The Chicago Women's Liberation
Rock Band
by the CWLU Herstory Website Editorial Committee
The Chicago
Women's Liberation Rock Band played feminist music for an all too
brief time from 1970-73. People who recall their live performances
speak of the incredible energy unleashed by the band. With their sister
band, the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band, they released a
vinyl LP called Mountain Moving Day in 1972.
According
to Naomi Weisstein, who played keyboards with the group, she first
conceived of the idea of a women's rock band when she tired of hearing
pop music glorify the subjugation and degradation of women. As a
founder of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, Weisstein wanted
to reach out to young women and at the same time, educate the CWLU
membership about the importance of feminist culture.
The Band's
first public performance in Grant Park consisted of 12 singers
and 4 guitarists and was generally regarded as a musical disaster.
The band's utopian belief that any woman could play music proved
to be illusionary. Eventually the line up solidified as Susan Abod
(bass, vocals), Sherry Jenkins (guitar, vocals), Patricia Miller
(guitar, vocals), Linda Mitchell (manager), Fania Mantalvo (drums),
Suzanne Prescott (drums). and Naomi Weisstein (keyboards).
Band
members tried to turn the star culture of rock music inside
out. They actually tried to start musical performances on time.
They rapped with their audiences, asked them what songs they liked
and turned their amplifiers down to a reasonable human level.
They combined guerilla theater with music as Susan Abod describes:
"We
did the Kinks 'You Really Got Me' but with a whole new set of lyrics
that started with Man,' instead of 'Girl,'and we pranced holding
our 'cocks' like Mick Jagger, or whatever rock star we found really
annoying, and it would just look ridiculous. And the audience was
totally into the guerrilla theater of it. They'd shriek and grab
at our legs like groupies. It was so much fun, laughing at a culture
that had kept us down."
The Band
went on tours through the Midwest and the East Coast, inviting women
to join them who were willing to help with equipment and do a little
partying. They played for audiences as varied at the Second Annual
Third World Transvestite Ball, and to fourteen-year-old black girls
at a summer camp for inner-city children.
The Band
dissolved in 1973 for a complex set of reasons. As Naomi Weisstein
notes, "This fact is not unusual; it even happened to the Beatles."
The
Band had made musical history, probably the first feminist rock
band ever, and the ancestor of the RiotGrrls. Lilith Faire, LadyFest
and today's hard driving woman centered rockers.
