Editor’s note: Hello Equalists! Sorry we’ve been away so long. We’ve been a bit busy moving packing up boxes, moving across the country, exploring new cities and starting new jobs – phew! Turns out it’s all quite time-consuming…
We’ve plenty lined up, and can’t wait to get blogging again, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share this brilliant piece from fab telly voiceover lady (she’s on ITV y’know), broadcast journalist and head of music at Brighton radio station Juice 107.2, Andrea Fox.
She’s written before for us about Taylor Swift and hairy tights (aren’t we lucky?), so enjoy the piece – and of course if you have ideas for a blog yourself, get in touch, we’d always like to hear ideas for blogs and articles: editor.theequalist@gmail.com
But now, over to Andrea:
“I’ve just finished reading Keith Richards’ autobiography.
It was ardent feminist writer Caitlin Moran’s interview of the Rolling Stones guitarist which led me to read it. It was an engrossing read, with Richards voice clear as day throughout, filled with fascinating and loving descriptions of music and writing process between him and Mick Jagger, who seemingly made pop songs out of thin air, and how that relationship broke down.
It’s also really bloody sexist.
I don’t even mean Keith Richards is himself sexist; he seems in awe of many women in his life including his female manager, but his description of the music industry through the 70s, 80s and 90s set my feminist alarm off.
His vernacular used to describe women is mostly ‘chicks’ and ‘bitches’ which doesn’t seem odd for a 70s rock star. But what struck me most was Richards seems to have worked almost exclusively with male musicians. Male musicians who play in bands with women (such as the Velvet Underground, teaming up with Nico) are dismissed as ‘just having played in chick bands.’
Interesting on many levels, but this picture of the music industry for women interested me most.
I am head of music at Brighton station Juice 107.2 so I get paid to play pick and play pop music. A gifted existence. Not the music industry as such but it’s on the venn diagram somewhere.
Our music policy during daytime is the best of the 90s and 00s and whatever this bit we’re in now is called.
Recently we had a new late night show which I had to schedule where our strict ‘nothing any earlier than ‘89’ policy was relaxed to play some classic tracks and I was able to go further from the daytime’s hit-based structure as it followed our new music show.
Excellent, I thought, Blondie, Kate Bush, how I’ve missed them. Shame the list of female artists didn’t stretch much further.
A look through our existing music catalogue (not put together by me) revealed an abundance of male artists and bands, and an almost total lack of female. Not something I feel has been an issue choosing new music. Where were the likes of Bat For Lashes, Tom Tom Club, Bjork, Gossip, Laura Marling? But no, working from the songs, it was, as they say, a sausage fest.
I browsed everyhit.com’s music trivia, hoping it was just my lack of knowledge. Of the twenty artists with the Most Number 1s only Madonna and some of the Spice Girls make the list.
Madonna is the only female on the list of ‘Artist with Most Weeks at Number 1’ or ‘Most Consecutive Number 1s’. Basically it’s all a man fest since the charts began in 1958.
The book, and the incident at work made me think. Ok, so in the past the music industry, was male dominated in the way that most industries, bar midwifery and sanitary towel testers appear to be. Have things changed?
Keeping a mix of genders from recent musical offerings never seems an issue. Taking a look at something like the Brit Awards, all the Critic’s Choice Award winner’s have been female and only bloke – Tom Odell – has collected it so far. But it’s only been going since 2009. And I really hope that girls don’t feel music is closed to them.
One of the Everyday Sexism twitter feed tales came from a professional female guitarist, checking out guitars in a store whilst on tour, only to be asked if she was buying a guitar for her boyfriend.
I can play grade three clarinet and I’ve many times tried to learn guitar, currently bass, as four strings must be easier than six (Keith Richards plays with five by the way.)
Someone once said radio is full of people who wish they were rock stars – I’d say that’s one hundred percent true. Maybe not Five Live.
I’m lucky, I’ve only once been patronised whilst working in radio for being female, and that was for taking a record back a quarter of a revolve before transferring to digital format. But radio, like the music industry it seems, is a mans world and I’m thankful that the recently set up organisations like Soundwomen has started asking questions about female representation on the airwaves.
They’ve found that while women working in radio are often better qualified than men (73% of women have degrees, compared to 60% men), they’ll be paid less – earning on average £2,200 less each year. They are also less likely to make it to the top and more women leave the industry in the thirties, never to return.
I hope girls don’t feel music industry is as closed to them as when the Rolling Stones were considered ‘new music’.”
Keef. Feminist icon?
The Equalist 