women in rock
Every few years someone pens a piece about how
women in rock are finally mainstream, pointing to the "emergence" of female singer-songwriters as proof. This weekend,
The Telegraph, in an article about the "New Girl Power" in rock,
declared that the mainstream music industry "has rarely invested in girls with guitars: it has always preferred them dressed-up and dancing." I'd argue that the rock world has invested in girls with guitars since rock began: At the beginning there were Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, and more recently
Sheryl Crow, Annie Lennox, Bjork, Chrissie Hynde,
Bonnie Raitt — the list goes on. There have also been loads of successful acts with pretty ladies at the helm, including No Doubt, Garbage, and Blondie. The place where women are still scarce is as part of bands. Besides the Donnas and the GoGos, I can't think of one all-female band that reached the upper levels of the Billboard charts (I'm sure there are others).
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Jezebel
dirt bag
A British blog has landed an exclusive interview with the individual responsible for stoking all the unrest in Tibet. Not the Dalai Lama, silly! Bjork. "When I said 'Tibet, Tibet.' I whispered it three times. There was no fuss in the room. It happened afterwards on websites. It shows more than anything that China has become the next superpower in the world. And the issue is: how are they going to deal with Western moral issues like freedom of speech? China said, 'It's obvious Björk planned a trip to China with the purpose of political propaganda gathering... and I was like, no! It's not true!" She planned the trip with the purpose of wearing a weird outfit, duh. But if they .jpg)
