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.

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.

… and I’m not talking about I’m OK, You’re OK.

In honour of Valentine’s Week (yes, I know I’m late, it’s been a busy week, okay), I’m posting for your enjoyment this video for one of my favorite songs about, yes indeed, female masturbation. While debates rage on, Cyndi Lauper is busy, well, getting busy.

I also appreciate the grammer lesson in this song: “She bop, he bop-a we bop, I bop, you bop-a they bop…” Everybody now!

A few more for the self-service playlist:
Missy Elliott - Toyz
Liz Phair - Turning Japanese (covering The Vapours)
The Divinyls - I Touch Myself (duh)

Okay, so it’s the time of year when everyone lets their hidden fantasy loose, their inner demon out, their freak flag fly, however you want to put it. And the next day we wipe off the eyeliner and fake blood and shaving cream and go back to our lives as usual. But for some people, every day is Halloween, and being what other people might call “freaks” is just a part of who they are. I suspect the dearly departed Les Georges Leningrad are some such people. The band broke up not too long ago, but their spirit lives on… on the internet (spooky). So for your Halloween enjoyment, here is a clip of them playing live in Detroit.

Other additions to the Halloween mixtape:

The Cramps - Human Fly
Thee Headcoatees - Strychnine
The 5678’s - Teenage Witch
Faun Fables - Catch Me
Anything by Diamanda Galas

Happy We’en-ing!

It’s a frenzy of media democracy this weekend here in Montreal. CKUT 90.3 FM (campus community radio) is hosting a conference on media democracy and community radio. Unlike many academic conferences, where you have to pay to attend and the tone is, shall we say, occasionally a little bit exclusive, this event is free and geared toward members of the community. Plus, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! is giving the keynote address. Booyeah.

Especially of note is Saturday’s panel discussion on women in community radio - one of my Venus co-hosts will be talking about our experiences hosting a women’s music show, and other panelists will be covering anti-oppression community activism, grassroots feminism, and… women and air-guitar performances! I can’t wait to hear what this is all about. Anyway, now’s your chance to show up and ask what “women’s music” is, whether or not women need an exclusive space on the air, and why we never play Sarah McLachlan.

Then, once you’re totally pumped on the power of community radio, you can start building your own low-watt radio transmitter in one of the workshops offered at the station!

And when your brain is full, head down to Le Cagibi (5490 St. Laurent) on Saturday night for a bootyshaker of a party, DJ’ed by yours truly and the rest of the Venus collective.

Check out the full schedule here.

It’s that time of year again - the looking-around time. The time when everyone is looking around for a new person to cuddle with in the winter, a new passion to fill the coming frozen hours, that one new song that perfectly captures the new chill in the air and the strange and familiar smell of leaves on the ground.

This is where Merrill Garbus comes in. Known on the stage as tUnE-YaRdS, she is a one-woman dynamo with a ukelele and sampled beats from an mp3 recorder. Don’t mistake her lo-fi setup for minimalism, though - this woman’s sound is much, much larger than life. Her lyrics, some of the most original I’ve heard, go from gentle to creepy and back again so quickly you barely notice, like being pinched on the butt at a party by someone who looks like a cute, shy librarian, and you go “Did that actually happen?” and you’re secretly really glad it did.

Recommended tracks: When You Tell The Lions That You Love Them So, and Melting, which was recorded live on a certain someone’s radio show. Ahem. There’s a good interview with tUnE-YaRdS here, courtesy of the good folks at the excellent Said The Gramophone, where she also talks about her puppet show Fat Kid Opera.

If you want to keep the chills going, check out Taki Pejzaz by California’s Faun Fables. Singer Dawn McCarthy has one of the most amazing voices of all time, and this song will take you places. I’m not telling which ones. Go listen.

I apologize for my lack of music posts lately - it’s not that there’s not enough good music out there right now but rather that there’s too much! How’s a girl to make up her mind?

I also realize that I made it my mandate - ahem, ladydate - to introduce music that you may not have heard before, and I’ve noted that many folks here are no stranger to the wonder that is MIA. But every time I try to think about what music I’m most excited about right now, my mind keeps sliding back to Paper Planes, a track off of her new album Kala.

By now it’s all too clichee to describe music as “a revolution you can dance to” (hello, Le Tigre‘s been doing it since the nineties) so I’ll assume you all know what I mean, and move on to how amazing it is to hear a dance song dealing with issues of colonialism, border patrolling, and “Third World democracy”. Especially compelling is the tension in the song, between the aggression of the gunshots and the playful, hopscotch rhythm that incorporates them. It’s like “I’m dancing to the sounds of warfare, and I love it! Is this right? Oh well, pass the glowsticks…” Listen to the song, you’ll know what I mean. And, while I don’t want to suggest it’s not a bumpin’ dancehall future-classic (because no doubt it is), it’s also, well, kind of sad. As songs about war and containment of bodies often are.

As a follow-up to what’s sure to be the season’s most-spun album, may I suggest the track Love Me or Hate Me by Lady Sovereign, the self-described “biggest midget in the game”? (Note: Her album Public Warning also has a very catchy track called Hoodie, which is apparently Lady Sovereign’s response to England’s attempt to ban hooded sweatshirts in nightclubs. A worthier cause I couldn’t imagine.) If only more pop stars could adopt the Lady’s “take it or leave it, I couldn’t give a flying rat’s patootie” attitude - except “flying rat’s patootie” probably wouldn’t be her phrase of choice (yes, this track has swear words, and I’m not talking about “douchebag”. If you’re going to play this one for your grandma or baby sister, consider yourself warned). She’s a funky little monkey with the tiniest ears, she don’t like drinking fancy champy, she’ll stick to Heinekin beers (yes, these are her own words. I can’t invent stuff like that). A girl after my own heart.

Happy listening.

Q: What do you do when it’s too hot to move, think, type, talk, or post eloquently on the musical artist of your choice?

A: Lie on your bed and listen to Heartbeats by Sweden’s The Knife. Guaranteed chills.

*I actually don’t like the live version they have up on their Myspace page as much as the original on Silent Shout. So if the screaming fans don’t do it for you, seek out the studio version. Either way, rock solid.

Oh my goodness, two features in one? What’s next, salt and vinegar potato chips? Jay-Z and Rihanna doing a song together? The mind boggles. Call it laziness or ingenuity, but I’ve decided to combine two weekly features into one consideration of a movie about music… kind of.

I finally got around to watching Shut Up and Sing, Barbara Kopple’s documentary about the Dixie Chicks and the uproar surrounding an offhand comment singer Natalie Maines made at a concert in 2003. Before I go into detail, I should mention that I was never really a Dixie Chicks fan - in fact they barely registered on my cultural radar before the whole “I’m ashamed George Bush is from Texas” debacle. But I am a huge fan of documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple - her 1976 doc Harlan County USA is one of the most astounding and heartbreaking films I’ve ever seen (and she made it when she was, like, 12. Okay, 22. But still). So I went into the film curious to see what she would do with a story about pop music, big hair, freedom of speech, and the polemic beast that is America today. Suffice it to say I was not disappointed.

The film is built around the aforementioned comment Natalie Maines made between songs at a concert in London, England - she expressed displeasure at US foreign policy, and then said “We’re ashamed that President Bush is from [our home territory] Texas,”. The fallout from the comment included hate mail, mass burnings of Dixie Chicks CDs (turns out CDs don’t burn so well, so we get to see lots of Middle American workboots stomping on them), radio boycotts, and even a death threat. Kopple’s deft editing and compiling of footage creates what is in fact a fascinating portrait of the media spin machine, and what exactly is meant by “free speech” and “patriotism” (and whether or not the two are in fact totally irreconcilable). There is the usual predictable and disturbing woman-hating, where the Chicks get called sluts and traitors, and several news commentators (guess which network - cough*fox*cough) suggest that what they really need is a good slapping around. You really get to see the opposite ends of the American political and cultural spectrum in all its gory glory. As one of the Chicks, Martie Maguire, sums up near the end of the film, “It had to be from us - it was perfect. It had to be the unlikely voice from what looked like the conservative heart of America.”

(more inside…)