A first exhibit of its kind at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the electric “Revolutionary Women in Music: Left of Center” opened to the public on March 8th.
Well-behaved women rarely make history, or stand out from the crowd, for that matter, and this new exhibit attempts to show the genre-spanning influences of such iconoclasts as Joan Jett, Beyonce, P!nk, Liz Phair, Queen Latifah, and Suzanne Vega, to name only a few.
To help with the opening, the Rock Hall brought in 2021 inductee Jane Wiedlin, of the seminal female band The Go-Gos, ’90s singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb, Garbage’s lead singer Shirley Manson, and Lorain native Malina Moye, who absolutely wails on the Blues guitar.
Each lady gave remarks (some prepared and others not so much) about the struggles of being a female musician in a male-dominated industry. Lisa Loeb said it best: as a young woman playing guitar, she was told that she was pretty good “for a girl.”
Jane Wiedlin stole the show with her speech; she cribbed a bit of dialogue from last summer’s girl-power anthem film Barbie. The dialogue talked about how being a woman in this world was damn near impossible, as expectations of perfection are pervasive in our everyday lives, yet the dichotomy is that women need to be as close to perfect as they can be, without coming off as perfect. Because that would be, you know, arrogant and self-serving.
Manson’s time behind the podium centered on the same issues: being a woman in this world, especially one with a unique or creative point-of-view, can be perceived as problematic in many males industry executives’ eyes.
