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 This Friday at Pla Dib, BangkokRecorder celebrates lady rockers in our first underground party. Here, we pay homage to key female bands in rock history. We're not going to give you a comprehensive list of the countless women in contemporary music, but just offering a little taste of CHICKS who ROCK.
Rock ‘n’ roll, it seems, has repeatedly proven itself as a genre for the minorities. Originally, it brought black music to white ears. Later, after its many evolutions and morphisms, rock also carved out niches for successful female artists in a heavily male milieu.
Although female composers and musicians have existed throughout history, it was in the twentieth century that chicks really started to rock out. It all started in the big band and swing era of the '30s and '40s, when all-female orchestras such as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm began to surface.  In the 1950s, “girl groups” emerged and peaked in popularity in the early '60s. Usually comprising of three or four young female vocals, the music was a combination of doo wop and rhythm & blues. Girl groups were accompanied by an army of songwriters, producers, managers and musicians, most of whom were male. Although they did well in the billboards, they received little media attention compared to their male counterparts. And because the girls were often very young and many of the groups were black, they had little artistic control. Often a girl group’s lifespan lasted no longer than a few years. By the mid-'60s, girl groups began to suffer on the charts. Their (or rather the producers’) saccharine songs were no longer hitting a chord among an increasingly unsettled youth.
What was reaching the revolutionary kids of the mid-60s was the raw and unrefined garage rock. Following a more DIY ethic, the music contrasted with the practiced studio sound of earlier rock ‘n’ roll. Garage rock allowed amateurs to break into the music industry, and this would be especially important for female bands and also for later movements like punk rock.
Female garage rock bands of the '60s were often signed to independent and underground labels. While they achieved little commercial success at the time, today these records have become rare and prized treasures among collectors.
One of the weirdest bands to emerge from the '60s was a group of sisters dubbed The Shaggs. The Shaggs were known “best worst” rock and roll band in the world, according to the New York Times. Formed by their father, the sisters hardly knew how to play instruments, yet they unwittingly spawned a cult following after developing a new musical language.
A popular '60s female artist to make a big difference for women in the scene was Janis Joplin. As one of the first front women of a rock band (Big Brother and the Holding Company) who also went on to build a successful solo career, Joplin broadened the identity of white female singers in mainstream American pop music. In her unprecedented and flamboyantly liberated style, she almost always wore pants on stage and never went near mascara, which was almost unthinkable for female performers in the '60s.
 The first all-female rock bands to be signed by major record labels were Goldie and the Gingerbreads and Fanny. Sisters, June and Jean Millington, fronting Fanny, pioneered the road for future she-rockers. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 1999, David Bowie said Fanny were “one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time…They were extraordinary: they wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers…and nobody's ever mentioned them.”
Fanny broke up in 1975, but they left a legacy that would be next picked up with more success by The Runaways. Lauded as rock’s first all-chick heavy metal pre-punk band, The Runaways were actually the brainchild of producer and manager Kim Fowley. Fowley thought, correctly, that the idea of five hot leather- and lingerie-clad teenage girls playing heavy metal music would be extremely profitable. Seen as a novelty act in the States, the Runaways were more popular in countries like Japan. Contrary to common belief, the band were talented musicians in their own right, writing and co-writing many of the songs. After disbanding in 1979, The Runaway’s lead singer and guitarist, Joan Jett became a successful solo artist. Jett also produced for many of the riot grrrls bands and is considered a role model in the movement. The Runaways preceded punk and were seminal for future chick punk rockers such as Bikini Kill, X-Ray Spex and, recently, The Donnas.
 While drawing from '60s garage rock, the rise of angry, anarchical punk music also has a lot to owe to one rocking chick, Patti Smith (not to be confused with Scandal frontlady Patty Smyth). Smith was known as “punk rock’s poet laureate,” bringing a feminist and cerebral streak to this fresh new genre. Her album Horses (1975) has been acclaimed as one of the finest rock releases of all time and proved influential to punk rock bands in the mid-'70s.  In punk’s climate of anti-establishment and DIY attitudes, female-fronted rock bands like Siouxsie & the Banshees, Blondie and Heart achieved huge international success. The first all-female group to hit the mainstream without a male producer or manager was new wave, pop punk outfit, The Go Go’s in the early '80s. The Go Go’s were bad girls. They devoured pills and cocaine, they trashed hotel rooms, and they eventually disbanded due to drug addiction and hedonism. Only the lead singer, Belinda Carlisle (after thorough rehab) went on to successfully carve out a solo career. Although the Go Go’s are not attributed to directly influencing the riot grrrls of the '90s, they were surely the precursors to the movement.
The 80s also saw the rise of iconic female pop idols like Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. One of the most influential, enduring and talented of these women, who has inspired such acts as Suede, Tricky, The Futureheads, Goldfrapp, Bjork, Tori Amos among others, is the elusive Kate Bush. Bush was unearthed by Pink Floyd guitarist, David Gilmour, and had signed a record deal by the age of 16. Her eclectic musical style has been called "fucking brilliant" by Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.
As '80s decadence became pass? and embarrassing, in the US city of Seattle, a new genre was born out of the punk scene. Nirvana are mostly attributed to the breaking this new “dirty” style of music into popularity in the early 90s. With the deluge of grunge bands, came outfits like Hole and L7, both with strong female presences and bad-girl attitudes. L7 is most notorious for singer Donita Sparks’ stunt at the Reeding Festival in 1992, when she pulled out her tampon on stage and flung it at the audience…nice.
 Also in Seattle and in Olympia, chicks were starting to get political again. Founding members of a movement dubbed the riot grrrls, bands Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, who were actually not an all-female act, were standing up against the resurgence of testosterone-fueled punk rock in the early '90s. The riot grrrls were hardcore punk groups, creators of such feminist zines as Girl Germs, Satan Wears a Bra and Quit Whining and were organizers of festivals like New York City’s Pussystock. They aimed to foster an environment where chicks could thrive musically without feeling stifled by punk machismo. The original riot grrrl bands would refuse to sign with major labels, vehemently sticking to independent record companies like Kill Rock Stars.
In 1992, the media actually took a shine to the riot grrrls, who were shocked to find themselves subjects of articles in magazines like Seventeen. The media coverage caused rifts in the movement as no one knew how to define the riot grrrls. Now in the spotlight, the riot grrrls were accused of “dragging feminism into the moshpit.” That year, Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill ordered a “press block.”
After the demise of Riot Grrrls Press in the late nineties, the movement waned. Many of the riot grrrl bands never went on to sustain successful musical careers. The sentiments live on today, however, in indie/electro rock bands like Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre, with former Bikini Kill member, Kathleen Hanna.
The indie scene in the noughties’ has seen somewhat of a garage rock revival in such bands as The Strokes and The White Stripes. Erin Smith from Bratmobile says, “There are more girls in indie rock now and a whole new scene of people in their early 20s. The underground is cool again, and ultimately that's going to help everyone who's on the fringe." As music history has proven, chicks rockers will rise with and often instigate alternative movements, adding to the texture and depth of one of the 20th century’s greatest musical offerings: rock.
By Karuna Gurung
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