| Jumpin said: Listening to the videos posted while working... I have a glass of whisky in me, one coffee, two teas, a bit of weed. Dionysus calls! I've been going through a bunch of the songs, and I really enjoy them! Is the theme songs that rock by women? Because I have a few - not quite on the vibe of the thread - and I'm stealing Nietzsche, but I tend to like music more on the Dionysian side, rather than the Apollonian, which metal generally falls more into - these songs probably involve a bit of both... .... And I don't know why, but I figured I'd close out the post with a a couple of 1970s classics by NYC's Joan Jett and London's X-Ray Spex: ... Hope these, or some of these, work for people. |
Any theme in my selections that you can identify is purely coincidental. It's hard to make my brain work like that. 
Well I am preferentially biased in favor of, as you say, rock by women (as is I think somewhat natural), but I don't think any more so than the rest of people here have favored rock by men. I enjoy a good amount of material from all kinds of rock styles: metal of all sorts, grunge, punk, shoegaze, rave-rock, rap-rock, ska, classical rock n' roll...I'm not too stylistically picky in truth. Not these days. When I was younger, I had a preference for punk and grunge because I really agreed with the DIY ethos and the whole anarchistic, "anyone-can-be-a-musician", democratization-of-music philosophy often attached to it, but these days I do actually miss the huge spectacle metal shows and whatnot of yesteryear now that they're no longer as much of a thing anymore too. Progressive rock is kinda the stuff I'm pickiest about. Or on the flip side, also if the song is just somebody screaming indiscernibly and nothing else from beginning to end, that gets repetitious and one-note to me pretty quickly. Those are the closest things to limits I have within the hard rock framework.
If you would like a brief tour through some of the grrrl powr semi-classics that I fell in love with back in the day though, I will supply you below. 
I was very into the riot grrl underground back in my tween and teen years. Many people don't seem to understand today what the third feminist wave it was part of was really all about. I get the whole "first wave was about the right to vote, second about equal access to the economy...what the hell were you even about??" stuff a lot. It was mainly about sexuality and achieving equality in that arena, which granted may seem a bit subjective, but it wasn't so much back then when you realize that like 40% of American women reported experiencing sexual violence. Crime rates were astronomically higher than today at the time, marital rape was legal, and the women's movement back then fought a lot for everything from lesbian visibility and validation to the first federal laws banning domestic violence and subsidizing shelters for battered women, as well for the preservation of abortion rights in light of the recent closure of most providers at the time (all subjects near and dear to my heart). Stuff like that. Or at least that was the stuff we could broadly agree on anyway. That's the heart of what it was about, at least at first; like into the mid-'90s. It was also part of a much bigger moment in the youth culture characterized by high demand for authenticity in everything from clothes (e.g. a major uptick in thrifting was seen among teens and young adults in a kind of anti-fashion wave) to television shows to music. Anyway, starting at the beginning...
Behold the very first song on the very first rock tape I ever got.
Being underground music at the time, these songs didn't have music videos or anything fancy like that attached to them. Bikini Kill and the now-iconic singer Kathleen Hanna, more than anyone else, were sorta the public face of the subgenre, owing in no small part to their association with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. They were the best-known group.
This next song of theirs -- the second one on the same album -- isn't a fun one, but it meant a lot to me.
The most iconic riot grrl song was this one. A bit cheesy by today's standards, but still catchy, authentic, and fun. Straight-up controversial back when it was new. Parents loathed this song for its explicit validation of same-sex relationships. It was always Bikini Kill's most in-demand song everywhere they played after its release and it's still easy to see why. This is the raw power of Kathleen Hanna's voice on full display!
Finally, this is footage from perhaps their most famous live performance, which was in Washington DC, drew a huge crowd, and I think captures the aura of it all well. The giant sign behind the group refers to Hanna's call for a media blackout on the part of the riot grrl movement to protest hostile and unfair news coverage.
Moving on from Bikini Kill, here's an awesome song by the Youngins you might remember from Gone Home, which remains the only video game to properly showcase and celebrate the '90s-era subgenre. (Ask me why it remains one of my all-time favorite games in perpetuity!) Does the angsty rawness not draw you in, I ask you?
There were also what have been regarded as riot grrl-adjacent songs and groups that were more mainstream and weren't formally part of the scene. For example, the X-Ray Spex, whom you posted a song from, were and are often considered an inspiration for the movement, though they were non-participants. Babes in Toyland were another such group. Below is third such example; a more mainstream group known to deploy similar themes without formally joining in the zine culture and whatnot. You'll notice that they actually had music videos. It gives you a sense of what the scene might've possibly looked like if it were above-ground like L7 was.
And now I must share a couple songs from my contemporaneous favorite band, Heavens to Betsy. It was a two-woman group. These are both from my favorite album of theirs. As one commentator has aptly put it, "If you don't feel this, you're not human".
Then the internet began to take hold and that was pretty much the end of the movement for a generation. It really destroyed the zine culture that the scene was built around. That said, riot grrl has also seen something of a revival in the last decade or so (mostly during the gender-bending 2010s). Here are a few tracks by two of my modern-day favorites in the subgenre:
This first one is a song about the experience of being groomed.
Before a quite serious internal controversy became public knowledge, GRLwood (another two-woman group) had been really one of the modern greats. Here's a song of theirs about weathering what the kids today might call your mother's internalized misogyny. If you don't have a Ph.D in women's studies, fret not because you'll get exactly what that term means by the end of this song.
Finally, a song about the gender dynamics of school shootings. And how pathetically regulated girls yes really are commonly taught to be to avoid male violence.
How to end this on a more upbeat note? ...Heee, I got it! How about Who's Got the Power? by Taocat? That should do it! Thematically appropriate and silly fun. 
That is what rock feministing looks like, so now you are aware. It's also me trying very hard to stay on-message. 
The set was chock full of their best stuff spanning the years and the audience was into it (in marked contrast to the other shows of the evening) and they themselves were amazing and gave it their all! You bet your ass I spent a good amount of time in the pit; it was the only way to go! Only thing that disappointed me was the absence of the musicians they originally collaborated with on a few of these songs. I've seen footage from some recent concerts where Poppy, for example, actually shows up and performs From Me 2 U with them live and that is more awesome than what we got, but honestly that stuff doesn't happen too often, so I wasn't counting on it. Not for an Irving stop anyway, ha ha!
