Women of the Underground: Music
Interviews by Zora Von Burden
In an age where feminism is seen as the filthiest word, any book seeking to celebrate cultural achievements in
the context of gender alone is running the gauntlet. It could be argued that the idea is reductive, that it separates
female musicians from the mass, making them into some sort of ‘Women’s Army’, but the stories of many of
the subjects herein are more than worth telling. Not simply because distaff contribution to non-mellow music
over the last four decades is still so rarely acknowledged, but because of the sheer weight of anecdotal,
ideological, inspirational (and bloody funny) material we get from (some of) these Broads.
Von Burden, a poet and writer from San Francisco, seeks to redress, to a degree, the lack of appreciation
afforded to female musicians with this series of interviews with artists from various strata of the underground
operating in genres as disparate as ska and metal-soundtracked performance art featuring vaginal omelettemaking.
I’m unsure as to what von Burden means when she says in the introduction that her subjects have “never [been]
fully acknowledged for their achievements”. All it could really mean is a lack of mainstream recognition, and
given that the women featured have wilfully remained in the margins, it’s clear that being “fully acknowledged”
is less a problem for them than it is our author.
Still, there are women here who have indeed paddled in the slipstreams and whose names will be familiar to
those outside the book’s intended audience: Pauline Black, Nina Hagen and Laurie Anderson for three. Black,
former lead singer for The Selecter is a fiercely intelligent soul, discussing the twin evils of racism and sexism
she came up against in the early ‘80s, while Hagen is as pleasingly bonkers as you’d expect (“I cling to no isms!
My religion is Embraceism today!”) As for Anderson, who’s always seemed po-faced to me, I was surprised to
find a modest, level-headed sort who can’t quite believe her luck in being fortunate enough to forge a career out
of bleeps and electronic birdsong.
But for every well-connected, former Musician-in-Residence at NASA like Anderson, there’s the real gals of the
underground – propelled from broken homes and halls of juvenilia into a hand-to-(big)mouth existence in the
rotting core of ‘70s NYC, like Adele Bertei of the Contortions, natty in her Buster-Keatonesque suits, and of
course, Lydia Lunch, Grande Dame of the musical and artistic netherworld, sourly curling her scarlet lips
around answers such as this: “This question assumes I lead with my cunt then formulate a project from it. It is
infact the exact opposite.” Lunch, musing on the origins of her worldview, very wisely pinpoints the importance
of literature in the life of every bad girl from the ‘burbs and the message of hope that shone out at her through
the raw, brutal works of Hubert Selby Junior: “Literature saved me . . . helped me comprehend that even if the
cards are stacked against you, you need to find a way to reshuffle the deck, find a new game, raise your own
stakes.”
Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground says that she never considered her gender an issue in the slightest, and
her answers are as no-nonsense and laconic as her idiosyncratic drumming style. Wanda Jackson, Queen of
Rockabilly, is still performing, a real force at 73, and then there’s Teresa Taylor, freaky drummer for ‘80s/90s
screamers Butthole Surfers, who riffs ever so amusingly on giving herself an aneurysm, catching scabies on the
tour bus, sleeping for months at a time on drum risers and living in an old beer vat in Frisco. Attagirl! Bass
players Patricia Morrison (Gun Club, The Damned, Sisters of Mercy), Mary Huff (Southern Culture on the
Skids) and Deanna Ashley (Frightwig) are clearly passionate about their chosen instruments – rhythm as a way
of life, if you will.
Unfortunately, this being the artistic world, there’s the inevitable pseuds and snobs, who at least provide an
alternative list of whose albums NOT to rush out and buy (my list of albums to most definitely rush out and buy
is pretty long after reading this book). Jarboe, alleged singer and composer with avant-noiseniks Swans airily
claims: “In my work, I have channelled the longing of human beings and the wrath of Khali.” A few questions
later, von Burden appears to be on the verge of making her excuses and leaving by asking Jarboe what she does
in her leisure time, to which she replies (through tight lips, while reclining on a divan, one imagines) “Leisure
time is rare for me. I have dinner parties. I go to art openings and carefully selected concerts.” Right. But
Jarboe’s most baffling admission, for one who describes herself and her work as “challenging” is her
fetishisisation of vulnerability (“To be truly strong, a performer [and] artist must enter into extreme
vulnerability”). If there’s a difference between that attitude and Barbara Cartland’s insistence that women could
only be truly themselves if they were ‘pliant’ and submissive, startled fauns who needed rescuing and
protecting, then I’m not sure what it is. Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle also disappoints, turning in
flinty, cold answers to perfectly intelligent questions, which is a real shame as her story is fascinating and
fearless, and she’s clearly Ms Brains Trust. But no one can hold a pom-pom to Phoebe Legere in the God
Complex cheerleader tryouts. For narcissistic (“I was always treated like a genius”), self-regarding (“no one
remembers I was the first out of the box with this shit”) and humourless (“pop is for the dumb. The underground
is for the smart.”) chutzpah, she’s top banana. While she clearly isn’t one of those dumb-arsed goons she so
loathes/pities, she doesn’t have enough wit to see what a hypocrite she is. For after saying (quite rightly) that
women waste their lives obsessing over their looks and weight she moves on to talking about how she posed for
Playboy in the ‘80s (which, for all her musical achievements, was all I knew her for prior to reading this)
because of the stupendous amount of cash offered. She doesn’t seem to realise that had she not made the most of
her own Vargas pin-up lusciousness, Uncle Hef wouldn’t have come a-knockin’ in the first place. Apropos of
this, when Von Burden asks folie Legere if her “sexy persona” has led to problems with her being taken
seriously, she snaps, “Who doesn’t take me seriously? Anyone who witnesses me playing or sees my painting or
my poetry or my videos would have to take me seriously. My photograph was printed because I am
photogenic.” Well excuse us Your Majesty!
If Legere and Jarboe (and a couple of others) had been jettisoned in favour of Kat Bjelland (Babes in Toyland),
Kira Roessler (Black Flag), Viv Albertine (Slits), Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore), Diamanda Galás and some of the
fierce, sadly missed women of ‘80s hip-hop, this book’d be a top ranker (when von Burden was conducting her
interviews, Poison Ivy was nursing Lux through the illness that killed him, hence her non-inclusion). Ultimately
though, these are minor niggles about a book which, for the most part, managed to fire me out of my post-Xmas
dinner lethargy to enthuse at semi-snoozing in-laws about its subjects. Hopefully it’s having the same effect on
back-bedroom-dwelling suburban teenagers somewhere; girls who don’t want so much to bite the hand of the
culture that’s force-feeding them, but rip the arm right off.