Vol 3, Issue 8: Sexism in the Music Biz Pt I: Call it a Case of Penis Envy?

It was 1984, hair metal was all the rage, and The Scorpions had just launched their latest album Love at First Sting, and were leading a successful tour across the greater parts of the Western world. Joan Jett, recently parted from her all girl group The Runaways, and generating buzz for her hit single, a cover of The Arrows’ classic, “I Love Rock’n’Roll” was given the support slot for over 20 dates on the European leg. But instead of being met with praise, recognition, and applause for being one of the “founding mothers” of women in rock’n’roll, audiences not only responded to Jett with aversion, moreover, they made sincere attempts to injure her throughout her performances.

Throughout her sets, Joan was subjected to aerial assaults of garbage, and debris including pieces of metal, batteries and virtually anything else that the displeased audiences could find. During one show, the attack reached such heights that shortly after her performance, Joan collapsed and had to seek medical care as she sustained injuries which included two broken ribs that came close to puncturing her lungs. Despite all of this, she never revealed even the slightest moment of weakness, she just kept on rocking through it all, and that is why she is known as the one, and only Queen of Punk Rock.

Though both greater society and the niche of the music biz has made giant leaps in terms of embracing female artists and bestowing upon them the same respect that all musicians deserve since the aforementioned horror story of Jett’s mainstream debut, I wish I could tell you that sexism in the music biz has been eradicated, but the sad truth is that it still exists, but now tends to rear its ugly head in more clever and veiled ways. To demonstrate, I’d like to call upon some of my own personal experiences from just a few years back in 2005 when my band ANTI-HERO made its debut.

Before we had established a reputation for being a legitimate hard hitting female fronted rocking ensemble, almost every time we played a new city, the other acts on the bill and the audience members alike, assumed that myself, and my female counterpart Nic, our bassist, were the tag-along band girlfriends and/or groupies just along for the ride. Moreover, when we got booked on metal or hardcore bills, before we were allowed to even strum a single chord on our guitars, the spectators, particularly the males, would make snide remarks toting us as being a group comparable to the Spice Girls. However, the worst of the offenses committed against us in our early career, undoubtedly goes to a Toronto concert promoter who blatantly told us, prior to our performance, that he only put us on the bill because he thought of female fronted acts as “novelty items”; essentially, to him, women who played guitars were subhuman, just sex objects with no real talent whose sole purpose was to act as objects of male fantasy.

As made apparent from the provided examples, there is still a heavy stigma alive and well towards women in rock, and unfortunately, because of the sort of sexism that female artists often encounter, it discourages many women from pursuing this route therefore making hard rocking chicks a rarity and so, subject to continued discrimination. As Naomi Less, a proud Jewish chick rocker notes, “I have been searching for some time now for seriously talented lead guitarists and bassists who are women - and in NYC [an entertainment capital, no less]. And they are so just hard to find.” But, afterall, the electric guitar is a natural extension of the penis right? Women don’t belong in rock bands, they should limit themselves to what they do best: shaking their asses and tits like Shakira. Well, sorry mates, but if this is the perspective that you’ve got, you need to timewarp back to the ‘50s, because even though fem rockers and riot grrls, like myself, may encounter this b.s., it just makes us even more motivated to prove all of those who’ve prejudged us wrong, and whether you like it or not, female fronted rock is gaining ground all over the globe.

About the Author:

Rose Cora Perry is the frontwoman for Canadian hard rock band ANTI-HERO known as “The 21st Century Answer to Nirvana”, as well as the sole owner and operator of HER Records, a management company in which she offers marketing, promotion, publicity, tour booking, and artist development services.

Her band ANTI-HERO has toured extensively across North America playing notable festivals such as Warped Tour, Canadian Music Week, NorthbyNorthEast, Wakefest, and MEANYFest.

Voted “Best Rock Act of the Year” by numerous industry publications, their critically acclaimed debut album, "Unpretty" is available worldwide for purchase. Rose Cora Perry is a dedicated promoter of D.I.Y. ethics, and an avid supporter of independent musicians.

For more information on Rose Cora Perry and her band's accomplishments, please visit http://www.anti-hero.ca/ or http://www.rosecoraperry.com/

Vol 3, Issue 6: The Origins of Sex, Drugs, & Rock’n’Roll

When we conceptualize the lifestyle of the prototypical rockstar, it is one that is associated with excesses in their many forms: namely exorbitant promiscuity, and copious narcotic consumption. While the pop culture expression, “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” didn’t begin to permeate the public consciousness until the 1960s and was further popularized by a ‘77’s single by Ian Dury, this image of the celebrity musician is nothing new.

According to music history buffs, this portrait of the rockstar actually originated in ancient times and is a modern figure of speech derived from the Greek hendiatris (a literary technique in which three words are used to express one idea), “women, wine, and song.” As apparent from its original expression, (which connotes a gender bias in favour of males as the adored performers, and women as the fanatical groupies) sexism within the music industry is nothing new either, but this is a topic we will look more into at a later date.

For the time being, I thought it would be interesting if we attacked the issue of drug culture and musicianship from both sides of the debate. Joined by my good friend, talented lead guitarist, industrial music lover, and extreme sports junkie, Jesse Tomes, in this issue and the next, we will examine the use and abuse of drugs in the music industry and both the benefits and the consequences of this from the artist’s perspective. As an avid anti-drug activist, I will naturally be taking the oppositional stance. But, before we get into the effects of this kind of lifestyle, let’s take a look at why artists and substance abuse have, for so long, gone hand in hand.

As I’ve stated in previous articles, many musicians (not all, but a great majority) first get involved in music as a means to soothe their pain. Whether the sons or daughters of abusive parents, those who’ve struggled with poverty, discrimination, and/or never felt as though they fit in, musicians often come to the table with a great deal of emotional distress, baggage, deep-seated resentment, and bitterness towards the world and anyone who stands in their way, to say the least. While their tortured souls prove beneficial for writing truly inspiring songs, their fragile states leave them in a position in which they are all too easy to take advantage of. In addition to partaking in songwriting as an outlet for their turmoil, before they even get their earliest tastes of fame, musicians are often already participating in semi-regular drug use as an additional form of emotional support and escapism. While smoking the occasional joint will likely not hurt themselves or any of their friends in a major way, their vulnerability as well as the structure of the music industry itself, makes the transition towards harder drugs frighteningly simple to slip into.

For starters, clubowners, irrespective of one’s career juncture, frequently propose alcohol and/or drugs to musicians as the form of payment for a performance, and if they (the clubowners) don’t blatantly try to screw over musicians with this tactic, they will at the least encourage a good snort after a job well done in the pleasure of their company. Not to sound too much like your VIP teacher from grade six, but this is a form of peer pressure that is difficult (but not impossible) to challenge, especially when you are outnumbered by fellow musicians and promoters alike, who embrace this lifestyle. Seeing as networking constitutes an essential part of any successful artist’s life, avoiding these after-show meet and greets could prove detrimental to one’s embarking career. So what’s an artist to do? An old trick that Gene Simmons likes to pull is to drink gingerale at such meetings as its resemblance to beer is rather uncanny, but how he would fake hitting a line of coke, well I don’t think anyone’s figured out a solution to that, as of yet.

Next, because of the incessant touring that is required for any band to establish a decent following, sleep deprivation and poor nutrition become additional battles with which musicians must contend. An easy solution embraced by so many artists of the past comes in the form of amphetamines (aka speed or uppers). Of course, the musicians who begin popping these pills almost always state that it’ll be a temporary thing, just until they are off the road, forgetting that in fact, drugs of this nature do have the potential to become highly addictive, and are known for producing serious withdrawal symptoms. To cope with the same issue in a slightly different manner, other popular drugs of choice are hallucinogens, which allow artists to temporarily escape reality. By no means would I ever support this kind of thing, but in this situation, when you are driving endlessly across the countryside to play a few 45 minute sets which may or may not be worth your while, one’s stress and frustration levels are ridiculously high, and I can appreciate why so many artists feel they have no other choice, but to numb the experience by going on a temporarily vacation (at least, psychologically).

What few people realize is just how unglamourous touring actually is. It is not until you are in the big leagues (and I mean in a seriously major act that’s been around for at least a decade) that you will be provided with the luxury of a tour bus equipped with bunkbeds, a fridge, shower, and a personal driver. For the rest of us lowly indies, it is you and your fellow bandmates splitting up the driving and taking turns spooning each other in the back of your van which will invariably breakdown, and get broken into, at least once on each of your roadtrips.

Finally, and in my opinion the biggest contributor to perpetuating, “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” as the norm and the expected behaviour of rockstars, is the media and its convention of glamourizing musicians who participate in this type of lifestyle, and by doing so, making it seem cool to aspire to be just like them some day. While most music rags don’t outwardly promote this kind of conduct as something desirable, the fact that they are more willing to devote page space to stories about drugged up rockers speaks for itself. As the audience of said magazines is largely composed of young, highly impressionable, and idealistic youth, what kind of message does this send?

It makes drugs seem cool, and makes people such as Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue), who was officially pronounced dead for two minutes on Dec 23th, 1987, and then revived by two adrenaline shots to the heart by a Crue-loving paramedic only to return to his house that very same night to ingest more heroin, seem even cooler. In my opinion, considering all of the trials and tribulations that our youth have to deal with today, this is hardly the kind of message that we should be sending them. It shows that the repercussions for substance abuse are trivial, at best, and that playing music and getting high is what will gain them fame, fortune, and of course, in the words of the boys of Crue themselves, “girls, girls, girls.”

About the Author:

Rose Cora Perry the frontwoman for Canadian hard rock band ANTI-HERO known as “The 21st Century Answer to Nirvana”, as well as the sole owner and operator of HER Records, a management company in which she offers marketing, promotion, publicity, tour booking, and artist development services.

Her band ANTI-HERO has toured extensively across North America playing notable festivals such as Warped Tour, Canadian Music Week, NorthbyNorthEast, Wakefest, and MEANYFest.

Voted “Best Rock Act of the Year” by numerous industry publications, their critically acclaimed debut album, "Unpretty" is available worldwide for purchase.

Rose Cora Perry is a dedicated promoter of D.I.Y. ethics, and an avid supporter of independent musicians.For more information on Rose Cora Perry and her band's accomplishments, please visit http://www.anti-hero.ca/ or http://www.rosecoraperry.com/