Keep running up that hill: Rock Hall 2023

When I edit students’ papers, I always try to give them positive notes first. Then I hit them with what they did wrong. In that spirit, let’s talk about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2023, announced today.

Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan Chaka Khan Chaka Khan.

First and foremost, standing ovation for the induction of Missy Elliott! Misdemeanor is truly one of the GOAT. Her mix of Southern hip-hop and electronic dance beats emerged fully formed on Supa Dupa Fly in 1997, at once inimitably Missy and widely imitated. She was a rare woman behind the boards and the scenes, writing and producing songs for other artists, including Aaliyah. And of course her videos blew the game up for female fashion standards. The omission of women rappers from the Rock Hall up until this point was one of the institution’s most grievous failures. I love that the woman who showed how to rock a garbage bag broke that glass ceiling at the pyramid in Cleveland.

I’ve critiqued the hall’s nominating committee plenty in the past, but I am thrilled that they selected Chaka Khan for one of this year’s Musical Excellence prizes. To their credit, the committee has nominated her multiple times but the voters have never supported her. This was the right, honorable way to get her past the goon squad.

Overall, the list of inductees is good. I’m super stoked about Kate Bush, even if it took a TV show to get the voters’ attention. Sheryl Crow, George Michael, Willie Nelson, the Spinners: These are all worthy talents. And while I’m not 100 percent sure that Rage Against the Machine are more worthy than other chronic Rock Hall snubs (Queen Latifah) or peers (Bjork), I personally love them. Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.

That said … the Rock Hall ain’t nothing but a bunch of hound dogs. Since its first inductions in 1986, the Cleveland institution has year after year ignored Willie Mae Thornton, original singer of “Hound Dog,” among other accomplishments. The hall will induct Link Wray and DJ Kool Herc in the Musical Influence category. Why not Big Mama?

You know why not: SEXISM. It has been the hall’s tragic flaw since year one, when not a single woman was inducted. Including this year’s class, only 8.63 percent of total inductees are women. That percentage has changed little since I first began calculations in 2019. The good news: 20 percent of this year’s inductees are female. That’s not close to parity, but it’s better than the zero women inducted in 2016.

The induction of all-male groups and solo female artists is part of the continuing problem. For every Sheryl Crow that gets in (yay!), there are five Spinners (also yay!). All those bros on the nom comm seem scared of sister acts, of girls together outrageously. Sorry Salt N Pepa, Bikini Kill, Labelle, Shangri-Las.

But the biggest problem is in full evidence this year, despite the Rock Hall’s repeated recent vows to be less hegemonically white male: The circle jerk of the additional categories. The Musical Excellence, Musical Influence, and Non-Performer (named after legendary prick Ahmet Ertegun) nominees are not on the performers ballot that is sent to the voters. Instead they are chosen in a secret ritual held in a treehouse filled with cigar smoke on Jann Wenner’s Montauk estate, with a hand-lettered sign on the door: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.

Okay, they’re chosen by small committees in the back room of a restaurant in Little Italy where oaths of omerta are sealed with blood.

All right all right, they’re chosen by small committees about which little is known – but I’m guessing are testosterone-heavy.

The use of these categories has increased in recent years, which one might think would be part of that effort to diversify. Indeed they have been used to induct hip-hop artists, such as Kool Herc, who otherwise are ignored by the rockist, racist followers of Gene Simmons. But with the exception of Chaka Khan, the opportunities afforded by the supplementary categories have not been used to rectify the cock hall’s gender problem. Only four of the 62 managers, songwriters, DJs, journalists, etc., who have been inducted in the non-performer category are women. This year, there’s one inductee – Don Cornelius. The Soul Train creator is an important figure, but like so many men associated with the rock hall, he has also been accused of sexual misconduct.

I have to admit I’ve grown weary of carrying the torch on this issue. I’m extremely grateful for all the music lovers out there who have taken up this cause, including the folx at Future Rock Legends and Who Cares about the Rock Hall?, Twitter agitator Nick Bambach, the members of the nom comm who are trying to create change from within, and most recently, the formidable Courtney Love. Ms. Love, please keep using your platform to shame the boys club. In Janet Jackson’s legendary words, #InductMoreWomen.

Research assistance provided by Tyler Roland.

People Have the PowerPoint

Patti Smith was radiant and fierce in her performance at the Saban Theatre Monday night. I’ve been to dozens of shows by the writer and musician during the last three decades; at this Songs & Stories event for the Aloud series of the Los Angeles Public Library, I saw aspects of her I had never seen before. First of all, she had a PowerPoint. A PowerPoint “to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools.” (Sorry, that was my riff on her anthem “People Have the Power,” not hers.) Smith clicked through images from her new book, A Book of Days, projected on a screen behind her as she told stories, jokes, and history lessons and sang songs, accompanied by longtime collaborator Tony Shanahan. Actually, an unseen technician advanced the slides for her; Smith laughed about this tour being her first experience with presentation software. In fact, despite her 75 years on the planet, the award-winning author is no Luddite. Book of Days is inspired by Smith’s third act as a social media influencer; her daily Instagram account, ThisIsPattiSmith, has 1 million followers. “I’m not capable of being square,” she said Monday.

(As an aside, my 2021 Los Angeles Times article about Patti’s online renaissance during the pandemic took a second place prize at the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards presented Sunday night by the Los Angeles Press Club.)

Patti was funny and sharp and sentimental Monday. She offered professional advice: to develop your “writer’s muscle” by having a “daily practice.” Hers is to get up every morning, grab a coffee, and open a notebook, she revealed. Appropriately, Monday was Joan Didion’s birthday; Smith and Shanahan played Bob Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings” for the writer. “When I think of dark glasses, I think of Joan Didion and Bob Dylan,” she said. In response to an audience question, she spoke about the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was young, revealing that they are in each other’s lives “but she’s very private.” Answering another inquiry, she said, “Michigan is where I had the saddest and most beautiful times of my life. I cherish them all.”

In her eighth decade, Smith is just getting better and more appreciated. She is on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, with the headline “The Radical Hope of Patti Smith.” Her voice is more assured, rich, and beautiful than ever. She and Shanahan delivered a stunning version of their 2004 song “Peaceable Kingdom.” But probably my favorite moment of the night was when he goaded her into singing, a capella, a holiday chestnut from her childhood by the Ray Coniff Singers. Roll the tape.

Speaking of Patti Smith cover stories, the first one I wrote was published 27 years ago by The Village Voice.

Talking ‘Bout Women and Music

Britney Spears. The Grammys. Lady Gaga. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Women and music has been a hot topic lately, and I’ve been talking about it. Agence France-Presse interviewed me about the Grammy nominations. The Guardian asked me about Gaga. And Newspoint 360 talked to me about a bunch of stuff, see video below.

 

The Problem with 1/12th: Armchair Art Walk Talk

On March 4, I took part in the San Pedro Armchair Art Walk. Following are the remarks I prepared on Women’s History Month, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Women Who Rock, and the problem with tokenism. You can watch the video with slideshow here. I was joined by two brilliant artists, Anne Daub and Monica Orozco.

I want to thank Linda Grimes, Sharyl Holtzman, and the San Pedro Waterfront Arts District for putting together this event. First Thursdays is one of my favorite things to do here in Pedro, and I can’t wait to be able to do it in person again: lobster rolls from the lobster truck, or sushi at Senfuku, wine and snacks and great art at Arnie and Ray’s gallery, all the galleries and restaurants and trucks and people. But I’m glad we have this to tide us over until those good times return.

Like all of us I’m sure, I have mixed feelings about Women’s History Month, because of course, half of the planet should get more than 1/12^th of the year. But the fact is, we don’t. Women, like people of color, get disproportionately ignored the other 11 months of the year, so we better shout our achievements every second of the month of March, and keep shouting until it’s women’s history year, decade, century and millennium.

Interestingly, 1/12^th is almost exactly the fraction of artists who are women who have been inducted into the rock’n’roll hall of fame since it was founded in 1986. It’s actually less than that: 7.63 percent. These appalling figures are why we need recuperative efforts such as Women’s History Month, or books about Women Who Rock: To set the record straight by shining a spotlight on the legions of women who get left out of the institutions, the history books, the archives, the museums, the playlists, the algorithms. Uplifting female musicians has been a mission for me ever since I was just a kid and heard Patti Smith singing about the sea of possibilities and Poly Styrene shouting Oh bondage, up yours! I created this book to celebrate what I call this rhythm movement, a century of female artists making great, glorious, gutsy music – some of them in the rock hall, most of them not. I hired dozens of women writers and artists to create portraits of these sheroes in words and in ink; here are a few examples . If you want to buy this book, it’s available here in Pedro at the Corner Store and the shop next door to it as well as the Cabrillo Aquarium Gift shop. And of course on Amazon.

But it’s important not just to celebrate women, but also to continually point out the way they are systematically disenfranchised, ignored, abused, and silenced by a male-dominated society and its institutions. We can’t stop with the ghettoization of dedicated history months; we need to be heard every month. That’s why for 10 years, in multiple articles, wielding statistics, graphs, historic examples, and suggested solutions, I have been documenting the Rock Hall’s abominable gender record. And I’m happy to say that in 2021, they listened, and acted. Women make up almost a quarter of the nominees announced last month, which granted, is not parity – but it’s three times better than 7.63 percent. Of course, these nominees – including Kate Bush, Mary J. Blige, and the Go-Go’s — have to get inducted. And the rock hall has 34 years of manhandling music history to make up for: the fact that every inductee gets a vote skews the rock hall voting body male. If every female act nominated – and only those acts – were inducted, the total percentage of women in the hall would rise more than one percentage point, to 8.73 percent – slightly more than 1/12^th. That’s the best case scenario. In 2020, only one woman was inducted, Whitney Houston. As Janet Jackson said in 2019, Induct more women.

The industry, press, hall of fames, and history books have a long legacy of treating women musicians like shit. And they are increasingly getting called out on it. In 1994, the Grammys temporarily dropped the Best Female Rock Vocal category because they couldn’t think of any women to nominate for it – no PJ Harvey, no Ani Difranco, no Melissa Etheridge, no Kristin Hersh. A group called Strong Women in Music protested that year. In 2018, the Grammys were denounced for their failure to award women artists. When the Recording Academy president responded women need to “step up” to the plate – as if it was women’s fault their work was being shafted – he was forced to step down. This year, all the nominees in the Best Rock Performance category are female or female-fronted. That’s progress, and it’s progress caused not by women stepping up, but by women speaking up and demanding change.

So in March, we celebrate history, her story, our stories, but now and all year, we must also march, and protest, and demand not just our 8 percent, but our 50 percent. In the rock halls, in the history books, on the airwaves, on the streaming services, in our ears and in our hearts.

Anthems and change: A Turn It Up! IG Live event with Shana Redmond

Join UCLA Professor Shana Redmond and I in conversation June 9 about the soundtracks of social change, from “We Shall Overcome” to “Fight the Power” to “U.N.I.T.Y.” to “Alright.” A Turn It Up! Tuesday Instagram Live eventa!

Turbulence at the Rock Hall

Whitney Houston is the only woman being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 2020.

In her 1998 piece Turbulent, Shirin Neshat juxtaposes two videos. In the first, a man in a white button-down shirt stands in front of an auditorium of other men. He turns to face the camera and sings a work by the Persian poet Rumi, accompanied by string instruments that are not filmed. It’s a powerfully emotive performance – a series of ululated exclamations — rewarded by a round of applause; the man takes his bows.

In the second, a woman in a black hijab stands in front of an empty theater and softly begins moaning. The camera rotates to her face slowly. She sings wordless scales, with the only accompaniment the amplified echo of her own voice, panting and bell-like and screeching – a one-woman emotive cacophony. When she finishes, there is no applause. There is no one there to clap.

Turbulence answers the old riddle: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? The woman, Iranian vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim, makes a mighty sound – as have the other women, across time and space, who have sung their songs in the privacy of their showers, their bedrooms, their walks, their woods because no one could, or would, hear them. Neshat was directly commenting on the fact that in her birth country of Iran, women were not allowed to sing in public after the Islamic revolution (they now can sing only in limited circumstances). But I see the bold, disturbing binary depicted in Turbulent as relevant across cultures.

How many little girls have been told they should be seen and not heard? How many aspiring musicians have auditioned for A&R men – and they are almost always men – only to be asked to trade their bodies for a contract? How many women have gotten past the casting couch only to be told they’re not skinny/pretty/pale/soft/sexy enough? How many were kept off the airwaves because only one woman was allowed on the playlist – because (as one country radio consultant infamously said) they were the tomatoes in the salad, not the lettuce? How many were allowed to be representatives of feminine beauty, but only for one song, one year, before they were deemed too old? How many were recognized for the innovations – the genius — that made them not necessarily popular, but pioneers? How many are saluted as legends? Are in the Songwriters Hall of Fame? Are in the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame?

We can answer the last two questions: 31 songwriters, or 7 percent of the total body, and  — as of today’s announcement of the class of 2020 – 140 artists, or 7.68 percent.

The halls’ omissions are striking. I do not think they accurately correlate to the successes of women in music, though that’s a hard thing to quantify. They certainly do not correlate to the efforts and effects of female musicians, to the percentage of women in the world, or to any known genetic link to musical talent. What they do represent are the gendered tastes of the mostly male nominating and voting bodies that make these decisions. They are today’s version of the Shriners or Masons: bro’ societies devoted to self-perpetuation. They are patriarchies.

Which makes it all the more offensive when they insist their decisions have nothing to do with gender or race, but only with quality (as both Rock Hall Foundation CEO Joel Peresman and former Rock Hall Board chair Jann Wenner have recently said). When they say that, they tell us that Chaka Khan, Big Mama Thornton, Cher, Labelle, the Go-Go’s, Bette Midler, Celia Cruz, Selena, Bjork, Dionne Warwick, Pat Benatar, etc., etc., are not actually good, but are just women. They add insult to injury.

The halls didn’t necessarily erect the obstacles that have historically kept sisters from achieving the fame and fortune of their brothers – though many of the industry insiders who created and run the halls certainly did work for companies infamous for sexual discrimination. But by repeatedly inducting only a puny, token number of acceptable ladies, they enshrine those gags – and then say they were earned.

Look outside the industry. In your home, in your schoolyard, in your gym, around your campfire: who makes the music? Who sings the songs?

And who is listening?

Turbulent is included in Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again, an exhibit currently at the Broad museum in Los Angeles, https://www.thebroad.org/shirinneshat.

You can read my previous writing about the Rock Hall here:

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8543758/rock-roll-hall-fame-gender-racial-diversity-guest-opinion-evelyn-mcdonnell

https://longreads.com/2019/03/29/the-manhandling-of-rock-n-roll-history/

https://www.salon.com/2011/12/11/the_rock_hall_of_fames_women_problem/

 

“Music Legend”

Somehow I never posted this article about me from a British music school, which may be one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about me. Definitely the first time I’ve been called a legend.