking on Sunshine was only released in Canada. The album garnered enough critical attention and radio play (especially for the title track) to merit a Canadian tour. In 1984, the group released a follow-up album in Canada (Katrina and the Waves 2), with Leskanich now handling all the lead vocals. Rew was still the primary songwriter, but de la Cruz was also responsible for a few songs, including the Canadian airplay hit "Mexico". Also in 1984, the band received their first ever airplay on BBC Radio 1 when DJ Richard Skinner played the track "Que te quiero", whilst their song "Going Down to Liverpool" was covered by the Bangles, which added to their profile. With the group building a fan base with their recordings and extensive touring, major label interest began to build, and Katrina and the Waves eventually signed an international deal with Capitol Records in 1985.
A follow-up single to "Walking on Sunshine" called "Do You Want Crying" (written by de la Cruz) also became a top 40 US hit, reaching no. 37 in the late summer of 1985. However, the band's follow-up album to Katrina and the Waves (simply entitled Waves) did not meet with the same measure of success, either critically or commercially. Capitol dropped the band after the Waves album. The band subsequently recorded a 1989 album for Capitol-distributed SBK Records called Break of Hearts, a harder, more rock-oriented effort than their previous releases. The album included "That's the Way" which reached no. 16 in the US (credited to Leskanich/Rew), but subsequent singles, including "Rock 'n' Roll Girl", failed to chart, and the band once again were dropped from their label.
On 3 May 1997, the band won the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom with the song "Love Shine a Light". The song won by a then-record margin of 70 points over the Irish runner-up. "Love Shine a Light" became Katrina and the Waves' biggest-ever UK hit, peaking at no. 3 in the UK Singles Chart.
Despite their return to the public eye in the UK, Katrina and the Waves were not able to follow up "Love Shine a Light" with another hit, and Leskanich left the group in 1998 after several disagreements within the band. The three remaining group members eventually dissolved the band to pursue individual careers in 1999.
Vivien Goldman (born 1952) is a British journalist, writer and musician. She began her career as a journalist for Cassettes and Cartridges. She then became a PR officer for Atlantic Records and then Island Records, where she worked with Bob Marley. She was a writer and editor for London-based Sounds magazine in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s she began making documentaries for Channel Four television, developing and producing the world-music show Big World Cafe.
Goldman lived in Paris for a year and a half, where she was a member of new wave duo Chantage, which gained modest fame in France. She released the Dirty Washing EP in 1981, with tracks produced by John Lydon and Adrian Sherwood. The EP appeared first on Ed Bahlman's iconic 99 Records imprint on 3 June 1981.
In August 1981, two of the tracks from the EP, "Launderette" and "Private Armies," were issued as a 7" single in the UK. Later the song "Launderette" was included on Gomma Records' "Anti NY" compilation and the Chicks On Speed-produced Girl Monster collection. In that year she also contributed vocals (on the track "Private Armies," which is actually "Private Armies Dub", or "P.A. Dub", from the EP) to the New Age Steppers' self-titled debut.
Goldman wrote for the music magazines NME, Sounds and Melody Maker about reggae, punk and post-punk. She was a member of The Flying Lizards and is listed in the writing credits along with the band Massive Attack on the song "Sly". She also appeared in the song "Vetar i zastave"(Wind and flags), with the Yugoslavian band "Idoli"(Idols) in 1983.
