#Scrawl velvet hammer skin#

Inspired by Gits guitarist Mia Zapata, Vigil put together 7 Year Bitch. 'On a subconscious level, it made the idea of being a woman in a band more familiar.' 'The indie scene had a lot of bands with women,' says Miki Berenyi, singer-guitarist with the British quartet Lush. Nirvana's commercial breakthrough in 1991 had an instant ripple effect: the mainstream took notice of the new bands and new ideas percolating in the underground, where it was no big deal to be a woman in a rock band. There were many others, women who mastered their instruments and became integral to the fabric of their bands: bassists Sara Lee (Gang of Four), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) and Kim Warnick (Fastbacks), and drummers Georgia Hubley (Yo La Tengo) and Heather Lewis (Beat Happening), to name only some notable examples. Janet Beveridge Bean picked up the sticks with Eleventh Dream Day nearly a decade ago simply because no one else in the band wanted to play drums, and today is one of the most formidable drummers in American rock. Brix's galvanizing riffing carried the Fall through one of its most fertile periods in the mid-'80s. While Ivy Rorschach was playing a brilliantly deadpan guitar for the Cramps, Tara Key was blasting solos for the Hoboken, N.J., trio Antietam. Throughout the '80s, women infiltrated the rock 'n' roll ranks and made an impact, not just as miniskirted hood ornaments for a bunch of guys with guitars, but as songwriters and musicians who didn't call undue attention to themselves, the equal of anyone else in their bands. Hynde's no-nonsense stage persona was emblematic of the times. She transcended gender because she was good. Hynde says she doesn't feel like a pioneer: 'Women were getting out of the house and doing things long before I did.' But Julianna Hatfield, who now plays guitar and writes songs for her own band, says Hynde 'was a new thing. Along with the likes of Patti Smith, Lydia Lunch, X's Exene Cervenka, the Slits, Au Pairs, the Raincoats, the Go-Gos, the Bangles and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Hynde was at the forefront of rock's first female revolution. Hynde's savvy combination of sensuality and toughness in songs like 'Mystery Achievement' and 'Brass in Pocket' lifted her band, the Pretenders, to commercial success in 1980. From the minute I stepped on stage, I never had a hard time. At the height of punk, the whole time was nondiscrimination. 'Suddenly gender didn't seem to be an issue anymore. 'I was self-conscious about wanting to be in a rock band until 1977, and then there was this little pinhole of light,' says Hynde, who had moved to London to escape a dreary childhood in Akron, Ohio. Perceptions began to turn around in the late '70s, when the liberating lessons of the feminist movement collided with the anyone-can-do-it ethos of punk. It's like Bonnie Raitt has been around forever, and she's amazing, but you never heard much about her until recently.' 'I've known lots of women in bands who never got mentioned much. 'The media is playing a lot of attention to it. Vigil, of 7 Year Bitch, wonders what took so long. In the 1993 nationwide poll of music critics in the Village Voice, more females than ever in the poll's 20-year history ranked in the Top 40, and three of the top four albums were by women: Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville,' PJ Harvey's 'Rid of Me' and the Breeders' 'Last Splash.' Now there are more all-female or female-led bands than anyone can count: the Breeders, Bratmobile, Hole, Tsunami, PJ Harvey, Huggy Bear, Pork, Bettie Serveert, Belly, Luscious Jackson, the Juliana Hatfield Three, Tiger Trap, Scrawl, Mecca Normal, Heavenly, Tribe 8, Slant 6.

I remember thinking that wouldn't it be great some day if it would be perfectly natural for a woman to pick up a guitar or a teenage girl to say, `I want to play drums,' and for people not to look at us like we have eight heads.' 'There was no camaraderie except between each of the members of the Runaways. 'When the Runaways were starting out, there really were no other similar bands-I couldn't turn to the other all-girl band, because there wasn't another all-girl band,' Jett says.

It contains songs cowritten with Sparks, Hanna and Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland.

Her seventh album as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, 'Pure and Simple' (Warner), arrives in stores Tuesday, and it brings her career full-circle. Jett's only response was to keep playing, and though the Runaways broke up in 1979, she went on to forge a successful solo career.

#Scrawl velvet hammer skin#

Reporters asked us questions like, `Do you feel like a man or a woman when you go on stage?' `Do you think female skin makes the guitar sound different?' How do you answer that?' We got called every negative name you could call a woman.