Description
cat no. TR526
Compiled and with liner notes by Vivien Goldman
The Slits, Crass, X Ray Spex, Patti Smith, Blondie,
The Raincoats, Sleater-Kinney, Big Joanie,
The Au-Pairs, Poison Girls and many more.
Since the historiography of punk is a male-dominated one, a “Revenge of the She-Punks” was long overdue.
This feminist reckoning was written by none other than post-punk pioneer Vivien Goldman, who has an
insider’s perspective due to her work as a musician and one of Britian’s first female music writers. Along
four themes – Identity, Money, Love and Protest – the “punk professor” traces empowering moments that
punk holds especially for women. This Compilation is inspired by the book, which was originally released by
University of Texas Press in 2019. Compiled and with liner notes by Vivien Goldman.
“We’re not talking a mean-spirited gotcha! revenge here. As both my book that inspired it and this recording
prove, us She-Punks’ revenge is about our complex survival in an all too often hostile environment. The book
offers a template to finding a way through the patriarchal labyrinth of the music industry by telling the back-
stories of thirty-eight songs by women from not only the Anglophone countries, but Africa, the Caribbean,
Asia and Eastern and Continental Europe. Together, they demonstrate how girls around the world, with no
or few role models, found ways to thwart blockages and become self-expressive musicians, breaking
traditions and expectations, setting new standards with every chord. Alas, for a raft of factors it was
impossible to include them all; but herein lies a stirring and representative selection. Cumulatively, we hear
how female artists everywhere are moved to sing about the common issues that I distilled down to be the
core themes of the book: the bare-bones of living that connect us, wherever we are. We open with Identity
featuring Fea, Big Joanie, The Raincoats, Blondie and Poly Styrene with X-Ray Spex. Then comes Money with
Patti Smith, Shonen Knife, Malaria! and the Slits; followed by Love/Unlove: Crass, Cherry Vanilla, Grace Jones,
Rhoda Dakar with the Special AKA, Alice Bag (The Bags), Tribe 8 and the Au Pairs, the Mo-dettes, Neneh Cherry
from the UK/Sweden/US and this writer/musician. The closing chapter, Protest, features Sleater-Kinney, Jayne
Cortez and the Firespitters Skinny Girl Diet, Vi Subversa and the Poison Girls, the Czech Republic’s Zuby Nehty,
Colombia’s Fertil Miseria and Jamaica’s Tanya Stephens. Many people have questioned how I arrived at those
four themes (answer: thinking,) and so far, no-one has disagreed.However, in sequencing this compilation,
the important thing was to sonically flow through the breadth of our creativity, led by the rhythms and sound,
rather than the lyrics; they, I already knew, formed a compelling whole, an implacable critique. My perspective o
n punk is based on spirit rather than adherence to the venerated concept of the genre as only a frenetic full-frontal
sonic attack (though that is also represented here). Having been involved with the movement at the start in mid-
1970s London, as Features Editor of the punk rock weekly, Sounds, I understood it to be a front line, inclusionary
genre, with DIY at its core, which is why it was the first genre to give anything approaching an equal platform to
women musicians.
Especially for the less conventional, all too often the path for women artists is still steeper than that of male peers.
Despite the massive success of today’s female superstars, there remains a quota perception in an industry that still
largely lives in boystown (though always factor in that it’s not the men, it’s the mentality,) who are less receptive to
forceful females; like the sort of bookers who say, Well, we’ve done our bit, we’ve booked our female artist – as if
booking women were some grim post-MeToo duty.But as heard in these tracks, in all its forms, whether sounding
strident or soft, punk is a music of resistance; women’s punk specially so. We continue to rail at and use our music
to shift a system which, in America as this release comes out – let alone in countries long known to be suppressive
of women – our basic human agency is under attack on more than one front, notably where equal pay and abortion
are concerned. Welcome to some very necessary and in many cases, too little heard voices of women whose
creativity could not be stopped, and who managed to use music to mould their environment, create their own space,
and live as self-actualized artists.”
Vivien Goldman
LP 1
A1) Tanya Stephens – Welcome To The Rebelution
A2) Au Pairs – It’s Obvious
A3) X-Ray Spex – Identity
A4) Fea – Mujer Moderna
A5) The Bags – Babylonian Gorgon
A6) Fértil Miseria – Visiones de la Muerte
A7) Crass – Smother Love
A8) Rhoda with The Special AKA – The Boiler
LP2
B9) Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters – Maintain Control
B10) Skinny Girl Diet – Silver Spoons
B11) Big Joanie – Dream No 9
B12) Malaria! – Geld
B13) The Slits – Spend, Spend, Spend
B14) Poison Girls – Persons Unknown
LP 3
C1) Bush Tetras – Too Many Creeps
C2) Grace Jones – My Jamaican Guy
C3) Patti Smith – Free Money
C4) Tribe 8 – Checking Out Your Babe
C5) Cherry Vanilla – The Punk
C6) Blondie – Rip Her To Shreds
C7) Sleater-Kinney – Little Babies
C8) The Selecter – On My Radio
LP4
D9) Mo-Dettes– White Mice
D10) Shonen Knife – It’s A New Find
D11) The Raincoats – No One’s Little Girl
D12) Vivien Goldman – Launderette
D13) Zuby Nehty – Sokol
D14) Neneh Cherry – Buffalo Stance
