Only 10 songs on the hottest 100 list were made by a band who had any women in it, ever (if we include Massive Attack, who, technically, only ever had female guest vocalists); the highest of these was placed at no. 20 (The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”). The only two songs with female lead vocals are the two by Massive Attack. Finally, no solo female artists at all made the list.
John Gunders has some speculations as to why this happened at The Memes of Production:
the absence of women from recent, mainstream rock music is troubling. I want to argue that there are two, interconnected reasons: the first has to do the masculinist nature of the “rock myth”, and the second is the increasing commercialisation of what we used to call “alternative music”.
There’s a third factor. As Mel Campbell argues at The Enthusiast, these sort of lists form part of a self-reinforcing cycle which diminishes the presence of female and women fronted bands on radio playlists.
Bah to JJJ.
Elsewhere: Rosanna Ryan.
Update: Lauredhel at Hoyden on the Hack segment, who also has lots of links in her post to other commentary and discussion.
Who votes?
Ten years ago, every youngster I knew who voted was female.
Compare the list to the one twenty years ago: Sugarcubes at number 9, and Go-Betweens at 11. But then that’s a completely different JJJ.
I thought it was kind of weird as well but not sure you can blame JJJ for the way the punters voted.
As much as JJJs playlist has narrowed over the years, the 100 was even more narrow and at times blander – Foo Fighters at such a high position says a lot.
In light of the recent Miles Franklin outrage and now the totally masculinist PM’s History Prize, what is happening in this country?
Geoff Honnor has it. It’s hardly JJJ’s fault for the way that their listeners voted.
@3 – Geoff, in the link to Mel Campbell’s piece I cited, she wrote:
Tastes don’t spring out of the earth like mushrooms. At the most basic, the more exposure a song gets, the more likely people will like it. So I think JJJ’s own programming must factor into this result.
I think we should campaign the government to enforce a 50% quota of female generated content on all radio playlists and in any top 100 lists. And then we should mandate that all school children listen to at least 50% female music. This can only be achieved by setting up an independent commission, government financed, probably called something like the Step Up Music for Independent New-age Girls (SUMFING), which will monitor the mainstream and report via press releases from some university somewhere. Ultimately this should prove that chicks rock just as hard as men, but in their own uniquely feminine and empowering way. Any one with me?
Hilarious, dude. You’re the new Andrew Bolt in the right wing humour stakes.
“Bah to JJJ”? You what? You’re blaming their programming for the perceived problems of an entire industry? :/
I wonder what the gender breakdown of their Unearthed program is like, when compared to the pool of applicants.
Kim, the only song on the top 20 of that list that Triple J would have played at all in the last 3-5 years was The Nosebleed Section by the Hilltop Hoods.
If you want to critique JJJ based on the contents of a Hottest 100, the most recent annual example might be more pertinent.
The influence of radio is waning (touring and the internet have taken over). I’ve left JJJ way behind in favour of the internet and keeping my ear to the ground
(I’m old now so I only listen to 2BL – ABC Sydney).
There is plenty of great rock action by women outside the narrow confines of mersh radio. I don’t particularly care what the mainstream thinks.
The point is, Rob, that a particular emphasis on some kinds of music forms a listening or taste culture which goes beyond what’s currently or recently on playlists.
Note – contrary to what some people seem to think (through the tried and trued method of jumping to conclusions unwarranted by what’s written), I’m not suggesting JJJ is teh evil or whatever. Just that there are a lot of factors which go into the formation of tastes which create these sort of exclusions.
I’d suggest that people read the linked posts.
@13 – Shaun, onya!
There are certainly lots of female acts which get lots of gigs, and you’re quite right to suggest that people are following all sorts of bands they hear in all sorts of places that aren’t mainstream FM radio. But there’s still a big nexus between mainstream radio and the economics of the music biz and returns to artists, so this stuff does matter (for the moment anyway).
I wonder to what extent the rush of young female artists to the whole “skank with bling” stereotype that has become dominant in the hiphop culture has drained the talents of female musical artistry?
It will. They are likely to continue to play a mix comprised largely of male vocals because that’s what their audience obviously wants to hear.
They’re a popular radio station that make money by giving their listeners what their listeners want to hear. What kind of business model, and for that matter what kind of entertainer compromises what their audience clearly wants in an attempt to prove a point?
Greatest ‘of all time’ lists like this do tend to feature a hearty helping of sixties and seventies music, and while I could think of some pretty notable female omissions even from that era, a hell of a lot of the big ones are by bands who were all guys.
That said, music tastes may be blanding down in general. There is a fairly narrow blokey rock scene, and a fairly narrow blokey hip hop scene, and yeah both get a fair run on JJJ. On the other hand, in total, and counting the other stuff they play (eg. the emerging revival of fizzy pop, make of it what you will), there probably isn’t a huge lack of female performers on the station’s playlist, just speaking of ‘current’ music.
The ‘all time’ lists tend to be much of a muchness; it’s similar to what I’d expect to see in a Q magazine listing of the same. Some big head-scratching omissions, but then, a limit of 100 songs and the base list of stuff that will never fail to be included (A Day in the Life, Stairway to Heaven etc). They probably should have a Top 200 of All Time.
I think we need to start a drinking game with this thread.
Skull every time you see “politically correct”, “Get over it” or an EvPsych reference.
Please refer to my previous comments. If you think you’re making a knock down argument, it sometimes helps to actually understand what’s being put forward.
I was thinking along not dissimilar lines, though I’d frame it somewhat differently, i.e. that rather than there being a rush of young female artists to the “skank with bling” stereotype there has been a rush of A&R hacks, record companies, mainstream radio programmers, etc., to sign up young female artists who for whatever reason decide to conform to that stereotype, and that those female artists with the vocal, writing and/or instrumental skills to record genuinely memorable songs aren’t getting the record deals, radio/video exposure, etc.
@19, we’ll be pissed very quickly, I think, Helen!
Amen Paul.
Outing myself a little to link to my suggestions for 20 songs that could/should have made the list, in response to the reaction that “there just aren’t any songs by women that fit the style of who was voting”.
After posting, I kept thinking of more, and I’m sure everyone would have different suggestions.
Kim, I suppose that my view is that the musical tastes of the voters in this poll were probably formed in the early 1990s, where for better or for worse Nirvana, Radiohead and Oasis (???) were on permanent rotation of Triple JJJ of that era.
If I may pick up on one point raised in the the Enthusiast piece you mentioned:
There’s an interesting issue here – whether pop music made by women is, as a whole, regarded as unserious compared to the oh-so-deeply meaningful and serious work of young men with guitars (or two turntables and a microphone). And I reckon there’s a case to be made, though the examples aren’t great ones (Lady Gaga in particular has received a lot of critical recognition, I believe).
Perhaps music by women that is actually any good tends to be appreciated by an older demographic than JJJ’s?
This could of course tie in with the fact that to be ‘marketable’ to youngsters, a woman must be hawt, and this runs somewhat at odds to a genuine concern for quality.
I think if RRR or [insert local equivalent] did such a poll, it’d be much less of a sausage fest.
I blame Elvis. Rock ‘n’ roll has a tradition of charged sexuality, leaving Elvis cut off at the waist on Ed Sullivan and the Beatles chased by screaming teeny boppers. While male rockers capitalised on this image, women were far more demure, for the most part, if largely because intelligent, empowered women are often more threatening to male ego whereas the same qualities in a man are more aspirational for other men while at the same time attractive to women. So boys and men voting on these lists aren’t picking Chrissie Hynde or Janis Joplin, and neither are girls and women.
JP, you may notice that Triple J is part of the ABC and is thus funded by the Australian government, and has charter responsibilities to fulfill.
@15 Thanks Kim. I agree that commercial radio can help the new artists but that is becoming less and less a factor. The majors may like commercial radio but the smaller labels and artists are becoming adept at utilising more modern forms of promotion.
@16 Scarlett, that only holds if hip-hop (or the “skank and bling image”) and commercial music is the only avenue of artistic expression available to women. As noted, I believe there is plenty of good stuff outside the mainstream. Just depends on your tastes.
Depends what sort of music we’re talking about, FDB. Someone commented on one of the threads about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s not as if there’s not rock and thrash written and performed by women and there are some Brisbands in that category which get lots of gigs around the show.
I think you’re probably right about RRR – I’m sure there’d be a different result from a ZZZ poll too (and they do have a younger demographic).
All this goes back to the JJJ point.
As an aside…
Just to give credit where credit is due, Elizabeth Fraser and Shara Nelson weren’t just guest vocalists on Massive Attack’s Teardrop and Unfinished Sympathy, they also co-wrote these songs.
There was a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s, yet no Aretha Franklin, Shania Twain, kd lang……
Anna #24, some possible additions to your list.
Do Re Mi – Man Overboard
Falling Joys – Lock It, Natural Scene
Club Hoy – Not Like That
The Waifs – Bridal Train
Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now
Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Mendocino, Kiss & Say Goodbye
Alannis Morrisette – You Oughta Know
Pat Benatar – We Belong
Janis Ian – At 17, When The Party’s Over
Johnette Napolitano (with Concrete Blonde) – Joey, Dance Along The Edge; (with Pretty & Twisted) – Ride
Isis – Treat Yourself Gently
I’m not sure why there’s a ‘bah’ aimed at JJJ, perhaps Kim wants to clarify.
Reading Mel Campbell’s article, she notes herself that JJJ is well balanced in terms of gender and contributors / presenters.
I’d also note as someone who’s been listening to JJJ for sometime that there’s certainly not a devaluing of female artists during the everyday broadcasting of the station. For eg, female artists / females in bands I can think of off the top of my head that have been or are heavily promoted and lauded on JJJ include:
Regina Spektor
The Gossip
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Sarah Blasko
Florence and the Machine
Little Birdie
Ladyhawke
Lilly Allen
Peaches
La Roux
Lisa Mitchell
School of Seven Bells
– that’s just off the top of my head, but you get the picture; many of these have had the feature album for JJJ as well, getting heavy play & coverage.
I must say I was surprised at the hottest 100 of all time being so male dominated, precisely because female artists have generally been well presented on the station. For eg, no Hole, PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Bjork I would have expected to feature given their long-standing popularity on JJJ.
It was noticeable that a few contemporary tracks kept in that I doubt would make an industry critics ‘hottest 100′ list; also noticeable was the lack of Australian artists. Apparently as just one eg Paul Kelly has never written anything we’d all consider classic.
And to give JJJ their final due, their Hack program is covering the ‘gender debacle’!
No Blondie!! Clearly Gen-Y are just philistines.
Aren’t bloggers not supposed to care what mainstream media gatekeepers tell us is, in this case, good music?
Could it be that making lists of top ten or 100 things is a male obsessive thing? (I’m thinking the whole Hi Fidelity “Top 10 things” that drove my partner nuts when she watched it.)
I was truly amazed by this. I’d heard all week about the lack of female representation, either in the final list or in the initial suggestions provided, but when I went through them all and saw only three bands with a single female member (The White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins and The Pixies)? That I was not expecting.
Music is a matter of personal taste, and it’s undoubtedly the case that just as I tend to prefer music by female artists for purely visceral reasons, so too will others tend to prefer music by male artists. I suspect this outcome is just as much a matter of canonisation though, about the fact that when we’re asked to pick the 10 Best Songs of All Time, most people (including, no doubt, me if I’d voted) are going to pick some that have already been critically acclaimed. And the existing Best Ever Music canon, like most canons, is predominently male.
Songs I think could have easily made the list
Man Overboard – Do Re Mi
Boys In Town – Divinyls
Hieronymous – Clouds
V for Vendetta – Bughouse
Brass In Pocket – Pretenders
Germ Free Adolescents – X-Ray Specs
Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie & The Banshees
I’m in a “wot s/he said” mood – for Anna@24 and Robert@25, but especially for Shaun@13.
20 years ago, tired of the FM104 boganocracy, I turned to alternatives to discover interesting music – first via ZZZ and a little later via JJJ. Now the Internet is available, these radio stations aren’t as necessary. Nor am I likely to find much “new” music on JJJ (I don’t know about ZZZ).
At the moment, I’ve got JJJ in the background. I can’t help how similar the music is to 10 years ago. It’s easy listening, in a way.
The Runaways – Cherry Bomb
Kate Bush – Sat In Your Lap
Catpower – Crossbones Style
Concrete Blonde – God is a Bullet
L7 – Pretend We’re Dead
Male rock music tends to be louder, thereby drawing more electricity, and contributing to climate change.
I do wonder whether female artists are more polarising or less universal in their appeal. I’m a bloke, and I enjoy listening to quite a few female artists (up to L in my iPod, I have Tori Amos, Bond, Dresden Dolls, Fiona Apple, Goldfrap, Kimya Dawson, Lacuna Coil, Lucinda Williams) in addition to male artists, not because they’re female, but because I like the music (admittedly there are a lot more male artists, but I don’t think on the whole I prefer male or female artists). My (female) partner however generally doesn’t like music with female vocalists (or, perhaps more accurately, she doesn’t like a lot of the female artists that I do), whereas she likes most of the same male artists as me.
I realise that anecdote is not the singular of data, but you would think that, as far as popular music goes, if female artists sold as well as male artists, they’d be a lot more of them. After all, popular music these days is strictly a corporate-controlled commercial venture – talent plays little role in who ends up in the charts.
Anyway, as far as social research goes, all the Hottest 100 tells us is that people who make the effort to vote in the Hottest 100 tend to have a preference for male artists. I don’t know what proportion of the Triple J listening population voted, let alone what proportion of the music buying population voted, but I guess it’s a long way from a representative sample.
Many more suggestions for inclusion at the hoydens’.
Personally, I can’t believe no-one here’s yet mentioned MISSY HIGGINS.
WTF Larvatus Prodeo, lift your game.
OK, how about:
Steve Nicks – Rhiannon, Landslide, Gold Dust Woman, Storms, Sisters Of The Moon
Heart – Magic Man
Suzanne Vega – Luka
Carly Simon – It Was So Easy
Joan Armatrading – Drop The Pilot
Toxic Shock (featuring the ABC’s Fran Kelly) – Let’s All Bleed
Hrm, interesting topic here. I agree that you cannot blame Triple J for how people voted.
People are blaming playlists and demographics and record companies for the lack of gender equality, but I don’t see it that way. The voting pool was wide open for people to elect any artist they wanted for the hottest 100, including those of any gender, race, nationality. There was equal opportunity to elect gender diverse bands and artists. In other words, there was equal opportunity.
This is a bit of a jumbled mess, but my initial opinion is that music as art is about emotion and inherently inclined to issues of inclusion/exclusion. When I think of my own favourite songs, I don’t feel that the gender of the peoples who performed the music is even relevant – I look for melodies, lyrical content, and other stuff that elucidates my own perspective of life.
Perhaps a fairer analysis to to look for the common themes that emerge from the content/perspectives that the songs and artists who made the list and see how these topics relate to gender issues and issues of exclusion/inclusion. When reading the message, do you consider the paper it was written on?
I’m not saying that the programming on Triple J should remain as it is – and I agree that it is somewhat male dominated. I’m saying that when it comes to music, people do and will make their own choices.Indeed, I feel that many of the people who listen to Triple J would probably be the people most conscious to regimes of gender exclusion. Thus I think it is slightly unfair to call those who listen to the Jays and voted in this poll as ‘preferring sexist rock’ as Mel’s article has done.
Saying all that, despite me not voting for them, I’m disappointed that no Fleetwood Mac made the Hottest 100 list! I will redress that the next time the poll comes around.
But Liam is Missy Higgins a women? or a girl-band?
I don’t think Triple J should be singled out, or particular age groups. If I remember correctly, similar comments were made about ABC TV’s My Favourite Album, which was also almost entirely a celebration of male creativity. Presumably the sample for that survey was broader than Triple J listeners.
Lift your game indeed.
Patti Smith has not been mentioned either. Oh dear.
and while I’m here, Abbe May tour dates, go see her, ’cause she’s great:
16 Jul 2009 8:00 EP LAUNCH @ JIVE ADELAIDE, South Australia
17 Jul 2009 9:00 EP LAUNCH @ THE EVELYN Melbourne, Victoria
19 Jul 2009 8:00 EP LAUNCH @ THE ANNANDALE SYDNEY, New South Wales
24 Jul 2009 8:00 Abbe May Solo, Supporting Gutter Twins @ ATHENAEUM Melbourne, Victoria
http://www.myspace.com/abbefuzz
Haven’t listened to the J’s for ages. Too soft, too safe: some of my favourite genres
Goth and Metal
Nightwish
After Forever
Emilie Autumn
Epica
Lacuna Coil
Delain
Industrial
Hanzyl and Gretyl
Angelspit
Android Lust
Kirlian Camera
KMFDM
Kidneythieves
Pzycho Bitch
Nocturne
Goth – Darkwave – Ambient
Dead Can Dance
Black Tape for a Blue Girl
Collide
Portishead
Dresden Dolls
Then there’s electronica, indipop, great african music and on it goes
I’m not so het up about the top 100 – but jeez, I wish they’d stretch their listeners
Oh why are you getting so upset? The only poll that counts was the 2007 feferal election which should have been won by Mr John Howard.
There’s no need for a list. There is only one name of note. See above.
Maybe if women made decent music then people would vote for them.
It’s not our fault they have less talent than men.
Ok whatever, you may have noticed that a whole heap of songs that were on the list havent been played by triple J for years. And the vast majority of those that still get played are only played occasionally. Its got nothing to do with their current playlist but with the tastes of the people who voted. People who are clearly drawing their influences from a wider range of sources than just triple J.
I don’t think I would be straying too far off topic if I were to announce that this argument about the respective merits of the renditions of We Belong by Pat Benatar and Tori Amos has been resolved in Pat’s favour by this performance. [NB: Pat's doesn't do her stuff until 4 minutes into the clip.]
Piece of rock trivia: I was the drummer for Fran’s Toxic Shock. But the wonderful “Let’s all Bleed” was another band. Does anyone remember? Google gives me nada.
The Eurythmics! (How soon we forget…)
Kim,
This is an interesting observation. In my teens in the 90s I was very into the alternative music scene and there always seemed to me to be far more women in Mainstream Popular Music than Alternative music. I’m not sure why this is. When I think of the “alternative” music JJJ used to play in the 90s, there really wasn’t very much of a female presence at all. Siouxsie, Johnette, Toni Halliday and other alternative female artists in the 90s who had huge airplay overseas rarely got played on JJJ.
From memory, the only Australian bands with a female vocal presence that were regularly played on high rotation were Magic Dirt. Occasionally Courtney Love and L7, Bjork and Garbage were played but apart from that, I really can’t remember much female vocal airplay on JJJ in the 90s.
In the last few years the explosion of emo/alternative has led to a proliferation of male only bands. Many of these bands have a large female audience but these alternative young women seem to be reluctant to embrace female vocalists – with the notable exception being Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
JJJ also now seems to play far more American and American influenced alternative music than British/European alternative music. In the American context, female vocalists seem to be much more associated with Mainstream Popular music rather than alternative music – which is dominated by male aggressive bands or alternative emo “boy bands”.
So, I think that the lack of female artists represented is possibly more due to the influence of American and American-influenced alternative music on JJJ rather than industry gender-bias per se. British and European alternative music has a much stronger female representation IMHO.
C’mon – that poll and it’s results is utter inanity produced by a handful of dullards whose reference point to music is 90′s corporate altera-rock. It stupid and statistically insignificant.
Since it is a poll to ascertain the ‘best’ music surely if one was to waste time pondering on its significance then wouldn’t the question of why is the ‘best’ music the crappest music be the overwhelming elephant in the room compared to a little dung pile of gender ratios.
It’s a pretty narrow list and indicative of Australia’s white-bread, rockist tastes in music. Even the rock is not the interesting stuff.
And there’s hardly any classic rhythm and blues – no James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Staple Singers etc;
If you’re going to have four or five blokes with guitars, you have to have Robbie Robertson and the Band, surely.
And what about great women performers like Patti Smith or Lucinda williams or Emmylou Harris??
errr, Stevie Wonder is in there.
Myriad’s points at 34 are most pertinent to me – there’s a very substantial mismatch between the voted list and the normal JJJ playlist, to the point where the list looks almost like something Triple M listeners could have produced (barring the lack of Chisel, heh). The problem seems to me to be related to who voted, and that has a lot to do with it being an online poll. And I’ll back the list-obsessive tendencies of male music fans as one explanatory factor, for sure
That said, having ‘smells like teen spirit’ at number one led me to suspect the whole thing was a bad practical joke. Don’t even get me started on Joy Division…
Maybe if women made decent music then people would vote for them.
It’s not our fault they have less talent than men.
Antonio, they played a fair bit of Polly Jean back in the day, I think…I’ve never been much of a JJJ listener though.
Yeah, the more I think about it Grumphy the weirder it is – even sticking to the fairly narrow ‘alternative’ category and the dominance of 90s music, where was Portishead? Garbage? Eurythmics? L7?
I don’t know why it happened, but I don’t think JJJ actively encouraged it. Even the very ‘light-weight’ breakfast team this morning commented on it in puzzlement this morning.
But I also think as others have pointed out, as a poll it’s pretty meaningless, and I thought in some ways a bit tacky for JJJ. When I first heard it advertised they were talking of how it had been 20 years of the hottest 100, and now they wanted to mark that with an ‘all time’ list, and I thought they meant -people picking from those 20 years of lists, not ‘everything’.
If they had got people to trawl the historical lists and come up with a 100 best for the last 20 years it would have been more authentic & relevant to the culture & history of JJJ. As an ‘all time’ list it has no weight.
Down and Out, I’m surprised you bothered to bite.
Can’t see your link here at work but will look forward to seeing your riposte at home in a bit.
What about Carol King FFS? How long was ‘Tapestry’ in the charts, 1000 years or something.
From a quick squiz there seems to be only two female entries on the 2008 Classic 100: No. 55 – Fandango by Ann Boyd, and No. 77 – Russian Rag by Elena Kats-Chernin.
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic100/chamber/100list.htm
Bah to Classic FM
Can I get a shout-out for the producers?
Linda Perry (remember 4 Non Blondes?) is the producer responsible for some of the absolutely massive pop mega-hits of the last decade by female singer/songerwriters. (Think Pink, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and many others…)
They might not always be up-front, or topping anodyne charts, but teh wimmin are still rockin’ out in the music biz!
Just sayin’
BTW: I haven’t seen the list, but if Leonardo’s Bride Even when I’m sleepingisn’t on it, heads should roll.
Down and Out in Saigon, my absolute favourite song.
@#63 PJ Harvey! You are right. Too bad her latest stuff has been derivative shite.
I wonder if people were polled about their fav songs, rather than songs they consider to be ‘the best’, whether you’d produce a much more varied and interesting list. I think that ppl are trying to show their ‘hipness’ by voting for songs that they think are popularly and generally regarded as the greatest. There’s a certain amount of pride in picking the winners.
Paradoxically if we had a special program celebrating women’s music or women in music, it would probably serve to reinforce the (false) notion that women’s music is lesser/separate/different from men’s.
triplejWe’ll be talking about the #hottest100 gender imbalance today on @triplejhack . 5:30PM. Have your say!
Just letting folks know if they’re interested.
Voting for Foo Fighters is showing how ‘hip’ you are?
/head explodes
I think the problem is triple j’s demographic. one poster said “maybe younger listeners like male music”. The fact of the matter is the demographic of triple J is the GEN X male. As much as they try and get younger people to listen they’re all tuned to more mainstream stations.
Triple J actually plays a lot of female artists on their rotations, but when these gen Xers voted they didn’t think of any songs made in the last 10 years as ideas. The top 20 is dominated by songs that aren’t from triple J’s stated 18-25 demographic’s time.
The vote reflects what a gen x male thinks. Nothing more, nothing less.
@73
since a lot of peoples musical tastes freeze at what they were into when they were 15 years old – 90′s alternarock wouldn’t necessarily be Gen X picks – maybe older Y’s and young X’s. Hunners & Collectors isn’t in the top10
Just had a look through my acquisitions for the last 12 months:
Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career
The Gossip: Music For Men
Sonic Youth: The Eternal
Bat For Lashes: Two Suns
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It’s Blitz!
Fever Ray: Fever Ray
Jenny Lewis: Acid Tongue
The Submarines: Honeysuckle Weeks
Duffy: Rockferry (don’t laugh – it’s good!)
That’s out of 22 albums. I never thought my music would be more politically correct than JJJ.
Zan’s response on the history pages that got changed was pretty weak imo. Even if you don’t think the history page had that much of an influence on the voting, why not just admit you got it wrong, something clearly indicated by the fact that the pages were changed!
I wonder to what extend women who are competent musicians tend to move to more popular music over time and thus become ineligible in the minds of “alternative” fans? Sarah Mclachlan and Alanis Morissette both cranked over from alternative to pop and raked in the dollars, but I suspect have so irritated the JJJ community that few would consider voting for them.
The US prettification problem is also important – look at the artwork on Shawn Colvin’s and Suzanne Vega’s first two albums for what happens when women move into the machine, for example. And again, both went pop… possibly more important for women where the pressure to conform is much greater. The UK is IMO more tolerant of non-trad women (or just has a wider gamut of women in music to choose from).
Perhaps this reflects the music played when JJJ had it’s greatest reach. The station only started in 1974 as JJ and went national in the late eighties (according to wikipedia.) Given it would have taken time to develop it’s identity and listener base it wouldn’t surprise me if the music on the ‘greatest 100 all all time’ was focused on music of the late 80′s-90′s as that is when the most ‘triple j listeners’ would have first been listening to the station.
I am basing these comments on the songs mentioned here, i wouldn’t care to look at the actual list, JJJ has for a few years been quite irrelevant to me.
Also someone mentioned Smells Like Teen Spirit as being undeserving of being number one. I think this song’s reputation has suffered from being over used more than any other. It’s worth mentioning that out of all the songs of the late 80s/early 90s it would have to be the most well known IMHO.
stop dissing on hip-hop, pop rather is what you should be criticising. I found that the hottest 100 was just as devoid of hip-hop as it was of women, it is very ignorant to perceive hip-hop as being as narrow as “skanks with bling”
Naps, Sturgeon’s Law applies to indie rock, hip-hop, punk, ska, ragtime, indie balladeers…you name it.
Maybe if women made decent music then people would vote for them. It’s not our fault they have less talent than men.
Update: Lauredhel at Hoyden on the Hack segment, who also has lots of links in her post to other commentary and discussion.
The first song is ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ which the website tells me revolutinized music. Revolutionized? Music?
.
Why are worried about what is obviously a composite of very pedestrian tastes?
.
Jeff Buckley has three songs on it, Bowie has one. The only decent song Buckley ever did was written by Leonard Cohen. He write hysterical sentimental tripe!
.
It is surprising that there appears to be just no song principally by a female artist. But I’m not intersted in a cross section of what the current 18-25 year olds think. After all they think it’s sexy to wear your jeans underneath your arse and that squawking like a two year old is a good look on your way out clubbing.
.
Generation Y is a catastrophe.
Changing the tone a bit, one songwriter I think is completely underrated is Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac. For some reason the things I’ve read about Fleetwood Mac seem to focus more on Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, but Christine McVie wrote so many pop gems – for example, Everywhere (not the real video!), Songbird, and others. (Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham also wrote some good ones.)
The list also reflects the lowest common denomintor aspect of such things. Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” is featured and yet it’s hardly the best song on The Boatman’s Call – “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” or “West Country Girl” anyone? Those songs break hearts.
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Speaking of which where the bloody hell is Polly Harvey?
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Oh what am I bothering for? Anyone who’d choose a Pink Floyd song, nay two Pink Floyd songs post Dark Side of the Moon has their taste in their bottom.
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Pink Floyd at their wankiest, but no Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Carly Simon, Tori Amos, Kate Bush…. Egad!
I think it’s cute that so many people think Generation Y was the electorate for that poll :- )
I reckon four things have intersected to produce the scantiness of hot chick rockers in the hottest 100 (no Def FX! Like, good grief man!).
Firstly, self-selection bias of the sample, secondly a large 28-38 thereabouts demographic cohort of JJJ, thirdly the nature of alterative-pop in the early nineties and finally the 15-20 year echo effect in music taste.
On self-selection bias in the voting sample, if you were into Marky Mark and the Funk Bunch or thought Melissa was just the name of your favourite niece – you weren’t going to be voting anytime soon. Add the Britney Spears set, any of those Boy Bands with acute melanin deficiency or African American artists that had music videos consisting of copious quantities of butt shaking, overacting and bright metallic purple eye-shadow… this wasn’t the place where those opinions would be heard.
Likewise, anyone that believed their musical taste was far too sophisticated for the hoi polloi of JJJ was never going to vote either. O’Fortuna – Carmina Burana in the Hottest 100? Ha!!
What that self-selection bias left when it comes to the pantheon of musical taste, was mainstream alternative pop – JJJ’s bread and butter.
Next up is the large chunk of people my age (34) and 5 years or so either side, that experienced JJJ going national and became long term listeners. So there’s naturally a large chunk of people that listen to JJJ and like early 90′s music.
Thirdly, although there were plenty of good female acts then, most of the big names – the big sellers in that alternative pop genre of the early to mid 90′s, just happened to be blokes. Think Seattle Sound and general Grunge, then their pommy followup a few years later with Radio Head and The Verve etc. Blokes sold albums back then because the culture of that movement.
Finally, for the last 20 years or so, there seems to be an echo in musical taste where mainstream ‘alternative’ music is the major part, but with a chaser of music from 15-20 years previously. When I was 20-22, we not only had the the usual suspects like Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Buckley and Pearl Jam on the CD player (or tape decks!) – but there was this echo of the Beatles, Bob Marley (although that was probably more to do with my geography), The Doors, Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones as well.
It doesn’t only seem to be a thing with that period – there seems to be this constant sizable minority of every generation of yoof that looks in the 15-20 year rear view mirror for a good dose of their playlists. I had a 19 year old the other day drool over my early 90′s CD collection – it’s like you get to live mainstream alternative cool twice; once when you dont know what to do with it and the next time when you couldn’t give a toss about it!
If you put all those things together – not only did a large chunk of the JJJ demographic vote for what they grew up with, but those same songs also got a vote boost from the rear view mirror set of current young’ns. That particular period was male dominated because of what mainstream alternative pop was at the time – and hence we got the results we did.
The thing I’m really surprised about isn’t the nature of the results, but the specifics – like, where the hell was Stone Temple Pilots and Hole?!?
So saying, maybe I just need to find more constructive things to navel gaze about while I’m waiting for Newspoll
seriously. we were all too busy mucking around on facebook to vote.
Possum @ 87 gets it pretty much right IMHO, especially with this:
Any list that places Massive Attack in the top 100 of anything has got some seriously strange criteria in the first place, and should be treated accordingly.
As an antidote, I prescribe Audra McDonald’s marvelous record “How Glory Goes.” You’ll thank me later.
Things that should rate in an ideal world but of course would nevah…
B-52s — “52 Girls”
Carina Round — “Paris” and/or “Lacuna”
The Fastbacks — everything on “Zucker”
Sonic Youth/Kim Gordon — “Kissability” “Star Power” and also that early one that goes “Fucking youth. Working youth.” Oh and also Kim’s hilarious karaoke version of “Addicted to Love”.
Royal Trux — “I’m Ready” and everything off of “Thank You”
But forget all these for the moment; run out and treat yourself to “How Glory Goes”. It isn’t rock, but still.
btw, can Klaus Nomi count as an honorary girl?
Can anyone point me to what is the JJJ target demographic (age, geographic, education etc) and anything that shows their actual listeners?
Do they publish any figures on what they actually do play over a year? Who sets their play lists?
In my station surfing I’ve never been held to the station for more than a song or two since it was double J on am – but maybe I don’t count.
Good discussion guys, here my perspective being a JJJ listener (from the mid 90s when it finally got to the Mid North Coast and Northern Tablelands of NSW, until the present) and a person who voted. It wasn’t until the countdown had mostly been done and people started complaining that the list had no women in it or was largely ‘white’ that gender or race even entered into my thoughts – I think this is probably a fair comment on most, if not all people who voted. Going through my actual votes, there were no women in the 10 somgs voted for but the tracks ranged from the 60s (Rolling Stones Paint it black) to 2008 (MGMT Kids – a song I firmly believe will be there in 10 years time). My ‘short’ list did have a number of women in it – MIA, Cat Power, Lamb, Cranberries, Susan Vega, Sia, Beth Orton, Dusty Springfield, The waifs, Baby Animals and Garbage. Why these songs didn’t make my final voting list was probably a case of how I felt when I finally pressed ‘Vote’ (I know for a fact that I regret not voting for Lamb – Goreki) but it didn’t make the cut anyway (I reckon it is probably the only love songs that isn’t about love lost or unrequited love that has durability and isn’t pop trash). I was surprised that some of these artists as well as others like Hole, Blondie (in particular), Missy Higgins and Sarah Blasko didn’t make the list. That said, there are very few songs in the list that I strongly think shouldn’t be there or at least in the top 2 or 300.
As for Triple J’s play list, I don’t think it’s too male orientated. AS others have mentioned, there are a heap of new young talented female artists that get a heap of air play. Sarah Blasko was last week’s feature artist) and as a welcome surprise to me, they even give Lisa Mitchell (A Aussie Idol finalist) a good run. These are far from limited examples.
I am surprised there aren’t more people concerned about the lack of Aussie talent in the list. What about the Church (Under the Milky Way), Aussie Crawl (Reckless), Ice House (Great Southern Land) are a couple of notable omissions IMO. Other surprises were the lack of electronica. There was no Chemical Bros (Hey Boy Hey Girl), Moby (Porcelain), Presets and very little Rap (Black or white (I mean where was Eminem?) and no U2 (I mean what about One? or Where the Streets have no name?).
Anyway, if nothing else, the list has got us talking about music again which is a good thing. If it makes us think of great Black, White, Female, Aussie, whatever singers/ bands,and remember songs we thought we had forgotten then I think that’s a great thing.
BTW Possum – I agree wholeheartedly with everything you have said there.
I only scanned the list, but i saw a lot of songs and artists that appear on video and console game soundtracks. the games that i have been exposed to have playlists that are dominated by male artists.
So it’s not most important, not most influential, not best crafted, and so on – it’s what is your favourite.
Michael Jackson would have voted for Smile by Charlie Chaplin. When did voting open? Would he have had time to vote? Did he use the internet?
the assumption that those who voted are older I think might be incorrect given that JJJ has been saying the average age of the voters (about 60k of them) was 21.
Haven’t seen a breakdown so the more statistical minds on here than mine I’m sure can say if this means I’m correct in thinking the voting audience was in fact quite young overall.
The amount of stereoyping and generation categorising on here is insane. Everyone has an opinion. A lot of people’s opinions differ. For the love of music who gives a shite? You want to support female artists? Get off your arse and go buy a female artist’s album. Come to think of it, you can probably do it sitting right here.
since a couple of people have suggested Do Re Mi could have been there, a recent comment from Deborah Conway:
In the 1990s, when radio play dried up, Conway was among many Australian artists from her generation bitter that their music, which hadn’t changed drastically, wasn’t considered suitable for commercial airplay. Today she is resigned to that fact and is prepared to work around it. She says she is “well past bitter”.
“I feel that it’s not my world. I occupy a different sphere. I don’t fit in anywhere. I can hear it. It wasn’t that way before Summertown. My Third Husband could have so easily fitted on the Triple J playlist, as could Exquisite Stereo. I think what pissed me off was that those decisions weren’t based on the music; they were based on something else.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25713692-16947,00.html
I’m sorry, but why are people so upset at the sexism contained within a list that just happens to lack any credibility whatsoever?
This is cringe inducing mix of good tracks, dross, and crazy omissions, and people think it would be improved by, what, the addition of Madonna and Sonic Youth in the top 20?
It’s obvious that any sort of ‘collated’ mass appreciation of pop & rock songs is now impossible, and just shouldn’t be attempted. MSM lists of the greatest albums of all time went the same way a couple of years ago—remember that ABC TV show where they decided that Jeff Buckley’s five minute career gave us a legendary CD, way better than Pet Sounds?
The real crime here is no TISM. “He’ll Never Be An Ol’ Man River” can’t even get in there? “Saturday Night Palsy”, “Defecate On My Face”, “40 Years-Then Death”, “Martin Scorsese Is Really Quite A Jovial Fellow” the list goes on. At least to some degree the band live on in Root!
Come to think of it how did that King Missile song “Martin Scorsese” miss out?
Obviously the Radiohead nerds ruined yet another poll. They are worse than Ron Paul supporters.
You’d think if that was the case, then bands such as Cold Chisel, Hunters + Collectors, Hoodoo Gurus, Paul Kelly, INXS and Australian Crawl might have got a look in. As it was, the only real classic Australian rock acts to make the top 100 were Midnight Oil (1 song) and AC/DC (2 songs).
Hardly a bogan’s paradise there.
Hardly suprising seeing as it’s never really been that popular in Australia. Rolling Stone’s top 100 included a lot of this though.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/500songs
Their list is a lot more worthwhile. You won’t find any Hilltop Hoods (really?) or 4 Jeff Buckley songs in the top 100 there.
My musical tastes don’t coincide with those of an indeterminate number of anonymous persons who were moved to divulge their choice of the “hottest” songs.
You can imagine how difficult it is for me to cope with this.
What. No Kylie M!!
Is there some kind of cool contest going on here? Whenever anyone mentions a famous band in this thread, their favourite song is not the famous one. Coincidence? I think maybe a little hint of Anti-Cool.
So here’s my anti-cool list:
Souxie Sioux is shite. And she thinks she taught Robert Smith how to apply make-up. That’s too much hubris to deserve accolades for anything.
Nick Cave had a museum exhibition on him before his music career was even over, let alone before he was dead. Which he helped curate. Which had “the desk” at which he composed “crap song number 68″ as an exhibit. On that basis alone he doesn’t deserve to be in the top anything.
Metallica and Nirvana are objectively awesome, and deserve to be in the top 10 of any list. After the revolution, all votes will be fixed to ensure this happens. Anyone who disagrees will be forced to listen to obscure playlists from Larvatus Prodeo until their ears bleed.
Also Triple J lost me after Helen Razor left the 3 hours of power. Or was pushed, or whatever. Was it 2 hours of power then? Easily possible, Helen Razor’s power was concentrated goodness. I still remember fondly the time she played a Slayer song in the breakfast show. Now that was radio presenting at its best!
Speaking of Ms. Razer, was it my imagination or did she have a huge (and hugely entertaining) on-air spat with Judith Lucy at one stage?
So much Nerd Rage!
Robert: yes, from memory Ms Lucy accused her of having eaten a thesaurus. Very funny.
Yeah, well, Triple J was no longer cool to me even though I was a kid in the country and we couldn’t receive it. Before I could let Helen Razer’s naffness infect me I’d already progressed to listening to RRR and groups like
The Go-BetweensTex PerkinsThe WaifsRadio Birdmanwhatever it is was I used to listen to before I became a contrarian hipster and loaded up my IPod with pre-disco Bee Gees.Soon I’m getting rid of the IPod, and won’t be listening to anything but forty-year-old 8-track tapes of Jimmy Little. Keepin’ it real, baby.
Katz,
it must be frightfully awful for you. But you can assuage your despondent feelings by perusing the tastes of many persons here, some of whom are also anonymous. And it must surely be comforting to see little spats and tantrums here, yes?
bah, lists like these
bah, the energetic but occasionally vicious and vacuous Helen Razer; yes she’s had a hard life, but….
sg: Helen Razer left JJJ because she was stalked – an awful thing to happen to anyone.
Helen #55, I knew Fran when she was singing in Toxic Shock and working as Activities Director for the La Trobe University Union. Fran it was who first put me onto Pat Benatar back in 1980.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you get out your drum kit, I get myself a Gibson Les Paul to play rhythm guitar, enlist a couple of past and present ABC employees cum axewomen (Suzie Higgie and Lin Buckfield come to mind) and form a once-off band with Fran on lead vocals to cover “All Fired Up”?
Maybe the post should be titled “JJJ hottest one hundred – music free edition’.
Why would anyone bother with the likes of JJJ these days when most could have access to thousands of internet radio stations worldwide?
Nickws, the 8-track is back!
True adrian@109. Maybe budding artists with a similar bent could get together and just start broadcasting their stuff instead of relying on traditional radio or individual internet site profiles like myspace.
BTW if anyone has any suggestions for existing internet music radio sites to check out, please share.
Sure joe2. If you like folk/americana or whatever, Folk Alley is great and their web site is also well worth a visit.
But the range of stations available is just unbelievable. If you have an ipod touch or phone you can download free apps that will access most of these stations.
My ISP provides access to quite a few internet stations without charging for the bandwith.
I think Kim is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Whats remarkable here is not how few, but how many females are represented in the top 100 songs.
A score of 10% in the Top 100 songs is nothing to sneeze at especially when compared to female representation in the CEOs of Fortune 500 (2.6%) and Nobel Prize winning scientists (2%).
By that standard I would say that females are over-represented in this measure by a five-fold magnitude. This is probably due to selection bias amongst the polling pool. Triple J listeners being especially keen on burnishing their gender equity credentials.
Even so, this is unlikely to explain the disproportionately large number of women in the Top 100. So it must be that women do relatively well in alternative rock. This accords well with my memory of the glory years of punk (1976-82) and grunge (1990-95). Its probably no accident that these good times for music were also bad times for the economy.
In those times the DIY spirit was abroad in the land and it certainly moved many a female soul onto the musical stage. I conclude that indy feminists should support the L/NP in order to drive the economy into the ground, to generate more creative opportunities for female musicians.
Well done girls, keep rockin’!
Well I like Triple J, and I like knowing the songs that everyone else knows.
It’s cool to hear about other alternatives etc, but there’s a bit of an “if you don’t like the job then leave” aspect going on as well, which is a bit problematic.
Speaking of which, I’m moving to Newport, RI in August. What a lineup!
Thanks adrian I will check it out. As you say, the number of stations is huge on the net. So much so, that word of mouth can help a little in the sorting process.
That festival has quite a line up and the price seems a lot more reasonable than here. Roger Williams knows how to organise a good gig.
For those interested in truely new stuff, check out Triple J’s Unearthed website where you can listen to 1000s of unsigned artists (male AND female):
http://www.triplejunearthed.com/
For those of you who have been critical of Triple J for not doing enough for loacl music or indy artists, I can’t think of any other forum other than You Tube which provides this sort of service for music artists and as a forum for searching for new talent, this far and away beats you tube.
Threw up last night ‘Top 200′ sans blokes* at my blog (*band members/songwriters excluded)
Sorry ’bout typos & dodgy song titles half remembered…. songs are chosen based on chart success or what I could recall or liked best or could just stand listening to.
Vaguely in chrono. order, def. not comprehensive, will finesse, just as an exercise to keep on the record (leave suggestions to add) and short term memory is crap compared to good old fashioned memory.
And it’s been going for oh, so long.. ever since the rock ‘n roll world began
Hoyden about Town criticises Zan Rowe for not “taking responsibility for a plan of action”
What exactly is Zan Rowe to do?
Jo, nice list, even though there are a bunch of songs I really dislike on it. Walking on Sunshine? eeeeeek!
I think this by Victoria Williams is just beautiful, in fact, I’ve recent;y discovered most everything by Victoria Williams is beautiful:
Upon reflection, I think there are a couple of things JJJ could learn from this exercise, if it was ever to approach it again:
a) while it’s true that the annual ‘hottest 100′ has always been understood to be a favourite / popularity contest, I think the ‘hottest 100 of all time’ confused people / was conflated as some sort of judgement of a song’s critical credibility by some. Responses on this thread reflect this to some extent. I think JJJ could have done a better job of reminding people this was about their absolute favourite songs; not least to help counter the info someone linked to above about how people are more embarrassed to admit really liking certain female artists / songs.
b) it’s all very well for Zan Rowe and others to say that the potted music history was meant to start a conversation and not be definitive; but it clearly played into people’s perceptions that this was a critical music hit-list not a favourites poll, and they were disingenious at worst and neglectful at best in not realising that what they put on their website does influence people. They clearly did subsequently realise this as the history was edited (I think in response to feedback). More attention should also have been paid to the guest commenter’s featured 10 picks, as there were barely any women amongst them.
Basically, as JJJ actually does have competent staff who know that women are historically and consistently devalued in the music industry, it would have been nice if they had applied that knowledge a bit more intelligently.
Apart from that JJJ should keep doing what they are doing. As about the only credible radio station available to listen to when I’m commuting in the car, I am grateful the station exists, has a high rotation of good female artists (40% in their A list rotation at present and the last 3 feature albums have all been female acts), and has rectified the period in the mid 2000′s when I stopped listening to them because all I seemed to get was bad misogynist hip-hop, rap and awful derivative modern punk.
It’s commendable that Hack devoted a whole session to the topic, and I don’t think their ‘unearthed’ policies show any signs of sexism.
Myriad
Why do you think that people voted for what thy thought was the best song and not just their favorite? When voting, you had to write a few lines about why your number one song was your favorite – this was what the Trip to Redding Music festival was based on. I definitely voted for my favorite song. If I wanted to vote for best, Nirvana’s Never mind might have actually made it into my list – I’m pretty sure the list wouldn’t have included any more women though (Sinead O’Conner perhaps)
I actually know a heap of people (Gen X’s and Ys) who didn’t vote because they felt that their favorite song changed depending on the day and their mood and voting did the songs that were left out a disservice.
So based on the above, I’m not sure that the critical aclaim argument (as opposed to favorite song) explains the result. I’m also not convinced that peoples’ favorite songs should include female artists (which is what your post seems to imply)
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I’m sure the negative comments about the list being too male will make Triple J think about it’s play list but given there were bugger all recent (post 2000) songs in the list anyway, I’m not sure that the results have any meaning for today’s playlists at any rate. One thing I’d like to add and that is that most of the pre 2005 stuff doesn’t get much airplay on Triple J nowadays anyway. I’ve never heard some of the artists in the list played on triple J (Micheal Jackson and Elton John to name two) so I’m not at all sure that the J’s playlist is to blame.
It seems like my post is in a moderation queue for some reason, is posting youtube videos a problem on LP?
[Moderator note: No, that's not the problem. For whatever reason your IP number keeps changing, and every change triggers the moderation filter. ~ tigtog]
Anyhow, Jo, again, nice list. I think Victoria Williams is list-worthy, I posted a clip of her performing Crazy Mary.
Bugger – mussed up the formatting. Only “Should” should have been bolded. D’oh.
hmm, sans YouTube link and still in moderation. how strange.
admin: yes you got picked up by the spam filter
Dave, I fixed your comment.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than “should”, but it is about changing people’s perceptions about what’s good music, what you acknowledge as good and what you hide as guilty pleasures etc.
Some of the songs that I listed as strangely overlooked are songs where I do want to criticise the people who voted by saying, hey you did love this song before. Why do the men get remembered as classics while the women get forgotten?
Thanks for the explanation about the moderation queues tigtog. I don’t have access to terrestrial broadband in my suburb, so I have a USB wireless modem. I actually didn’t realise the IP address was not stable, hmmm, that might explain a few other things, anyhow, thanks again.
I did a quick survey of the the prison population of Australia, and was disgusted to find that less than 5% of those in jail are female. I also noted that the incarcerated are mostly under 35.
What steps could we take to make jails more representative of the general population? If that works, perhaps similar steps could then be taken to make pop music less sexist and less ageist.
Anna,
Thanks for fixing that up.
It’s an interesting question about guilty pleasures but I’m not sure that guilty pleasures are necessarily favorites. There is a lot of pop out there that is fun for a while but gets tired quickly. These are often good to bring out for a party or the occaisional listent but a classic or favorite is, IMO, something that you can listen to over and over again day in and day out and it doesn’t get tired.
I am surprised there wasn’t more female music in the Top 100 (there certainly would have been in my top 100) but given that for every great female artist we have mentioned should have been in the list, there are probaly 2 or 3 male artists that weren’t there either. The results are definately an interesting insight into the music tastes of those who voted but if the results are in fact unreasonably biased against female artists (which I admit they appear to be), is this a case of subconscious sexism or simply an objective example that subjective music tastes suggest songs by male artists age better than songs by female artists (or something else entirely)? Who knows?
Dave,
I’m not saying that the critical / favourite explains the result but I was left wondering if it was a factor, not least because I was confused and because on the Hack coverage of the countdown on Monday Zan Rowe spent quite a bit of her first comments elaborating / clarifying on this topic.
I didn’t blame the current playlist at all, in fact if you read both my comments on this thread you’ll see I’ve been a strong proponent of JJJ’s current very obvious promotion of female artists.
Dusty Springfiled gets played all the time on 720 WF.
Let’s just use the example of the number one song. Kurt Cobain was pretty comfortable with acknowledging his riot grrl influences, he was surrounded by riot grrl bands, and it was a woman from Bikini Kill who came up with the phrase “smells like teen spirit”.
How can you say that the cult status of Nirvana is not a simple example of sexism?
White men are “influenced” by black jazz, black rap, female riot grrls, and make millions. Then people try and claim that it’s because women or black people don’t do music in the style that “the audience” likes.
I can’t believe “Diseases” by Thrush & the Cunts didn’t get in. Absolute classic.
jeepers, that could be a thread-stopper. I hope so.
I can’t believe “Diseases”…
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I can somehow. But cool song. Been ages since I’ve heard it.
Because Nirvana’s songs were better.
Paul @ 110: You’re on!
jo,
For Australian/Melbourne women, I’ll suggest Sally Seltmann from New Buffalo and Caroline Kennedy from Deadstar, the Tulips, and other bands. (I first heard both of these women on Triple J.)
Triple J has been shite for years now (remember when “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” was their number 1 song of the year?), so I don’t know why people think it means much. Basically this list is just a barometer of the taste of white fans of semi-”alternative” guitar-based rock music, aged 15-30. The maleness of the list shows how much Triple J has mutated into Triple M’s more pretentious cousin.
And if Hilltop Hoods’ “Nosebleed Section” is the best hip-hop song of all time, I’ll smash my own face with a hammer.
No Aretha Franklin is certainly a crime.
But fear not my feminist sisters, if Nova or Fox ever do a similar list, there will be plenty of female artists represented. “My Humps” will probably be the top song of all time. Then we can all be happy, right?
The initial post and much of the discussion seems to exemplify the cultural studies approach at its worst, to wit – 1) absence of actual stats on jjj playlists by gender, voters by gender, and 2) a surface interpretation of cultural factors – ie that its the way womens music is ‘constructed’ – rather than a deeper explanation.
Presuming that jjj’s playlist and the voting ratio are both better than 90-10 men/women, why are both men and women preferring male artists so utterly? Is it because, in choosing songs that are ‘best ever’, ‘hottest’ ‘really meaningful’ etc people are choosing songs that express big ideas, authority, power, passion? all the top 10 songs – teen spirit, hallelujah, etc etc – are of that type. Is it that songs by women tend to project a more intimate, personal dimension and that when they dont – pink’s rock star, etc – they sound gimmicky, novelty?
Is it that men identify with the idea of men laying down the law, and women like the law laid down to them by men, that that’s the moments they remember when asked to name their ‘hottest’ songs? Quite possibly their ipod playlists have a much more even gender ratio.
Not a popular idea – but possibly a better fit to the facts than much of the above.
Wait for next year.. the Bangles are recording again
Eurasian Sensation,
One of my brothers directed me to your blog a while ago and I enjoyed reading it. (By the way, you may not know me, but our two families do know each other as common members of the Indonesian community in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs. Your parents went to my father’s funeral in February, for example. I’m hoping to catch up with them at the next Indonesia Update at the ANU.)
Hear, hear!
Good point. One Hendrix song and nothing by Prince, or Sly & the Family Stone, George Clinton, etc.
Maybe this helps explain why Jimi was moving away from hard rock and embracing funk at the time of his death—perpetual teen, male whitey never liked him that much?
Unfortunately this thread has little time for an argument against whitebread rock fans. Wrong cultural critique.
And if Hilltop Hoods’ “Nosebleed Section” is the best hip-hop song of all time, I’ll smash my own face with a hammer.
Not best, most popular with those who voted – see what I’m getting at Dave55?
How on earth could I have forgotten? Kate Miller-Heidke: Caught in the Crowd.
What does the absence of this song from JJJ’s Hottest 100 tell us about the radio station and its audience?
myriad,
Rereading your posts, I think we are in agreement.
And I don’t think a lot of nose bleed section of hip hop generally (although I do have a heap of time for the Beastie Boys).
Yeah but Ponce blows as a performer. Even Rasberry Beret was better when the Hindu Love Gods did it. More baaaaaalls.
I love that so many of you guys think that Roger Clinton, Club Hoy (which I-tunes lists as “Easy Listening”), Shania Twain and various obscure Melbourne uni bands should have recorded the favourite songs of JJJ listeners. Anton goddamned Enis on SBS last night, making knowing sarcky jokes about “dinosaurs” in re this story, like he’s the fwacking Harbinger of Cool.
What the hell, I’ll give youz my theory. Prior to this chick thing blowing up I was thinking about the age of the songs on the list. Apparently the average voting age was 21. In previous “best ever” lists there were a lot more new songs (and of course people objected to that too). When dragging my aging white arse around Youtube looking at CSNY do Down By The River and such, I have seen the Yoof complaining that nobody rocks anymore. The recent songs that did make this list such as those by Hilltop Hoods and Kings of Leon have something in common: they mean it. You can be all technical and knowing and clever and this’ll-impress-them-at-the-conservatory, but it won’t be anyone’s favourite song.
Of the recent reasonably popular and at least slightly alt stuff I can think of by women, most is either too mellow or too emotionally mediated. When Reginna Specter comes on I think “Oh she’s good isn’t she?! I enjoy this.” I don’t think “Oh fuck yeah TURN THIS SHIT UP TO ELEVEN NOW!”
If the male domination of rocking and meaning it is a cultural thing, you women could overcome it by forgoing the entitlementarian whinging on this thread, dusting off yer old drum kits and rocking out with your tits out, to coin a phrase. It will take some moral courage to stay the course, this I will certainly admit. I cried inside the day I turned on the tele and there was Adelita Srsen in a mod suit doing pop. “Pace it” could have made a JJJ list. Shania Twain????
It is interesting how geeky/cool/parochial/obscure/obcure/obscure some of the fanboyism here has been. But brother, Hindu Love Gods means as much to me as Thrush And The Cunts. That is, nowt. Hell, those two groups sound like hoax-names dreamt up by TISM for one of there songs about petit bourgeois navel gazing.
All this aggressive ‘I’m-so-cool-you’ve-never-heard-of-what-I-dig’ stuff might actually reinforce sexist constructs in (anti) popular music. Women just don’t engage in that sort of competition—hence my belief that this thread wouldn’t exist if Madonna, Sonic Youth et al had made up the top of this misbegotten list.
I like Sonic Youth Nickws, but again, their stuff isn’t going to make a favourite’s list either. Indeed it seems to shit most people.
Hindu Love Gods was a bit of a side project where REM had Warren Zevon as lead singer, and did blues covers. Back in the previous millenium when I spent time browsing in record shops. I thought you were cool, man.
What more do some feminists want for females than equal opportunity? What opportunity is not available for females in the music industry? Is there an awareness that wanting more than “equality” is infact sexist. The artists in that list all worked their butts off to get out there & heard, & liked. As have a massive number of artists not on the list (both male & female, from numerous countries, races, and cultural backgrounds). Music is indiscriminate. It was people’s choice. How many people fussing voted? 40% of my choices made the list. 10% of my choice was female, oh, & so am I. As a whole I felt proud of music (yes, even though all the songs I wanted there weren’t there and some songs I despised were on the list) From the beginning, right until the end the jjj hottest 100 of all time was a democratic poll. Everyone had the right to vote. I don’t believe it was ever intended to be anything other than that. I think the real issue here is why there are no males playing in the ANZ Australia & New Zealand Netball comp, and why there are no females playing AFL. That’s what I really want to diverge into. On second thought, it doesn’t really bother me. I don’t think I’ll visit this thread again! Happy reading!
Sean, would you say that to Tom Petty?
Someone up there mentioned ‘gatekeepers’, which indicates to me just how much of a mindless reflex this simplistic and misleading notion has become. It was precisely an anti-gatekeeper exercise: it was a poll. A lot of this discussion reminds me of Gideon Haigh’s classic essay about Google, in the way some people are conflating and confusing ‘democracy’ and populism with any kind of objective quality, accuracy or truth. Which is about as meaningful as saying whoever wins Australian Idol must be the best musician.
This thread must hold some sort of record for the number of commenters who haven’t actually properly read and understood the original post.
The question of who actually voted seems relevant. @ 1 I was referring to the annual Hottest 100. My mistake.
Still, this wasn’t a carefully sampled survey (correct proportions of male/female, old/young, Anglo-Celts/non-Anglo, low-income/high-income, etc.) It’s difficult enough drawing useful information or conclusions from that kind of survey…. but this???
What more do some feminists want for females than equal opportunity? What opportunity is not available for females in the music industry?
Well, some researchers who may or may not be feminists have done good research that shows that women artists in contemporary music do not get equal opportunity at all. If some people commenting on this thread who apparently aren’t going to bother reading replies or researching their comments took half a mo’ to listen to the Hack segment on the countdown as just one eg, they would have heard from a researcher who just completed her PhD on the grunge movement, and found that while the women artists got just as much critical acclaim & also did well in record sales, in subsequent writing about the genre it’s as if the women were completely absent – and that this was consistent with trends for women in the industry as a whole.
Which is why my one criticism of how JJJ ran their popularity poll on this occasion remains a) not making it clearer it was about favourites instead of critical success because the latter plays into the very selective ‘great rock songs of all time’ kind of reporting that is part of the problem
and
b) producing a potted music history that did exactly what the PhD above found as a trend, ie basically wrote women out of rock via absence.
I have no idea how much those two things affected the poll outcome, and it may well be not much at all and there are other issues at play such as the votre demography etc. that factored in to the lack of women in the poll, but from my pov it’s only worth commenting on what JJJ could control, not what it couldn’t.
“My Humps” will probably be the top song of all time.
Indeed. I have long believed that “My Humps” is the zeitgeist of the age, the anthem of Gen Why the fuck were they ever born if this is the best they can do? I wish they would stop now. Is Gen Z cooked yet?
It’s not their fault Casey. The derivitive name given them by marketing demographers has crushed their spirit.
Y ?
Y ????
Oh Y ??????????
will.i.am, who produced and co-wrote “My Humps”, was born in 1975. I think Generation X can take credit for that song.
We choose not to.
Michael Jackson and Madonna were baby boomers who catered to Gen Z so bollocks to that. As if someone who catered to Gen Z would call themselves Will. I. Am.
As a matter of fact, I have this outrageous theory. Its just like another untenable theory about how the best of the young Australian males were wiped out in Gallipoli and how all white Anglo Australian blokes are the descendents of the mangy left overs of the woefully depleted gene pool. Ok, ok. Harsh, absolutely no scientific basis to it, complete delusion, but stick with me.
Well I reckon the best of the baby boomers and Gen Z musos were killed off by drugs, toe cancer, obesity, themselves, vitiligo and the CIA, not to mention Tupac who killed Notorious. Or something. So all that remains in the musical gene pool is a medicority of Yness. Like Jet. Or the Killers (Are we human or are we dancer?) Lets just bury Jet, the Killers and lets bury that band that did that song which goes ‘Hush girl, shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and move with your hips‘. And for the sake of world peace, someone eradicate MGMT. And while we are at it, could Gen Why the fuck dont your write your own songsI have this outrageous theory. Its just like another untenable theory about how the best of the young Australian males were wiped out in Gallipoli and how all white Anglo Australian blokes are the descendents of the mangy left overs of the woefully depleted gene pool. Dont touch em ladies. Pick a recent arrival. Ok, ok. Harsh, absolutely no scientific basis to it, but stick with me.
Well I reckon the best of the baby boomers and Gen Z musos were killed off by drugs, toe cancer, obesity, vitiligo, themselves and the CIA, not to mention Tupac who killed Notorious. Or something. So all that remains in the gene pool is a medicority of Yness. Like Jet. Or the Killers (Are we human or are we dancer?) Lets just bury Jet, the Killers and lets bury that band that did that song which goes ‘Hush girl, shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and move with your hips‘. And for the sake of world peace, someone eradicate MGMT. And while we are at it, could Gen Why the fuck dont your write your own songs? stop ripping off Gen Z songs and destroying them? Thank you very much.
I dont know why that duplicated itself. Probably the CIA.
Casey
your mythos may be untenable, and it’s a little repetitious, but the non-Gallipoli gene pool story falls down because
i) heaps of Anglos arrived here post-1920, from UK, NZ, Canada, US, South Africa, Rhodesia, India, etc; generally unaffected by Gallipoli-slaughter-of-the-heroes
ii) heaps of non-Anglos who fully assimilated and took on Anglo chareacteristics were unaffected by the Gallipoli slaughter, though some male ancestors (or absent non-ancestors) no doubt died in WW1 and WW2
Still, this is the mighty Thread of the Untenable, so please continue
Look Casey, apart from your repeated use of Gen Z to mean (presumably) X, your agrument isn’t all that crazy.
Well, it is, but in a good way. Just crazy enough to work, if you catch my drift. If only to get us off the gender thing for a bit [moderator alert - wanton derailment], I’ll have a crack at it.
My spin on it, just cos I love tenning the tenuously tenable, is that the prurience of shows like MTV and other US mainstream media through the 80s made it unacceptable to be outrageously drug-addicted and grossly unhealthy. Or until kinda recently, black. Or anything short of gorgeous if you’re a lass. I’m generalising, but we’re talking trends, yeah?
So there are still ugly, drug addled freaks all over the joint, but it’s hard for them to become mainstream successes.
The Buggles were right! Again!
And while we’re on the topic…
Yes I am aware my argument has a psychotic break in it, Ambi. But that never stopped Keith Windschuttle and look how far he got with the right patronage. And furthermore, to continue on my demented way, I vociferously change my mind. I want Gen Y to stop ripping off Gen X songs. They are free to pilfer from Gen Z nursery rhymes all they like.
Casey
I didn’t call you psychotic or demented, but now ten has tenned the tenuously tenable, and I’m fair dinkum stonkered.
American TV was prudish through the 50s, 60s and 70s and then I failed to pay attention for a decade and suddenly it’s f*** this ‘n that, hos everywhere, badass gangstas, phew!!!!!
Gimme some old-fashioned Marx Brothers or Mae West double entendre any day; ya have ta stay alert to hear it.
The only thing is, I can’t credibly blame Keith Windshuttle for any of these lamentable trends. No evidence, and the chronology isn’t right.
It’s Teh
CreepingGalloping Authoritarianism of the age, for mine. Even when JJJ was playing Killing in the Name at #2 on the weekend, they had to have some arsehead comedian imply that moshing to the band nullifies any critique of militant capitalism in the song lyrics. It would be the depths of uncool to say that RATM had a valid point. As the Professor said, if you are constrained by sociological norms and generational constructs from expressing a rebellious reaction to authorititive institutions, you will be somewhat hampered in your ability to rock out with your cock out.Casey, they never had any really great songs to rip off, but they did manage write themselves into history, as usual.
Generation X
(I would have put my money on remaining the ‘Blank Generation’, better song and band)
Technically, the music associated with baby-boomers was in the main created by people born before 1945.
And likewise the music most closely associated with Gen X esp. punk & new wave etc was created by baby boomers.
So is it the musicians/music or the ‘at that moment teen audience’ they are referring to in these stoopid demarcation zones?
And of course, the people who put up the legislation that brought in free tertiary education and universal health care into this country were born around WW1 and after. Bloody freeloading depression-interwar generations!
Well indeed. A catchy line that captures very nicely the degree to which we the cock-free are regarded by the rock culture as not part of the rock culture. Jen at #154 please take note that these issues run a lot deeper and wider than ‘equal opportunity’, as you’d know if you knew anything about feminism at all. Oh whoops, she said she wasn’t coming back. Spray one’s ignorance as per cat pee and then blow the popsicle stand; a not uncommon commenting strategy, god knows.
Ambi at #116, may I add (iii) Many of them, like both of my grandfathers, fought in WW1 and survived it to come home and raise up a family of future Australians. Casey, it’s not that I don’t love your argument, but its anti-Darwinism does bother me a tad.
RIGHT ON FDB. I dont know that song, but RIGHT ON.
No great songs to rip off Jo???? And what about this then? Back in 1725, when I was an embryo, I predicted that this band would be bigger than the Beatles . And you all know of my uncanny ability to get these things right.
And now, Generation Why the fuck can’t do my hair like that has made an excrement of it.
NB: If anyone argues with me I will put up Haysi Fantayzee to prove my point further.
sean
I think that’s a bit tough on Wil Anderson. His comments were really just taking the piss out of himself and the vast majority of other young white males who loved RATM but had NFI about the message. I don’t think he was dissin’ RATM or their message.
Ok, Casey….. ‘Dancing With Myself’ was their best song and has probably been covered by someone other than Billy ‘imself.
Interestingly….
So it’s back to them well known cusp war baby Mods Peter, Roger, John & Keith talking ’bout their generation again…
doh,
still talking
Sean – I like Sonic Youth Nickws, but again, their stuff isn’t going to make a favourite’s list either.
.
I think that songs from Daydream Nation and or Goo did make the list way back when.
Casey – Gen Why the fuck were they ever born if this is the best they can do?
.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
.
I want Gen Y to stop ripping off Gen X songs.
.
Or sub-cultures or lingo. The Gen Y sub-cultures are almost identical to gen X ones. There are differences. The Hip-Hop lot are mainstream and there’s sub-divisions. Hip-Hop’s also become the Bogan code of choice. Goth has grown myriad sub-branches. Punk’s reasserted itself and there’s a thing called ‘Emo’ which was always there but now it has a name.
You know, there’s still a lot of good music left to be written in the key of C major. But whether it’ll be written in a rock idiom, is anybody’s guess.
I note that the bebop, ragtime, and tone-row styles are much in abeyance these days, as are the Lydian mode and the Elizabethan catch.
Eheu, fugaces labuntur cantes.
The Kransky Sisters – Born To Be Wild
“His comments were really just taking the piss out of himself and the vast majority of other young white males who loved RATM but had NFI about the message. I don’t think he was dissin’ RATM or their message.”
Exactly. RATM fans for the most part didn’t know or care what it was about, and still don’t. At best they go on to watch Michael Moore, or pick up a fetish for the mainstream of the Latin American left ie. neither being a particularly worthwhile contribution to the alleviation of human misery.
Gen Y haters: Not only are there plenty of awesome bands with members under 30, (or even 25) years of age, but they borrow and steal all over the place and do it knowingly, making much better use of what they’ve taken than most of those they’ve take from. All of your favourite bands from the 1960s onwards were recycling. The only thing that looks more foolish than a baby boomer complaining about how unoriginal today’s music is: a Gen Xer doing the same.
As to the main point of the thread: any list without Linda Thompson on it (or for that matter Richard) isn’t worth the waves it is broadcast on.
I’d like to point out that Midnight Oil fans, Tori Amos fans and Propagandhi fans also often don’t know wtf the band is talking about. I think it might be universal. Gen WTF.
As long as this thread is doing a healthy side business in hipster griping about obscure ommissions, let’s not forget the great Exene Cervenka.
“Woody Guthrie sang about
B-e-e-t-s,
Not b-e-a-t-s.”
Heh.
“Good morning, midnight” — indeed.
Disappointing oversimplification.
It is doubtless that all musically interesting bands in the 1960s were merely recycling some of the time. And it is doubtless that many musically uninteresting bands in the 1960s were doing it all the time. (It is a testament to the extraordinary richness of 1960s musical culture that there were so many epigone bands of the time whose names today are still household names.)
But something much more interesting than mere recycling happened in popular music in the 1960s. For the first time in history music from a broad diversity of cultures can to know each other and to combine in new, unique and unrepeatable ways: blues, jazz, Indian, Latin, Anglo-Celtic folk, to name just the most prominent influences. Combine these influences with huge strides in recording and production techniques.
Out of these influences arose a cultural mass whose gravitational influence is to be seen in many of the comments in this thread.
Does it matter a damn if this amazing music was in fact composed and performed by pre-baby boomers? Of course not. Composer/performers and audiences were in a symbiotic relationship in the process of evolving new cultural forms.
But this music was the victim of its own success. So lucrative did it become the money attracted the sharks who turned popular music into Joni Mitchell’s “corrupt cesspool”.
One result of this is today music is much, much, much less likely than in the 1960s to be both popular and excellent.
I’m a very busy man these days and you should be grateful that I would deign to comment at a site frequented by latte-sipping Bob Brown supporters who are too fastidious to approve a uranium mine owned by an enthusiastic supporter of the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists, but I think it’s important that I tell you that following Cabinet discussions I have concluded that the lyrics of the song Sun City are the sort of piffle one would expect from Green Party types and that separation of families is an entirely understandable and in many cases legitimate and beneficial policy for a government to pursue.
PS: I don’t hate gen Y, but Will Anderson shits me like laxative.
THERE I SAID IT!
Sean, I suspect that Wil is actually Gen X – he just behaves like a Gen Y
Oh he is definitely my age-ish, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I should have used “OTOH” instead of “but”.
And thank God, coz if Will was Gen Y he’d have that half-gay-half-septic-tank accent they affect and people would throw shoes at him in the street.
Some people on this thread really need to stop worrying about those kids on their lawn.
Wil Anderson is Generation X. Born in ’74.
.
Here’s some good Gen Y stuff. She’s unsigned. I really do wonder about the music industry when they promiote utter shite and there’s at least three bands playing within a kilometre of my place every night of the week who struggle to pay the rent.
dj: don’t you really mean those skinheads on your lawn?
…I really have no dog in this fight of course, but this was just too funny to resist…
Katz @ # 185: “For the first time in history music from a broad diversity of cultures…” etc etc (cue Yakety Sax).
For the first. Time. In history.
Well maybe for this particular individual idiosyncratic blend. Maybe, but I doubt even that much, seeing as how I can find New Orleans on a map. Or Marseilles. Nevertheless, behold the mighty panoptic spirit of the all-knowing Soixante-Huit ‘tards. Hmm, what other important things might they be all-correct about?
Just sayin’.
– j_p_”silk road”_z
half-gay-half-septic-tank accent
.
Yo. You forgot de Gangsta wannabe stoopid to da max bro’! Ya know da mix of da LA style wid da Ozzie jut6s got outta jail sctick. It’s real appealing. Just like the full view of a grotty 17 year old’s under wear.
Gen WTF? Who cares about the generation, just listen to the music.
You must fascinate us more about your views on the influence of Indian music on the Music of New Orleans, Japerz.
Of course you can find New Orleans on a map. The US once fought a war there.
I doubt this is the first time you have taken yourself to the Sulky Corner whining about those horrible soizante-huitards and how they ALWAYS get EVERYTHING.
Katz: “I doubt…Sulky…whining…”
Wow, when facts fail you, you’ve really got your “make it personal” Alinsky shee-it down to rights, don’t you, like a good little Yippy. King Bammy’s prolly even got a plum job waiting for ya, once the kookier unread bills get rammed thru Congress. (Mustn’t waste time! Amurrica will wake up by the 2010 cycle, so we have to hurry NOW! NOW! NOW!) And if you’re extra nice, maybe you’ll even be paid in rupees or yuan, ‘stead of BammyBucks. Couldn’t hurt that portfolio. — But then what on earth am I saying? Only devils over 30 have something as crass as a portfolio, right? Right?
As for pre-Carnaby Street music-history Indian tendrils, why don’t you try looking up Coltrane, Sun Ra, John Gilmore and their interesting friends. Or noticing a rather long colonial history. Or even that peculiar semihistorical eldritch drone that seemingly links Dublin to Delhi, much as an I-E linguist mighta done.
Agh, it’s all too much work for me. I have to get back to blaming Jerry Rubin for the cracks in my bathtub, when my editor specifically ordered me to credit the Yippies for Bjork.
So you can see how it gets confusing. Aloha. …or does that word belong to Hunter T. theez daze?
I rely on my elders and betters to pronounce, as you can doubtless see.
Oh goody!
Just what this thread needed for reinvigoration, some good old fashioned jpz/Katz sniping. I do hope “Soixante-Huit ‘tards” is an original.
Ambi, I wasn’t implying that American mass media prurience was invented in the 80s, merely that MTV was, and MTV has been the dominant music marketing tool ever since.
Dancing With Myself? Well, it’s good, but it’s not even Billy’s best IM(not especially)HO.
Indeed, FDB. Let The Quibbling Commence.
On MTV’s prurience: wasn’t it that channel who showed Old Dirty Bastard being chauffered in a limousine to pick up his welfare cheque?
no worries FDB
I applaud “Soixante Huit ‘tards” too, but only if it’s original. Yup, we cain’t have any derivative sh*t here, eh? Them derivatives is whut gut Wall Street in the sh*t, yeah….
Liam, I’ll thank you to stop poking holes in my fabulous argument.
What’s a guy gotta do for some mindless echo-chambery around here?
FDB is completely right of course.
get back to you on that: NFI : 4.30pm Shanghai time : 40000 euros
There is too much mirroring on this site.
Keep up the good work Japerz. You’re bound to get to the bottom of the Great Strawberry Icecream Scandal.
A breathless world caught between innocence and amazement awaits further revelation about Obama’s Yippie Plot to put LSD in America’s Punch.
As long as the MC5 play a set, Katz.
Sixty nine America in terminal stasis
The air’s so thick it’s like drowning in molasses
I’m sick and tired of paying these dues
And i’m finally getting hip to the American ruse
Wonder how it’d sound now if LSD and MTV had broken through at the same time.
Never mind Katz v Japerz, I’m just glad to see that there appears to be a drift in generational attitude: Gen X seems to be taking the hatin’ heat off us Boomers (good, I was hoping this might happen before I got as far as the nursing home) and shifted it to Gen Y.
Whom I think are actually kind of sweet.
*Runs away*
Gen X seems to be taking the hatin’ heat off us Boomers (good, I was hoping this might happen before I got as far as the nursing home)
.
Chuckle.
Ok, I road tested this clip today at work on five hip M/F 20 somefings – Greek, Lebanese, Aboriginal (2), Chinese.
Verdict: Cool, wild, hot, and similar uber description-encapsulations.
Jay-sus.
NO no Cat. The Boomers are cool. And everyone knows it. They were really the New Romantics in that they seriously broke with the past in the way the original Romantics did. Think: You guys creatd the maxi dress. The mini skirt. Shag Pile carpet. Swingers Parties where you ate chocolate fondue in the nude. (Well sometimes people got murdered but that is the price you pay at the frontier). The Lizard King who came and went all along the Watchtower. We had no where to go after that. The answer blew in the wind only once and it was in your gen. Who can hate the Boomers? Everyone knows you Were The Real Thing. Once X part One realised Adam and the Ants were a bunch of ponces in lederhosen doing a camp version of the Sound of Music, and X part Two realised Nirvana had very very dirty hair, and worse, believed their own publicity and offed themselves for no damn good reason, the big dags, – it was over.
Sweet? Well you can afford to think that. They aren’t the ones replacing you
Rebel Yell. Hands down.
It seems that consensus has been achieved.
Persons between the ages of 33 and 45 may collect their “Living with Angst Self-help Kit” from the kiosk as they leave.
Ahh. new romantics.
Two drum kits – Stand and Deliver!
Persons between the ages of 33 and 45 may collect their “Living with Angst Self-help Kit” from the kiosk as they leave.
.
We wrote it.
.
I’d just like to point out that Nirvana isn’t every Gen Xers idea of the voice of their generation. The voice of our generation was Slacker #2 in The Simpsons Lollapalooza episode. The one who’s friend asks him: Dude are you being sarcastic?
.
And he replies: Aw man. I don’t even know anymore.
Now that’s the shit, you probably got the best quote out of the whole thing. Another favourite would be Cypress Hill seriously considering the possibility they hired the London Symphony when they were high.
Katz @ 185
This read to me like one of those ads on midnight till dawn TV for ‘greatest soft rock’ or ‘singers and songwriters’ or ‘super sixties’ compilations, especially the way they try and convince you that the music you were into was the best ever, a golden age that will never be repeated.
FWIW i think there was an interesting point all the way back in, and derived from, the original post (a topic i’m sure we won’t being going back to, I can handle that, it had it’s time but now it’s a new age with a whole new outlook on the notion of ‘comments’) concerning the way Female artists are thought of when it comes to ‘best ever’ lists.
Someone has suggested that there isn’t a problem because in 2009 the opportunities are fairly equal for Males and Females. I think this misses the point, it’s not so much about current music(ians) but the legacy of Male and Female artists. There was a good comment on the hack program from the academic who studied these things. She pointed out that the phenomenon of ‘women are getting big in pop music’ comes around every few years and the underlying gender balance probably doesn’t change that much. This is separate to the fact that there are a significant number of female artists on Triple J’s rotation.
Yeah it was a bit of a cock forest, which is a bit weird.
Me? I voted for ‘It’s a Man’s World’ by James Brown.
Well it a good song!
“James Brown in Boston” doco on TV recently was good: JB prior booked to give big concert the day after Dr King’s assassination. And brought stark realization to watching boomers. That was 40 years ago man! When our parents reminisced about events 40 years earlier, they were describing the 1920s man!
Tempes fugit when you’re on a 40-year high, man.
Yeah, “The Night James Brown saved Boston”. I really enjoyed it too.
Precisely Ambi.
How much music recorded in 1928 was on high mainstream rotation in 1968?
How much music recorded in 1968 is on high mainstream rotation in 2009?
Shorter Katz @ 220: ‘I’m a glib imperialist.’
It’s actually sort of hard to determine which of those two words to emphasize. OTOH, ‘carpetbagger’ is an acceptable compromise, at least in the lower 48.
How many of the words used to express #220 were new-minted after Mr. Lennon and his pals landed at Idlewild?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not even ‘yeah’ will suffice.
K.516 will outlast us all, and in the long run will probably prove more useful. Hell, it’ll even outlive the locust-like boomers, though I’m sure that’s impossible for them to imagine. See the title of Mr. Hirst’s cleverly preserved shark.
Wow, man. Like, hey.
Too heavy.
The Triple J Breakfast Crew (or more correctly – the Doctor) just made Women the Friday F— wit for this week for not making good enough music and thus causing such a fuss this week.
That’s the good thing about us Xers – no one ever says that about the 80′s. Keeps one’s head proportionate to one’s shoulders.
I thought the big intergenerational bullshit fight ATM was between Gen Y and the Boomers, because the Boomers are better than everyone by virtue of having been born at a certain time, and Gen Y are entitled to be CEO Of The World at 19 and knock off at 4:30 and the Boomers won’t “Just Fuck Off” as the Gen Y Prat’s book says (sweetly).
I was finding that pretty funny until I remembered he was in Frenzal fwacking Rhom, now I’m more outraged than Kim will be.
That’s Rhomb to you boy.
I think ‘fight’ is a bit of a misnomer; it implies that both sides are engaged, whereas in all this anti-Boomer carry-on, one side is in a humungous tis-was and the other is just blithely carrying on.
*Runs away*
Sort of like Melbourne and Sydney.
*Runs further away*
I dunno, Sean, I’ve heard many Gen X-ers say worse, and anyway I got the impression that said Gen Y prat was pretty much on his own out there, generationally speaking. And you have to feel sorry for him; think how he will cringe in years to come when he looks back on his sweet little book, and may even be doing so already. Merlin’s laugh: the laugh of those who know what’s going to happen.
Srsly, next time one of you starts resenting Boomers for having been born at a certain time, as though that were somehow our fault, I want you to consider the 51% of Boomers who are women. Have a look at, in particular, the pay scales, the divorce laws, the rampant free-rein sexual harassment, the leniency of rape sentencing in the rare cases where the woman was brave enough to report it, the social pressure about getting married and staying home to reproduce, and the rhetoric around femininity in public and popular culture, as they all applied until somewhere around the late 1970s, and then ask yourselves whether we were really leading a historically charmed life.
Don’t forget the Vietnam War and the conscription of young men.
This Gen-Xer thinks the 80′s were incredible, anyone who disagrees needs to go out and buy “left of the dial – dispatches from the 80′s underground”. I confess the ratio of women is not that high, but a fair number of the blokes were embracing androgyny in that era…the blurring of gender lines ever since either makes this thread’s argument redundant, or more interesting than I at first realised. [??]
“Me? I voted for ‘It’s a Man’s World’ by James Brown.”
Voting for the Renee Geyer version could have gone a long way to addressing the issue at hand!
My problem is with the notion that a particular confluence of demographic and historical forces is felt to have produced something that is granted more cultural value than what preceded or succeeded it. It seems that that valuing process is related more to the demographic and historical forces than it is to anything intrinsic in the cultural products as a category. Most of the canonised 60s-era bands and albums are still on the air waves, still talked about, because of the persistence and size of the market for those bands or albums. I put most of that down to a self-fulfilling cycle of familiarity. A lot of the most influential and ‘best’ stuff from that era didn’t sell then or now, and wasn’t on the airwaves then or now.
Correct KK. Yet much of it did influence the popular music of the time. There was a close confluence at the time between the “best” and the most popular.
Your problem is with the gatekeepers, not the music. Yet the ‘net was supposed to weaken gatekeepers. Yet the beat goes on.
Funny, that.
Still in the Sulky Corner, Japerz?
C’mon, sing along with me…
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love
Love love
Love is all you need
There. Feel better now?
I agree Pavlov, if “sell out” is worse than “fuck off”. Anyhoo, the key word in my last started with “bull” and ended with “it”. No doubt some things change and the experience of being young varies a bit from decade to decade, but there are only a few people who take that generational crap seriously.
I do, however, stand by my comments about the half-gay-half-septic accent.
Also Will Anderson & Frenzal, to show my impartiality and LACK OF SEXISM. I have thought that I could actually take the JJJ morning show if it was only Ms Hardy. People have to be pretty damn charming for me to be able to take them talking alot before coffee #3.
It certainly sucked to be an able-bodied Australian male resident born between 1946 and 1954, James, true. On the other hand, it sucked a great deal more to be born in those years in Vietnam or Cambodia—or Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or China. Let us by all means continue the GREAT GENERATIONAL AIRING OF GRIEVANCES but let’s let everyone play, and let’s not let the Vietnam War forty years gone still poison any discussion of the place of women in art and society.
[takes a deep breath]
This is also why I flinch every time I hear the words “Greatest Generation” used to refer to those born c. 1915-1925: as if they weren’t in other places a huge bunch of Fascists.
“Rebel Yell. Hands down.”
I beg to differ, Casey.
Casey FDB, Billy only got a guernsey in relation to the strangely circular origins of the ‘Generation X’ label. I had to scrape the barrel to find a half decent song by the band…And as I said, the generation defining song of that time was Richard Hell’s.
Rebel Yell…what on Mum and Dad’s couch watching Countdown?
Going back to ’76-77 around when Blank Generation was released, we used to jig from Sydney Girls High (you don’t want to know how young I was but let’s say well underage) up to Darlo to buy pots of tea downstairs from Caps nightclub next to a couple of bathhouses and then off to see Sydney’s finest version of:
And nothing was blowing in the wind… except wafts of hash from the long, long line outside the Social Scrutiny office courtesy of Fraser’s razor gangs and oh, the global downturn . Liam, I got the LSD punch and a MC5 set at the same time, lucky ‘ol fucked up teen cusp boomer/gen x me.
Your rave about Gen. X, Casey reminded of the above but more so, what an important little period punk was…cause Billy Idol & Adam Ant etc were the result of McLaren’s timely (from his view) interventions into what was a fairly small organic scene in which McLaren involved, except here of course.
But forget Billy’s Generation X – it was The Sex Pistols.
I assume the real story is 50% Great Rock n Roll Swindle and 50% Filth & the Fury but irrespective, the cartoon-ish-shock-splatter-news-of-the-world UK Number 1 record banned from being played on British radio catapulted the ‘punk’ underground or rather a version of it front and centre.
The Anglo recording industry and every established rock act had been outflanked in a matter of months. It was more anarchy in the recording industry than anything else.
The immediate ramifications are still being felt today (and within years combined with MTV) it was like the gatekeepers of the industry had lost their hearing aids, while every DIY act on the planet might win the lottery no matter how crappy their song.
Most of the best and accessible ‘new’ music did make it mainstream o’nite like the Buzzcocks, Patti Smith, the Clash, the Jam, Blondie, then later Elvis Costello & The Pretenders, Joy Division, Talking Heads etc, But unfortunately it seems more often, what is recalled from that period now, are the excesses of the pop/novelty acts like Haircut 100 and Flock of Seagulls and Adam Ant rather than the stellar output of the bands mentioned above, and for reasons I need to ponder on for longer… and I have to go out. (And I like a dumb well crafted pop song as much as the next bogan ftr)
And what was really interesting about the underground incl. here, remained underground and/or were being re-fashioned and developed via little nascent mini-scenes of grunge, electronica, dance, industrial, experimental, alt. country, into much of which grew into the big ‘new’ music scenes of the 90′s.
Jo, are you crediting McLaren with punk? or just the commodification of punk? I’d concede on the latter, but the former is just wrong.
Forget the Sex Pistols. It was The Saints.
MC5 founded punk. It happened in Detroit in the late 1960s.
furious, it should have been fairly obvious via my referencing of Richard Hell, Radio Birdman and MC5, that I’m talking about the fallout from the Sex Pistols, how they were developed/marketed etc – and not only on the mainstream but obviously and conversely, the impact on the underground etc.
hmmm, can I split hairs and argue about the difference between protopunk and punk? that’s not gonna fly is it?
*sulks with j_p_z.
No you are wrong. A little known fact is that Simon and Garfunkel founded punk.
It happened in Berkley in the mid 1960′s. January 17, 1966 to be precise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvn PEHuv9w&feature=PlayList&p=0189022BE77C5451&index=0
Worth listening to svengali’s r us’s words underneath the above, purely for his tres amusing “evil manipulator” shtick.
Also worth remembering that most baby boomers in oz, in the 1960′s were Liberal voting cockheads who would have stomped a hippy given half a the chance.
This is true. By scary coincidence it happened to me on 17 January 1966, outside Berklees.
One was short and stocky and the other had hair like a severely shagged sheep.
I don’t see how they could possibly have been inventing punk at the same time.
Hey, you probably deserved it. Anyway they also invented multi-tasking.
Yes, it stands to reason that multitasking was invented by Liberal cockheads.
And, amazingly, they did say that I deserved their late-Menzian chastisement.
I never had you pinned as a Liberal cockhead, C’r'U.
No that’s me hippy scum.
PC wrote: “I want you to consider the 51% of Boomers who are women. Have a look at, in particular, the pay scales, the divorce laws, the rampant free-rein sexual harassment, the leniency of rape sentencing in the rare cases where the woman was brave enough to report it, the social pressure about getting married and staying home to reproduce, and the rhetoric around femininity in public and popular culture, as they all applied until somewhere around the late 1970s, and then ask yourselves whether we were really leading a historically charmed life.”
Hear, hear, hear-bloody hear. You have skewered one of the silliest images of the 60s: that somehow a “summer of love” in California, or a few Beatles hits, wrought a massive social revolution overnight.
If readers will excuse my blathering for a few lines:
* first (new-wave) feminist street march in Melb, circa 1972: we sang along to “Don’t be too polite, girls! Don’t be too polite! Show a little fight, girls, show a little fight!”
* my wife (main breadwinner) was refused a home loan circa 1976 by one bank, because she “might fall pregnant”
* pay scales far too low; ACTU campaigning on this followed (eventually): equal pay for Aboriginal stockmen? equal pay for women? The unions appeared to be {cough} male-dominated
* very few women enrolling in Engineering circa 1977
* most professions & occupations still considered off-limits to women in Australia during the 1960s and most of the 1970s
* no womens toilets (and no disabled access) in many buildings
* no female members in …… various clubs
* very few women in some types of leadership roles
* very few female MPs
Attitudes were slowly changing, but barrier after barrier had to be patiently dismantled. Thanks for the reminder, PC.
Given that the boomers are defined as being born from 1946-62*, i would think that most boomers wouldn’t have voted in the 1960s as they wouldn’t have been old enough. That’s not to say they wouldn’t have wanted to.
*http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/5a93a65fbebe1923ca256dea00053a32!OpenDocument
See under “Components of population growth”
Hey, maybe you guys can help.
WHAT is the name of the band and their song with the lyrics and refrain
“I sat on the porch I felt see through
Christ – I really like you”
It was a female lead vocalist and was a break-through song for the band that made them semi-alternative Big Day Out famous.
Was it The Clouds ?
I’ve been Googling but can’t find the track.
I thought the song was called ‘Like You’
Anyrate any help appreciated.
- Barra
And in the 60s the minimum voting age was 21, IIRC.
Baraholka – The band you’re think of is The Falling Joys. The song is called “Lock It”. I think it was written by the lead singer Susie Higgie who once complained ina friends doco that there were no male groupies. She had a really nice blue-green guitar.
.
Sorry Paul. Beat ye to it.
I want you to consider the 51% of Boomers who are women… then ask yourselves whether we were really leading a historically charmed life.
.
That’s absolutely right. Boomer women may have produced Feminism’s 2nd wave (3rd wave imho) but they mostly lived the way their mothers had, or attempted to. The unintended consequences of the 60s social revolution included a comparatively unrestrained licentiousness on the part of men and a willingness to take advantage of the liberalized divorce laws to abscond on their responsibilities en masse.
.
In an interview I read recently the artist Carmine Rose Garcia (an X’er) was talking about her parents. Both artists themselves. Her mother did not succeed. But she was always being told at art school that ‘women don’t make good artists’. Garcia said that she’d never had that problem. But she did, I’d wager, have a few female role models. She’s successful. And really really good: Punk Rock, Disney and William S Burroughs. Check her out.
.
When X’ers bitch about the stereotypical unrestrained egotism of the Boomers they’re thinking about a man 99% of the time.
Adrien,
Owe you one!
here
here
No one has mentioned Sleater-Kinney, if only more women voters picked them instead of Jeff Buckley.
Ok, you win FDB. Rebel L it is. In fact I like it so much I am, for personal reasons, changing my name to Rebel L. The broomstick stays.
I couldnt be bothered about going into the cultural history of the 60’s Jo, as everything I have been saying here has been in jest and nothing more.
But out of love for the dandy highway man, this must be said in all seriousness. McLaren is talking rubbish. He had nothing to do with Adam Ant, apart from this: When he was asked by Ant to manage his band, he responded by stealing his first Ant lineup sans Adam which went on to be known as Bow Wow Wow. When Adam and Marco Pirroni joined forces and created the second group, they quickly found international success of their own making, not McLaren’s. Always able to pick the winner, Malcolm kicked himself for bypassing Ant. He is on record saying as much and admiring Ant’s particularly unique stylisation which captured the imagination of that era. We at the Ant Liberation Front are always available to dispel myth and rumour upon request.
didn’t know i’d asked you to bother, ms casey.
he had nothing to do with adam ant.
it would have been interesting if he could have convinced david johansen to wear the pirate outfit but (according to thunders?) he wouldn’t be in it.
i’m sure mclaren rues not keeping ant or any other proteges under his thumb, but come on…. it was lydon, in all seriousness.
but whatever, if adam’s particularly unique stylisation got you through the night, well who am i to come between a girl and a bedroom wall poster.
The particularly unique stylisation was a quote from McLaren, not me. Take it up with him. I had no posters on my wall for you to come between.I simply pointed to the erroneous assertion that he had something to do with Adam Ants ‘success. I did not mention the Pistols at all. Are we done?
Not if you’ve missed the main point about him being a huge fucking influence on that entire scene at Kings Road. And this is not saying that some of the proteges didn’t bring their own shit to the party.
Adam’s “particularly unique stylisation”. Yes, a world class marketer.
As I said way above, lots of shit was going down all over the place, (for any bystanders reading) but you can’t meta Gen X (band or era) without mentioning McLaren & Lydon.
Anyway, sorry Casey, for taking out some work-generated aggression on you..and Adam.
I don’t understand all the angst and anger over this. Could there possibly be any cultural invention that celebrates hairy, testosterone-dripping, sweating, vodka-swilling, drug-gobbling masculinity more than Rock Music? There are plenty of great women who are also great rockers, but they are so rare.
‘Feminine’ Rock? YUK!
Rock Music is by definition masculine.
You better get used to it, so you don’t get fooled again.
Greenslime Attack!!!
According to this chap living in New York City, this happened recently:
I hope Japerz caught the show.
Katz, the other day all the shelf stackers at Coles were singing along with the same song and after it ended on the P.A. they all kept going. Damned if I can remember which song it was though.
…I’m guessing it wasn’t the song that Down and Out linked to way back at #62.
But I’d shop at Coles in a heartbeat if they started using it!
Genderation Y #257, how does your argument square with the frequent presence of jeff Buckley on the list and the absence of Status Quo?
well the best songs are sung and played by males
And your qualification is…
…I’ll settle for nothing short of groupie.
does jess listen intently at your gigs, FDB? is she perhaps star-struck? or merely one of the finest and most incisive critics of popular music this – or any other – generation is likely to produce?