Then it must be May Day!

Hazel Dickens is a longtime union supporter and feminist folksinger. She comes from a family of miners in West Virginia, and has lent her voice to the cause of workers’ rights - especially women workers - countless times. She appears in Barbara Kopple’s incredible documentary Harlan Country USA, about a miners’ strike that ended in tragedy, and some of her most powerful songs are collected on the amazing album Coal Mining Women, and are a potent reminder that women have ALWAYS been part of the fight for safe working conditions, shorter hours and decent pay. She also, I should mention, has a voice that could raise the dead (and invariably makes me cry like a babe). Plus, in an industry (the music one, I mean) where youth is god and death may as well occur at 30, it’s really important to remember that there are people out there who have been doing it and doing it well since before you were born, you little pischer. So, as she says in Woman Coal Miner Blues, if you can’t stand by her, don’t stand in her way.

A mystery person (thank you, whoever you are!) has created this fan video featuring Dickens singing union organizer Joe Hill’s song Rebel Girl. It opens with a speech by feminist labour leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the images are all of women involved with the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies). It’s really worth checking out the video’s original source for brief bios of all the women pictured. Powerful stuff. What? No no, I just have something in my eye, that’s all.

I’ve also posted the first half of a video biography of Hazel Dickens after the cut. Happy May Day!
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Time for a little shameless (heh heh) self-promotion (sort of): if you like your media free from corporate manipulation, remember that even free media ain’t free to run, and support your local community media outlet. CKUT, Montreal’s community radio station, is holding its annual funding drive, where the station raises money to cover its operating costs. Because they’re not backed by either large corporations or advertising, grassroots media organizations (like Shameless!) need the support of the public to exist. So if you have any cash to spare after donating to your fave feminist publication, consider helping out CKUT or an independent media outlet in your neighborhood. We need these organizations to ensure we continue to have a diversity of voices in the media landscape. And honestly, where else are you going to hear MIA and Team Dresch back to back? Clear Channel? Methinks not.

portrait of the author as a budding radio enthusiast, circa 1988

For Venus’s annual funding show, we’re going to be doing live karaoke in studio, with special guests from some of our favorite local bands, like Thundrah, Kickers, 100 Common Disasters, and more. The more pledges we get, the more we’ll embarrass ourselves! Tune in this Thursday from noon to 2 PM. Everyone wins!

In my years as a community-radio DJ, I’ve received many a promotional CD for a female artist with that most backhanded of compliments in its promo material: “Not your usual female singer-songwriter”. Okay, I take most music journalism about as seriously as I take Stephen Colbert’s presidential campaign, but this is annoying for so many reasons. What is “your usual female singer-songwriter”, and what’s so bad about that? Did Joni Mitchell really traumatize so many children of baby-boomers that we can no longer conceive of the (extremely broad!) category of female singer-songwriters as anything but derivative and banal? Humph. (Not that I think Joni is derivate and banal. But admittedly she did spawn a legion of copycats who occasionally make me want to poke my ears out.)

Okay. Now that I have that off my chest, here’s my recommendation for this week: Finders Keepers has released a compilation of female singer-songwriters called Bearded Ladies that is anything but banal, gooey, or involving songs about menstruation. What’s nice about this comp is that it seems to have no driving theme other than the unusual and the awesome - the songs date from the 1970s to last year, and the artists are from the USA, France, Turkey, and elsewhere. All the songs could be roughly categorized as folk(ish), but they all decidedly push the boundaries of what can be done with a guitar and a single voice. For instance, Peachtree, the contribution from Lispector (which you can listen to on the Finders Keepers site) is from 2007 but could have come from decades ago, with its 4-track warmth and meandering style.

Other contributors include Turkish protest singer Selda, Wendy & Bonnie, Speck Mountain, and the indescribable Brigitte Fontaine. In fact, I’m not even going to try to describe her. Just watch the video below the cut. Laurie Anderson, eat your heart out.
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To me, nothing says First Day Of Summer (okay, not officially, but have you been outside today?) like Cannonball by The Breeders. Oh, the Deal sisters and their greasy hair. Oh, 1993. Fifteen years and this song still makes me grin like a maniac. This video, incidentally, was directed by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, along with Spike Jonze.

Last time I wrote about the Derby girls, it was mostly to lament the fact that there were no tournaments in my neck of the woods for months to come. Well, the snow is melting, the leaves are budding, and is that a wristguard I spy?

The Beast cometh (Montreal Roller Derby)

The Montreal Roller Derby league is about to kick off its season with a tournament of heretofore unheard-of proportions - The Beast of the East, a full day of hip-checking, body-slamming, fishnet-ripping insanity. It all goes down April 19th from 10 AM to 10 PM, at Aréna St-Louis, 5633 St. Dominique. Teams from all over Canada and the States will be playing for the title (and the admiration and swooning of the fans).

There has been some debate, on this very board no less, as to whether or not Roller Derby constitutes a feminist activity or intervention. The point has been made that, while fun, Derby delegitimizes female sports, because of the outlandish costumes, sexy undertones, and focus on performance rather than skill (though skill is obviously necessary as well. Look at that photo. Good god, would you want to mix with that if you didn’t think you had what it takes?). But I kind of think that Derby is to sports what The Cramps are to barbershop quartets; granted, the latter is more refined, more about sheer skill, discipline, and good clean living, less about showiness and attitude. But I know who I’d rather be watching on a Saturday night.

(*no, I did not some up with this title myself. I’m not that genius, okay. It’s from a fundraiser the ladies held last week to help pay their way to a tournament in San Diego.)

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Very excited about Toronto’s Crystal Castles’ debut self-titled album - I was surprised to hear it was their first full-length release, since I’ve been hearing about this band for a while and nodding furiously along with various songs on their Myspace page. One reviewer described it (somewhat derisively) as “like being high on LSD and playing an old school video game”, a description with which I concur (but without the derision. Acid and Supermario, yeah). But it goes beyond gimmick - in particular, I like how they mostly reject standard song structures and, heck, lyrics in general, with singer Alice Glass warbling what sounds like a made-up language - much like some of my other favorite bands, Gang Gang Dance and Les Georges Leningrad.

Airwar is my top pick right now, and while there’s no official band video, the grab-bag that is YouTube has provided us with this fan video so we will have something to do with our eyes while we listen to the song. Hope you like ballroom dancing.

*apparently the band name is a reference to the home of She-Ra, the self-styled cartoon Princess of Power (were she and He-Man dating, or were they just friends?).

In other news, Montreal noise monsters Aids Wolf play tonight at La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent, with Black Feelings, Japanther, and Sightings. Be prepared for a serious blistering. I swear, sometimes I think singer Chloe Lum is channelling Yoko Ono. Video for Spit Tastes Like Metal after the cut.

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The Lesbians on Ecstasy want you to dance. Not only that, they want you to dance to classic lezzie tunes revamped into club hits - discerning ears can pick out references to Melissa Etheridge, Tracy Chapman, the Indigo Girls, and other members of the queer canon in their songs. Nevertheless, they are 100% original, and one of my favorite bands to shake it to (and also interview). This video is very much in the spirit of 1970s lesbian feminist activism, but it’s not satirical or ironic - a reminder that feminism isn’t/wasn’t (only) about wearing ponchos and brandishing the lady-symbol but also about “yo, look around you, it’s awesome we’ve found each other.”

In celebration of spring (fingers crossed), enjoy this video. Who knows, it may inspire you to go for a walk in the forest and check out some tree vulvas too.

For my Film Friday this week, I’m offering not a review or a critique, but a Shameless Exclusive. A friend directed me to this short video made by New York artist and musician Jessica Segall. It’s a history of corn told in shadow-puppetry - a fine mix of art, history, politics, oh and just a little sci-fi. (Of course, if you think about it, lots of food-politics stuff is way more Twilight Zone than Rod Serling’s most out-there fantasy.) Hope you enjoy. And eat those Corn Pops while you can, because after this you may never again.

Drop in on Jessica Segall and her band here.

If it’s true that punk is an explosive reaction against an oppressive regime, then it’s no surprise that the punkest thing I’ve seen in ages is coming out of Afghanistan.

The Burka Band is a group of three women who, with the help of some German music producers, created this video, and a three-song EP, and a bit of an international reputation - one which, sadly, they can’t really enjoy, as they have to remain anonymous in their home town of Kabul. According to sources, only about ten people in all of Afghanistan know who these women actually are.

The video was released in 2003, and there was initially some doubt as to its authenticity - were these hipsters in bedsheets? Russian pop-stars riding the cutting edge? But it seems to be confirmed as the real deal: an Afghani girl group singing about how they feel about wearing burkas and being women in a highly segregated society. And why not? If the West has anything useful to offer the rest of the world, it’s that social critique often goes well with power chords and four-four beats. I don’t assume that the Burka Band speaks for all Afghani women, just like I don’t assume Yoko Ono speaks for all Japanese women, or Madonna for all American gals. But this is one of those strange and kind of amazing examples of how musical forms can bounce around the globe, mix together, influence and mutate, and just maybe make the world a little bigger. I can only hope.

The main songwriter, Nargiz, says of the project: It was a lot of fun, but also very scary. Afghanistan is still a very dangerous place for modern women, and when we shot the video we had to do it very discretely because no one could know that we were playing music. Of course it was a joke to sing in the burkas, but it was also necessary to wear them. If people in Afghanistan knew who the members of the Burka Band were, we could be attacked or killed because there are still a lot of religious fanatics here.

The single was released on the German label Ata Tak, and you can read more about it (and buy it) here. More Burka Band articles here and here.