Female Rock

Until lately, notable female rock groups have been about as numerous as girl goalies in the National Hockey League.

Which is understandable. Today's rock climate is far removed from the sugary days of Phil Spitalny and his all-girl orchestra. There is nothing particularly feminine about strumming a deafening electric guitar, flailing with feet and hands at an electric keyboard, or stomping the stage shouting overamplified sex lyrics. The few females to succeed in rock (Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Genya Ravan) have usually been singers in all-male bands.

Now, partly as a result of the Wornen's Lib movement, female rock groups are breaking out around the country. Most are notable mainly for their forensic rather than their musical line:

> Pride of Women, a Detroit group, consists of four leggy but irate girls who lay down a rough, reeling beat as raw as anything done by the early Rolling Stones. Trouble is, the girls' sexual solidarity is too ferociously antimale to be borne by anything except, perhaps, an all-girl audience. ("Get your gun, honey. Don't be afraid to kill the soldiers when they come.") Pride of Women, in fact, so enraged the clientele at a Louisville bar that the manager sprayed Mace at the group, which fled outside, only to find that an off-duty policeman had riddled their truck's fenders with bullets.

> Goldflower is a new New York rock trio that offers a quiet, countrified sound with occasional Women's Lib lyrics ("I'm a gettin'-on woman--gettin' on by myself--sometimes I take it out and shake it--most times I leave it on the shelf"). Composed of two college dropouts and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Goldflower works the Eastern college circuit and so far has no interest in a recording contract. "We're not trying to make money," says Singer Lorraine Shapiro. "We're trying to get women to organize and fight repression."

> Los Angeles' newest girl group somewhat coyly calls itself Fanny. More commercial than combative, Fanny already has an album, just released by Reprise Records. The sound is not impressive. But the sight of four young girls making rock-'n'-roll music is still a novelty, and the girls have been able to start a tour.

The one outfit so far that can compete with top-level male band quality is Joy of Cooking, and it is only partly female. The group is owned and led by two 32-year-old women. Terry Garthwaite, a tough rock singer, plays electric guitar and sings with a scratchy authority that can suggest Janis Joplin. Her partner, Toni Brown, a pretty Bennington graduate, sings, stomps around the stage, plays electric piano and organ, and writes songs about what it is like to be a woman ("Time goes, and the baby keeps growin', and I can't help knowin', baby I love you"). The girls --backed by three males, Fritz Kasten, 27, drums, Ron Wilson, 37, congas, and Jeff Neighbor, 28, bass--produce a reasonably rich mixture of blues, wailing gospel and riffs of pure country, folk and hard rock, all curiously overlaid with Latin conga rhythms.

Joy of Cooking does best on Only Time Will Tell Me, a gospel song written by Toni and sung by Terry, and Castles, which ends with the two girls twining their voices in a long, wild scramble of Afro scat singing.

Joy's first album, just released by Capitol, is slowly climbing the charts. Meanwhile, the group is getting ready for a nationwide tour. It has been a long wait for recognition. Terry and Toni formed their outfit in 1967, but for four years they played mainly pass-the-hat parties, high schools and local dives. "I guess we're not as aggressive as we would be if we were males," Toni explains. "We stuck together, though, partly because women have a lot to say and they're just not saying it in music."

At Mandrake's, the Berkeley nightclub where Joy got its real commercial start, male patrons would occasionally jump on the stage, grab the instruments from the girls and try to take over. In general, fees were lower than for comparable male groups too. For a while, it looked as if Joy of Cooking might remain one of America's thousands of unknown "party" bands. At one point, Terry and Toni were actually forced to revert to making and selling dresses to pay the rent.

Now the gigs are rolling in, along with good money and praise from critics. It remains to be seen, though, if the male-dominated world of rock music is really ready for Women's Lib.

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