Track 7

By Jade Curson

It’s January 5th, just close enough to the start of the new year to still feel optimistic about all that possibility stretching out ahead. The streets are lined with joggers. The bus pulses with uncharacteristic activity as smokers with good intentions writhe absent-mindedly under the irritating adhesive of a fresh nicotine patch, and let their restless hands dance their distraction. The feeling that 2017 was a constant conveyor belt of fresh roiling horrors seems to be universal, and the air is thick with the quiet desperation for 2018 to turn it around. This year has to be better. This year has to be better. I open Twitter on the way to work and my timeline is flooded with posts from Australian punks Camp Cope, and in that moment the year already seems off to a good start. After being asked to play Falls Festival, the band noted that not only were there hardly any women on the lineup, but only male bands were given decent positions on the billing. After calling out organisers to do better, they have spent days fighting against the backlash from angry young men who have never experienced a lack of representation in any field of art or entertainment but are still clearly experts on the subject. Watching these awesome women holding their ground and speaking truth to power was an unexpected boost which made me think maybe everything would be alright after all.

Three hours later, Slaves announced the launch of their new record label, Girl Fight. Along with the label reveal came the news of their first signing, Lady Bird, and it soon became clear that both were pretty inappropriately named (but then what more could we expect from two white dudes who chose to call their band ‘Slaves’?). The names are the only hint of a woman as far as the eye can see. The news broke via an exclusive interview with DIY, but it may as well have been sent out to everyone and their mums as a press release; within minutes, practically every site had swooped in to copy and paste bits and post it themselves as news. In the space of hours, the story of rad women fighting for a cause had been usurped by bland news about a bland band and their bland brands. Truly, hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Firstly, let’s deal with Lady Bird, because once this paragraph is over we can consign them to the rubbish bin of history where they desperately belong. Three white boys from Tunbridge Wells who have named their band after a non-existent female presence. Three top bloke banterlads writing a pretend-romanticised account of a night out in Spoons, which has the familiar “lol it’s good because it’s shit” disdain-disguised-as-affection which will surely garner them a few fans among Vice readers, at least. I’d draw a comparison to the sneering way Orwell wrote about the working classes if I didn’t think they’d take it as a compliment. I listened so that others might be spared, but it’s widely available on the internet if you hate yourself like I do.

Being a rubbish band with rubbish songs is hardly noteworthy in itself, but the problem with Lady Bird – and with Slaves launching a new label called Girl Fight without bothering to include any women – is that it’s indicative of a wider problem. While every female band competes against each other in the scramble for the token slot in shows and festival lineups, a myriad of all-male bands use the name and imagery of women to build their cool guy reputations. In an environment where women are already significantly underrepresented, it feels like just that extra kick in the teeth for men in bands to use the concept of womanhood as a marketable image. Something to be consumed, without agency and without voice. Cheap Girls. Hard Girls. Girls. Women. Girls in Hawaii. Shy Girls. Sea Girls. Human Woman. Rainy Day Women. Single Mothers. Motherhood. Strong Asian Mothers. And my personal love-to-hate favourites, a bunch of pre-NME makeover Kings of Leon-looking motherfuckers who called themselves Black Pussy. (BLACK. PUSSY. What the FUCK were you thinking??).

This trend seems to be on an upwards swing, and while yes, it might be Lady Bird like the insect (!), the fact is that there is more than one interpretation here. And whether they’re choosing to ignore this ambiguity or are actively playing on it, this proclivity to pick and choose what language means actually makes them the ideal first band to sign to Slaves’ new label. After all, Slaves have been courting name-related controversy for years, and seemingly have learnt nothing valuable from the experience. Confronted by music fans who felt that two white men calling themselves ‘Slaves’ was a bad look, the band have spent a lot of time and energy explaining that actually they meant it in a different way, and encouraging their critics to look up the dictionary definition of slavery. To reiterate their point, they told NME that they’re actually really inspired by black culture. So that’s settled. And in a way, it’s a relief that none of the outlets reporting feverishly on Girl Fight have bothered to stop and ask if this whole thing is really okay, because we’d probably just end up with a series of solemn-faced statements about misandry. How can the band be sexist? Their mothers were women. All the while adding more and more bands with names like Femme Fatale and Girl Power and The Suffragettes who release identical songs about being top lads getting up to their classic geezer hijinks.

And it’s mad isn’t it, how soul-crushingly normal this all seems. We are so far past the saturation point of bands who are just the ‘god grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man’ tote bag made flesh. But they just keep on coming. And all the while, women who fight for a place at the table are told that there just aren’t that many women in bands, there’s no demand, we’re not good enough, try harder and come back next year. The expectation being, of course, that we do not.

In the space of a few hours, the righteous work of Camp Cope was bustled out of my timeline by a legion of uniform, non-critical tweets about a white male band called Slaves launching a label called Girl Fight and signing an all-male band called Lady Bird. As on Twitter, so in real life. Slaves faced a wave of backlash for their ill-advised choice of name, and instead of learning from it and growing as people, seem to have decided to double down and go for the appropriation bingo full house. They’ve faced no real adversity in the press, felt no consequences, and so they have learned nothing.

In November, Camp Cope released ‘The Opener’, a song which detailed the double standard that continues to flourish in the music industry (and, arguably, everywhere else):

“You worked so hard but we were ‘just lucky’
To ride those coat tails into infinity
And all my success has got nothing to do with me
Yeah, tell me again how there just aren’t that many girls in the music scene”

And yet, writing about this exact bullshit argument did not stop a barrage of unsolicited messages from men suggesting to them that there are just no women in bands to fill festival slots (because as we all know the birth of Twitter marked the death of irony).