The hardass badass women who play

Here at Mouse Words, the blog, we are known to complain occasionally that female musicians get no respect. At the House of Mouse, we complain about this issue pretty much daily.

I love music, but I can't play. There's no where to turn to win--most nights at most shows, you'll see hardly a female on stage. Play in a band that is all female, and find yourself playing shows where the gimmick is "girl bands". Not that this is in itself a negative experience. A friend of mine found herself opening occasionally for Sleater Kinney. Annoying issue--her band had nothing in common with Sleater Kinney except that they were all women. But she had an overall good experience, as she met some really cool girls, blah blah.

BUT THE BULLSHIT MUST END!

The fact is that women are musicians. And they aren't in neat, easy-to-stereotype ways. Female musicians that are already out there are the best example that women can play how they want when they want--but they are mostly invisible.

I won't shit you. Being a woman and playing can be a nightmare. The hardest part is that punk rock should have just thrown those doors wide open--as Sarah Vowell eloquently pointed out, punk is inherently feminine. And certainly, punk made it easier for women to form and be in rock bands--if you are going to be contrary, it does no good to kowtow to the tedious belief that women are audience, men are performers. But it sure wasn't enough to achieve parity. And men keep taking over and just squeezing out what female musicians have a platform. Hey, do you think the angry, angry female bands that came out in the early 90's were bitching about nothing? Without their anger and their feminist-inspired willingness to write lyrics about extremely painful and extremely personal stuff to draw on, I highly doubt that Kurt Cobain would have been inspired to do more than just play Melvins-esque crap into obscurity.

The story of female musicians is the Zelda Fitzgerald story--create until your heart bursts and have a man put his name on it.

All of us at Mouse Words knows that pointing out the gross injustice of this is not fashionable, but we don't care. But we also felt impotent to make any difference--we can't play, so we thought we were limited to purchasing albums by women, going to shows with female artists, and educating our friends about female musicians they would like but may not know about. But we can do more than that! We have a fucking website and a huge backlog of useless trivia about music!

With resources like that, there is only one thing to do. Mouse Words will be highlighting a female musician that we like every single day. Some will be really famous, some you probably haven't heard of. I want it to be weird and arbitrary and random, because my point is women are already out there and already playing. If we start looking at the female musicians we already have, then it won't be so hard to see that we need more.