Feminist Friday : A Weekly Round Up for July 8, 2016

St. Vincent covered The Golden Girls theme. Sure, I will take this ethereal distraction from my otherwise mostly depressing social media feed.

Is it that there are fewer women in music than men currently or do we blame the people of power in the industry for excluding us from venues, publications, festivals, offices, and label rosters? Meaning we are here, get used to it, and hire us damn it. The Guardian has some answers. Harvard Business Review also offers some related insight to confidence of women in the workplace. Apparently unless we also radiate competence and warmth, we will continue to be looked over. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Pittsburgh has a three day music festival that celebrates women in music called Ladyfest that kicks off today.

Music fan's interest in the long player continue to wane as singles and EPs cycle back to meet our ever diminishing attention span. I don't care about trends. As a musician who loves the creative process of creating a whole album; building a story that has a beginning, middle, and end, I will ignore this data and carry on as I please.

Did you know Jean Smith from Mecca Normal is also a stunning painter? I am obsessed with her very affordable portraits.

Indie record store owners are reminded that the major labels really don't give a crap about them. This week WEA will stop selling music to accounts who purchase less than 10k a year from them. Perhaps someone can tell me, does this mean ADA who is a part of that umbrella also cutting off these smaller record stores? For those of you who aren't familiar, ADA is a music distro that is one stop shopping tha represent some of the biggest and best indie music labels in the business and the very stores who have helped to make those record labels household names will no longer be able to purchase their catalog. Yikes. The music industry desperately needs more DIY distributors. Record stores need product to sell and it is impossible to go direct with every label or band they like. They rely on distributors to help keep their stores stocked.

The transgender community deserves a better voice says Genesis P-Orridge and Laura Jane Grace. I couldn't agree more.

Backyard Report! * Once upon a time Richmond, VA had a legendary large brick building called Garbers filled with band practice spaces spread over many floors. Our local creative community suffered a serious blow recently when it was announced the building was sold and was going to become condos. All bands renting a space there have been asked to vacate the premises. Our city lacks affordable practice spaces so more than 30 (I bet closer to 50 band) have lost their rehearsal spaces this month and now there is a small army of talent now looking for new places to call home. Local musician and filmmaker Allison Apperson (of the band Hot Lava) is working on a short documentary on this important piece of Richmond's music history. My band Positive No called this space home for the first three years of our existence and nearly all of the music we have released to date was written and worked out in a room there. * I can't get enough of GIRLS ROCK! RVA.

Nylon has selected 5 female fronted bands they think you should know about.

Enjoy visiting this LEGO record store created by the legendary artist Coop.

My favorite on the planet Sheila B is taking her act on the road. Europe, you have no idea how lucky you are.

LA Weekly has published a story on women smashing misogyny in the music industry. Behind the scenes there is a growing network of us coming banding together in person and on social media in private groups to help bring about change and support each other when sexism strikes which as you can imagine is a daily event. No more secret keeping. We are naming names and calling situations out in an effort to protect each other from those who abuse or oppress us.

Erykah Badu is donating concert funds to Detroit's rape kit process.

There is a Classical music tribute entitled Sing Her Name that commemorates women black women impacted by racial justice. #BLACKLIVESMATTER

I could look at Rock and Roll fashion portraits from the past all day long. Punks! Goths! Disco Queens!

Want to feel insecure about who you were as a 17 year old? Lindsey Jordan from Snail Mail is the kind of talented young musician that is decades ahead of her peers and she has only just begun. And I thought I was accomplished as a teen for learning how to drive stick shift.

Why can't electronic music festivals give us some love? Owning just  3% of a talent roster is not acceptable.

Big is Beautiful!

Beth Ditto of the band The Gossip is releasing a line of plus-sized clothing coming this Feb. To kick things off she is selling a limited edition t-shirt that is a collaboration with long time friend of her's Jean Paul Gaultier (see the shirt below).

Yé-Yé Girls and X-Girl

Once upon a time Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head) and Daisy Von Furth started a clothing line called X-Girl that was a ying of sorts to X-Large's yang (one of the original X-Large owners was Mike D of the Beastie Boys).

Their small store opened in the early '90s on Lafayette Street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood and across the street from X-Large. One of the highlights to the X-Girl brand was that artist Mike Mills created much if not all of X-Girl's iconic graphics and shirt designs. Limited posters of his gorgeous brand work were also available for purchase and I think of anything I regret not purchasing back in the day, it is these pieces of art.

The general look of the X-Girl clothing line was androgynous and simple. The idea was to produce timeless classics that featured clean lines and were form fitting compared to that time period's grungy counterpart. To be as accurate as possible, it was practically the Mac store of '90s fashion. The business was short lived as the shop closed at the end of the '90s and then the line was sold to Japanese company that still produced it to this day.

I would be lying if I said X-Girl clothes fit anyone above a size 10 but that is a different story all together. This believe it or not brings us to the subject of French Pop musiccalled yé-yé sung by girls and young women in the 1960s.

This genre of music was said to be inspired by The Beatles and their hooky line "She loves me YEAH YEAH YEAH". The fashion sense of these yé-yé girls (tasteful Euro-mod) were also said to be an influence on the X-Girl fashion line and often playing on the small TV inside the store was a video compilation of these original yé-yé  music videos. I had several friends that worked there, including my then boyfriend. As they were closing up the shop some nights, I would sit on the bench waiting and watching these campy and totally intoxicating videos. This was my introduction to French Pop and I have collected it obsessively ever since.

It should be noted that this genre of music spread like wildfire all over the world so there a are ton of groovy girl records from the '60s to check out from many other countries too.

Here are the kind of videos that were on the X-Girl VHS collection:

Read more about X-Girl here.