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Women in Revolt! (Underground Rebellion in British Music – 1977-1985) is a brand new 14-track compilation, set for release on Music For Nations on the 3rd November 2023 (on neon yellow vinyl and digitally). Music For Nations?! Really? That’s a rather strange label for something like this to be on, weren’t they pretty much a patriarchal bastion of very macho somewhat repressed heavy metal bands back when all female musical rebellions was happening? The fact that this rather fine compilation is on this of all labels does kind of have us asking questions (we really don’t like Music For Nations that much he cynically smiled, they didn’t treat people that well back there…) Actually didn’t MFN release that notorious W.A.S.P single F**k Like A Beast back when Blackie Lawless was busy tying women to crosses and degrading them on his stage every night? Let’s just quote some of Blackie’s, Music For Nations released lyrics here – “I do whatever I want to, to ya, I’ll nail your ass to the sheets, A pelvic thrust and the sweat starts to sting ya, I f**k like a beast…” – This is a very strange label for this release to be on! Pretty sure Music For Nations would never have gone anywhere near any of these bands at the time, if they had I very much doubt any of the bands would have said yes.
It is an excellent compilation though, if you were around at the time you pretty much know and love all these tracks, if you weren’t around or maybe not even born at the time you probably still know and love all all these excellent pieces of music that have been wildly passed down over the years. Rebellion yes, most certainly, underground rebellion though? Probably not, these bands were (rightly) all over the mainstream music media at the time, NME front covers, regular play from people like John Peel and the rest and really, the tracks chosen to represent each band are pretty much the “greatest hit” from each of the very fine bands present here. it is a very narrow field, I’d have loved to have seen some of the real underground female bands of the time, there were quite a few, deep down in the punk rock undergrowth rather than the NME approved world, hell I’d love to see Girlschool acknowledged just once, early songs like Baby Doll or Not For Sale were as much of a challenge to the musical patriarchy as anything on here, they really did walk it rather tha njsut talk it in their early days, they were never really that welcome in this girls club though.
Hey look, this is a brilliant compilation, of course it bleedin’ well is, there’s not an average track on it, these bands were always exciting, they really were important, some of them still are. The album, which compiles “tracks from some of the most trailblazing – and often unsung – women working in UK music between 1977-1985, channels a passion and political voice that is too often overlooked when looking back at this vital time in British culture” is a vital collection, a statement (and if you’re 14 and hearing all this for the first time, then it must be really exciting to hear).
“Created in response to the forthcoming Women in Revolt! exhibition opening at Tate Britain on 8 November 2023 – a long overdue examination of the work of over 130 women artists working in the UK between 1970 to 1990 – the album has been co-compiled by the exhibition’s creator Linsey Young, Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, and Julie Weir, Head of Music for Nations, and explores the women artists, activists and musicians working outside of the mainstream who were changing the face of British music and inspiring a generation of women to break out of the restrictions placed upon them by patriarchal society.
Linsey Young says, “I think music is often a gateway drug and it absolutely was for me. I grew up in rural Scotland and accessing music as a teenager – by way of 1.5 hr bus trip to a monthly record fair in Inverness! – was one of the first ways that I started to find a like-minded community, make friends and start to explore books, films, art and left-wing politics. I was also interested in feminist thought so naturally sought out women musicians: bands like The Slits were fairly easy to find but I later worked in a record shop and studied in Glasgow where clubs like Optimo opened the doors to all sorts of experimental work by a wide range of people. The energy and vibrancy of the alternative music that inspired me will be present throughout the whole of the Women in Revolt! exhibition.”
This exhibition is the first of its kind – a major survey of feminist art by over 130 women artists working in the UK. It explores how networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Through their creative practices, women’s liberation was forged against the backdrop of extreme social, economic and political change. Women in Revolt! brings together a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, film and photography. It explores and reflects on issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, punk and independent music, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDs pandemic. The show celebrates the work and lived experiences of a hugely diverse group of women, many who, frequently working outside mainstream art institutions, have largely been left out of artistic narratives. Women in Revolt! presents many of these works for the first time in over 40 years.
The album features several artists included in the Women in Revolt! exhibition: performance artist, musician, author and co-founder of Throbbing Gristle, Cosey Fanni Tutti; photographer, photomontage artist, performance artist and co-founder of Ludus, Linder Sterling; musician, filmmaker and co-founder of The Raincoats, Gina Birch and musician, designer, visual artist and co-founder of X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene (1957-2011), alongside other important voices from the punk and post-punk scenes, worlds that were closely tied to the British art schools that thrived across the country”.
“The compilation buzzes with energy, and includes one of Tracey Thorn’s first recordings in the band she co-founded in sixth form, the Marine Girls; The Slits’ classic ‘Typical Girls’ (from Cut, their debut studio album that went on to feature in NME, Rolling Stone and Kurt Cobain’s Greatest Albums of All Time lists); Birmingham’s Au Pairs, celebrated for their frank and forthright songs about sex and equality; the Mo-Dettes, whose members were also associated with the Slits, The Raincoats, Fun Boy Three and The Communards; Scotland’s finest Strawberry Switchblade, who feature with an extended mix of their debut single, ‘Trees and Flowers’; the often overlooked anarcho-punk of Poison Girls, led by Vi Subversa; the b-side of Girls at Our Best!’s self-financed debut 7”; The Gymslips, who racked up five John Peel sessions in their short time together; heroine of the UK music press, Vivienne Goldman, whose recent book, Revenge of the She-Punks celebrates the unique perspective of women in punk from its beginnings to the present day; and Essential Logic, who were formed by Lora Logic straight out of art school in ’78, and released their second album in 2022.
Within the album, there are celebrations of love, disappointments with love, the unique perspective of women with a newfound way to make themselves heard, and above all, a discovery of self – all delivered with an abundance of style, passion and a complete absence of the navel gazing that some of their male peers were prone to.
With artwork designed by Leah Devine (Witch Fever, The Great Frog, Lush) and a tracklisting to inspire and motivate a whole new generation of women, Women in Revolt! is an essential companion to the Tate Britain exhibition, and a vital document of some of the women that defined an era of seismic change, politically, socially and artistically, and whose voices have lost none of their relevance all these decades later”.
There you go, great album, brilliant album if you don’t already know all these tracks, it does indeed buzz with energy, fine fine album to go with what looks like it will be a very important art show at the Tape next month, shame about the questionable label the compilation is coming out on but hey you can’t have everything, go steal or copy or tape it off your mates 1980s style and go buy a Raincoats album instead of something on a label cynically cashing in on something they had nothing to do with at the time,. I don’t know, an album like this on Music For Nations jsut does not sit right… (sw)
Women in Revolt at the Tate / Women in Revolt album – The full track listing and more links ca nbe found underneath the te album cover artwork…
The track listing
1. Mo-Dettes – White Mice
2. The Slits – Typical Girls
3. Poison Girls – Ideologically Unsound
4. The Gymslips – Dear Marje
5. X-Ray Spex – Identity
6. Au Pairs – You
7. Girls at Our Best! – Warm Girls
8. Ludus – Sightseeing
9. The Raincoats – No Side to Fall In
10. Marine Girls – In Love
11. Strawberry Switchblade – Trees and Flowers
12. Essential Logic – Aerosol Burns
13. Vivenne Goldman – Launderette
14. Chris & Cosey – October (Love Song)
further reading via these fractured Organ pages
ORGAN THING: Celebrating the subversive with the Neo Naturists…
THE ORGAN 
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