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Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music
This is a study of women playing instruments in pop, rock, indie, soul etc. from the punk era until today. The author, an academic and musician, carried out over 100 interviews with women playing in British bands from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Although the book is primarily sociological, it is easily accessible to the general reader and rich with quotations. It explains the shortage of female instrumentalists and explores the routes and life experiences that have been taken by those exceptional women who do play in bands.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
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March 8, 2009
The author is a sociologist who was a member of an all-women band The Mistakes, who were based in Oxford, England starting in 1978. Apparently Simon Frith was her PhD tutor. She started with a study of women musicians in bands in the early 80s. However, after her thesis was completed, she was not able to publish a book immediately. So she undertook another round of research and interviews in the mid-90s, at the time of Riot Grrrl (though most of the women she interviewed saw British Riot Grrrl as a media construct that they didn't want to be a part of.) Therefore she had two groups of women to compare.
She notes in the introduction that the book is intentionally written in an accessible manner - it is not dry and doesn't suffer from critical theory language problems.
Due to the way the research was conducted, some of the musicians from the earlier cohort (i.e. the era this mailing list focuses on) are referred to by pseudonyms. There are some "name" musicians she interviewed for the book, like Judy Parsons of the Belle Stars (who was also in The Mistakes), Debbie Smith, Skin, Natasha Atlas, Amelia Fletcher, Candida Doyle, Emma Anderson of Lush, Gail Greenwood of Belly, Manda Rin of Bis, Vi Subversa, and Vicki Aspinall. There are also interviewees who were in more locally-based bands.
Unfortunately the book was only ever published in hardcover from an academic press, so is expensive to own, but I checked it out from the SF Public Library and it should be available from many libraries or
via interlibrary loan.
She notes in the introduction that the book is intentionally written in an accessible manner - it is not dry and doesn't suffer from critical theory language problems.
Due to the way the research was conducted, some of the musicians from the earlier cohort (i.e. the era this mailing list focuses on) are referred to by pseudonyms. There are some "name" musicians she interviewed for the book, like Judy Parsons of the Belle Stars (who was also in The Mistakes), Debbie Smith, Skin, Natasha Atlas, Amelia Fletcher, Candida Doyle, Emma Anderson of Lush, Gail Greenwood of Belly, Manda Rin of Bis, Vi Subversa, and Vicki Aspinall. There are also interviewees who were in more locally-based bands.
Unfortunately the book was only ever published in hardcover from an academic press, so is expensive to own, but I checked it out from the SF Public Library and it should be available from many libraries or
via interlibrary loan.
Displaying 1 of 1 review