Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
How did I miss #62 from Lisa on Monday?
>>As for the groupies, I discuss in the conclusion of the book how the
>>subculture has changed, and not (I believe) for the better. M, once
>>again, you know a lot about current conditions in the groupie
>>subculture. 

Regrettably, I can't speak with much authority on contemporary
groupies and what I know is pure observation since the groupies I know
and hung out with are all retired. The bulk of the ones I see called
groupies are titty dancers or porn stars. The presence of the internet
led to some decent treatises on the topic, like the late, lamented
GroupieCentral site.

Donna Anderson is my favorite exmaple of the current groupie supreme.
She used to have a wicked page at metal-sludge.com that named names and
rated musicians by length, width, and stamina. She's a blonde
video-style babe and it's easy to see why she is successful. But I
don't know of any organized gaggles of groupies ala the GTOs and Texas
Blondes.
  

    
Lisa, please include Marianne Faithfull, Bonnie Bramlett and Kathi
McDonald. Bonnie you know from Delaney & Bonnie, who were massively
influential on Eric Clapton's emergence as a solo musician. Kathi was
the West Coast singer who toured with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs &
Englishmen and was one of Leon Russell's Shelter People. Kathi's
enduring moment is singing backup on the Rolling Stones' "All Down the
Line" on Exile on Main Street. Kathi's singing partner in Shelter
People was Claudia Lennear, for whom Jagger famously wrote "Brown
Sugar" for. You might also want to talk to Lydia Pense of Cold Blood
(who just released a new album) and Patti Santos of It's a Beautiful
Day. 
  

    
I'd be happy to speak with you, Lisa - email is
lollylewis@mindspring.com.

Sorry if I'm missing the point of the list but I bet Linda Tillery
should be there. Annie Sampson too.
  

    

(The "slip" thing has to do with a response being posted while you were
composing yours.  It's an artifact of the origional conference software -
which many of us still use - displaying a message like "Warning!  A comment
slipped in ahead of yours."  The web interface notifies you and gives you the
option of re-editing, cancelling, or posting; the previous system just
offered the alert.  So in short, you don't have to say "slip" when responding
to earlier posts.  I'd suggest instead that you say somethiing like this:

Re <124> - "Slip" has to do with a response..." - that provides a clickable
link to the pose you're reponding to.)
  

    

Linda LaFlamme lives around here (Oakland CA) somewhere.  She came to a
coffee house gig of mine a couple of years ago.  Not sure what name she's
using now.
  

    
I thought the original concept for this next book here was women
instrumentalists. 
  

    
Ed, yeah that is what I am doing.

M, I am only addressing women instrumentalists. Did Marianne, Bonnie,
or Kathi play anything besides their voices? I am interested in
researching women who decided to break out of the mold of female singer
and who decided to become performers, instead of spectators in a
unique way (kind of like groupies;).

Lolly, thanks so much for your generosity. I will email soon.
Absolutely Linda Tillery. I had forgotten Loading Zone. Anyone out
there have some info about their recordings (faves, what has been
reissued or is out on CD)I will start looking for the vinyl. Annie
Sampson was a singer in Stoneground,yes? Does she play an instrument? 
 
David, The Linda LaFlamme that was in Its a Beautiful Day? Did she
play? 
  

    
She played violin -- or was that David? Far as I know Annie Sampson
was only a singer. Worked with Elvin Bishop and was his girlfriend,
died early of some ghastly disease. Tillery played keyboards -- seems
to me she was in a jazz-ish group for a while. 
  

    
David was the violinist.  Not sure if Linda LaFlamme played anythiing.

Linda Tillery is here in the Bay Area; shouldn't be too hard to find.  In
fact, our new cat-sitter used her as a reference.
  

    


John Adams writes:


First, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Frightwig, because Paula Frazier was
maybe the best bass player I've ever seen. (I never saw Jaco.) She played
around northwest Arkansas after leaving Frightwig. I'm not sure if she made
the trip with Declaration of Love/The Faith Healers/Dali Automatic (I forget
which version she was in) to Austin and/or Dallas to open for the Flaming
Lips/Butthole Surfers, but she's now in San Fran, doing fabrics for a living.

Anyway, I'm old and cranky now, and not much moves me anymore, but there are
two recent bands with significant female instrumental presence that do: The
Jayhawks and The Drive-By Truckers.

Mark Olson left The Jayhawks after their masterpiece _Tomorrow the Green
Grass_ (which includes "Miss Williams' Guitar", which at first I thought was
about Lucinda Williams) to marry (I +think+ they're married) Victoria
Williams and be in The Creekdippers with her. That's commitment. The Drive-By
Truckers' _Southern Rock Opera_ is smart on civil rights and southern rock,
but see its not-quite-fair "Cassie's Brother".

Thanks,

      John A
  

    

We have a former member of Frightwig here in the WELL: <hex>
  

    
Lisa, please include Marianne Faithfull, Bonnie Bramlett and Kathi
McDonald. Bonnie you know from Delaney & Bonnie, who were massively
influential on Eric Clapton's emergence as a solo musician. Kathi was
the West Coast singer who toured with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs &
Englishmen and was one of Leon Russell's Shelter People. Kathi's
enduring moment is singing backup on the Rolling Stones' "All Down the
Line" on Exile on Main Street. Kathi's singing partner in Shelter
People was Claudia Lennear, for whom Jagger famously wrote "Brown
Sugar" for. You might also want to talk to Lydia Pense of Cold Blood
(who just released a new album) and Patti Santos of It's a Beautiful
Day. 
  

    
Nope, they are all singers. I missed the instrumentalist part but
still think The Duchess belongs there. She MADE Bo Diddley's band.
  

    
Country Joe McDonald's _Paris Sessions_ album had a number of good
women instrumentalists on it:  Tucki Bailey, Dorothy Moskowitz, 
and Anna Rizzo.
  

    
Lili Hayden
  

    

>You might also want to talk to...Patti Santos of It's a Beautiful Day

Not possible, unfortunately. Died in a car crash in the 80s.

>Far as I know Annie Sampson  was only a singer. Worked with Elvin
>Bishop and was his girlfriend, died early of some ghastly disease.

While I'm happy to report that Annie Sampson is alive, well and still
singing around the Bay Area, the wonderful singer and Elvin Bishop
squeeze that Ed mixed up with Annie, Jo Baker, did indeed die (of liver
disease) some time ago.
  

    
Might want to add Lisa Kindred and Alice Stuart to the list.
  

    
(Linda Tillery is definitely around, I saw her recently. HAve her
contact info around here somwhere - - - )
  

    

Alice Stuart lives in Seattle and visits the Bay Area on tour once or twice a
year.   I'll send you her contact info.
  

    



John ADams writes:


Marianne Faithfull might make an interesting counter-example of someone who
only came into her full blossom after she stopped playing guitar (did she or
didn't she, in the early days?) It'd be interesting also to contrast that
situation with that of, say, Joni Mitchell, an exceptional player with a
great ear for talent, yet who is categorizd in that singer-songwriter niche.
("What the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my
head.")

For current examples, I'd look at Ani DiFranco--she's doing it all, eh?
heavily into the business end of things and doing a lot of her own
production--and the similar yet musically utterly different Polly Jean Harvey
and her band, PJ Harvey. (Incidentally, she also worked on the most recent
Marianne Faithfull release.) It might be useful to contrast her with her
contemporary Liz Phair, who did that one great album and then kinda fizzled
out.

In a slightly older vein, Jennifer Batten is no slouch, and had a Guitar
Player column, did the studio and touring band bit--Michael Jackson at his
peak--and I think was in one or more of the late night TV show bands. Sara
Lee (newest record on Ani's label) has a stellar track record: League of
Gentlemen (you can't play bass with Fripp if you aren't a player), The
Waitresses (I think--I'm getting old), The B-52's, The Gang of Four.

The best story might be about the women who weren't fronting bands and
weren't singing much, if any, lead. Karen Grotberg of The Jayhawks is one of
those--her playing is an important part of the sound, but so far as I know,
she only does background vocals. It'd be especially cool to focus on women
who were drummers or keyboardists--anything that hid their bodies and made
them less available as eye candy.

I'd rather read about Georgia and Ringaline than Joan and Paulette--we've
heard their stories.

(Apropos of nothing, I knew in the summer of '87 that women were finally
going to be accepted as rock instrumentalists: On two consecutive nights I
saw two different touring bands, each with a way pregnant bassist.)
  

    
Y'all are forgetting Maureen Tucker of the Velvet Underground, no?

BTW the LaFlammmes have a web site: http://www.roadhogs.net/laflamme/
  

    

The current Linda LaFlamme is not the original Linda LaFlamme.
  

    
Good lord, Dorothy Moskowitz! She of the United States of America,
which would give her a long pedigree. 

Sorry about the Annie Sampson/Jo Baker mixup; what happens when you're
too lazy go get out of the chair and look at a CD cover. 

And I'd add to this list -- which I believe Lisa wanted restricted to
a certain time-frame, but I could be wrong -- Wendy and Lisa, who
started with Prince and then went on to do their own thing, and were
frustrated in doing so by the sexist attitudes they ran into in the
business. (Imagine that! Sexism in the music business!) 
  

    
Ed, you are right about the time frame. I am going to limit it to the
same time frame as Electric Ladyland, 1965-1975. I am interested in the
way women instrumentalists were treated by the industry and addressed
by the media in the era when rock music became big business. One
website I came across listed Tillery as a drummer. I will try and track
her down. Any help would be appreciated from those in the Bay Area.

The following are a series of slips:
David, the Alice Stuart suggestion is a wonderful one! Thanks for the
contact info.

Hal, all I can find on Moskowitz and Rizzo says says they are
vocalists. Thanks for the heads up on Tucki Bailey.

Sharon, it says that Lili played with Funkadelic, was that recently or
back in the day?

Earl, what kind of music did Lisa Kindred play? I know she plays blues
now but she was on Vanguard, which I remember as a seriously folky
label.

Jon, most assuredly Mo Tucker. I went to the EMP Conference last year
and they had reassembled in the museum a light show and film exhibition
from the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. It was on all four walls and
you sat on the floor to watch it. I think the two most amusing things
about it (besides the fact of its quaintness)was watching all us older
folks get up off the floor after 20 minutes and the fact that it almost
set off my epilepsy!

Ed, I am not finding anything that says Dorothy M. was an
instrumentalist. Anyone have the lowdown on this one? 

It is so gratifying to me to see how many women instrumentalists were
(and are)out there. I am slowly trying to get a handle on the project
and all your suggestions are really wonderful grist for the mill. On a
related note, I went to see a fun band last night at the Trocadero
here, The Gore Gore Girls out of Detroit. They wear vinyl mini dresses
and boots (with frighteningly high heels) and (M, does this take you
back?) falls in their hair. They play big Gretsch guitars (one plays a
black one, one a white). Fun retro sounding stuff with punk volume and
sensiblity (and one Crystals cover). I was still struck by the fact
that most sound guys don't seem to know what to do with female vocals
at high volume, I don't know whether it is lack of practice or
interest, but it still pisses me off. I don't know what it is about
watching an almost all-girl band that still seems new and just a bit
subversive to me (even in vinyl mini skirts)even at this jaded state in
my life. 
  

    
Lisa Kindred did indeed do mostly blues, but had a band called the UFO's
in the '60's that was more rock.  Diane Tribuno was also in that band, 
with two other women.  It was one of the first all-women rock bands.

Alice Stuart was also more folk than rock, until her album done in Berkeley, 
called Full Time Woman.  I think it was on Fantasy.  Vic Smith, Richard
Greene and Mark Naftalan were on it, but it was all her songs.