Vive La Grrrl-Style Revolution!
ROCKRGRL Women in Music Conference Makes Good on Its Promise of Change Through Unity

By Tizzy Asher

[11/8/2000 - Seattle] As I climbed onto the Number 17 bus in the early evening hours of Saturday, November 4, two people I’d never seen before waved brightly at me. Another bolder soul smiled, said hello and proceeded to strike up a conversation. What was going on? Usually, I’m the social outcast that no one speaks to. I was stumped. Stumped, that is, until I looked down to what was still hanging around my neck. I’d forgotten to remove the laminated plastic badge that signified me as a participant in the ROCKRGRL music conference.

According to Carla DeSantis, the one-woman powerhouse behind the conference and publisher of ROCKRGRL magazine, the gloomy truth about women in rock is that the bulk of them have been slaving away outside the mainstream, ignored by the media and virtually hidden to those to whom they should be connected. For her, organizing the three-day ROCKRGRL conference held from November 2-4 was an attempt to provide women with a place to network, speak openly and freely about relevant topics and, of course, hear new music by other women. In short, to bring them together.

“My goal is to try and foster a community where women don’t feel so isolated,” she says, via phone from the ROCKRGRL office. “When I played music many moons ago, I didn’t even know there were any other women out there that played.”

DeSantis can rest assured. There is no doubt after ROCKRGRL’s successful three-day run that the women in rock are making their presence known, both to each other and to the world at large. This is fast becoming a community that extends beyond the walls of the Madison Renaissance Hotel—the labyrinthine location where the conference was held. Moving out to the streets of Seattle, onto the bus system and into world at large, the women who attended ROCKRGRL are no longer a divided force.

With its two days of panel discussions and workshops, ROCKRGRL definitely provided a forum for those issues that are of specific relevance to women in rock and those that are more general interest. “I think that people are really tired of talking about new media,” DeSantis notes. “New media is really interesting, but I liken it to having a conference about phonograph needles. It’s a method to get your music out there, but it’s not your music!”

Indeed, at the panels that I happened to attend, there was a visible dialogue happening between the audience and the panelists. At one panel entitled, “Woodstock ’99 to Eminem: When Did Women Become the Enemy?” the audience was practically jumping out of its seat to direct comments and questions to the panel, which included KUBE 93.3FM’s Julie Pilat, Ann Wilson and Jill Stempel, moderated by the New York Times’ Ann Powers. Another panel, entitled, “Skirting the Issue: All About Image” had participants fighting over the relative merits of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

Compounding to the interest of the topics was the number of guest artists, writers and industry folks that DeSantis had enlisted to speak on the panels. Though it was not possible to see everyone due to schedule conflicts, particularly interesting were long-time journalist Deborah Frost, Jessicka (of Jack Off Jill) and Manifesta author Jennifer Baumgardner. And of course highlights came with the keynote speeches by Amy Ray and Ronnie Spector, who fumbled through her pre-written notes, badmouthed Phil Spector and broke down in tears while describing herself as “a little girl from Spanish Harlem.” Added as a surprise speaker on Saturday evening was none other than Courtney Love.

Though DeSantis explains that she cashed in a lot of “karma chips” from people she’d once championed in her magazine, Spector in particular, she still believes that the festival’s stellar roster was aided by the festival’s mandate for change in the still male-dominated music industry. “These people aren’t being paid!” DeSantis exclaims. “They’re coming to be a part of it. To me that makes it even more incredible because they’re all coming on their own time, they’re all coming on their own dime to be a part of something and to see some change happen.”

As far as the bands that bombarded me with press packs for an entire month? A lot of them were truly average, and a lot of them were fantastic—the gentle folk of Maggie, Pierce & E.J., for example. Wanda Jackson’s performance in EMP’s Sky Church was breathtaking, and yes, she’s still got whatever “it” is. And, if nothing else, the showcases were an excellent lesson in diversity. DeSantis explains, “There’s a huge variety of music in [the showcases]. It’s important to show how many different types of music there are and how many types of women there are playing it.”

The obvious comparison heading into the conference was Ladyfest, a five-day festival held this past summer in Olympia. But DeSantis saw her creation as quite different from Ladyfest, and indeed it was. “[ROCKRGRL] is more focused on how to empower yourself as an artist. This is very music business-focused. Whereas Ladyfest had a few shows every night that were really great, really cool shows, this is 20 venues. I think Ladyfest is also about the music, but the music is political.… This is political, but in a more subversive way because it’s candy-coated.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with guys,” she continues. “It just has to do with yourself and how you relate to your own art.”

In a way, that was the driving principle behind the entire ROCKRGRL venture. Making it easier for women involved in rock to become more comfortable with their images both as musicians and as empowering role models for a younger generation of upcoming songwriters, guitarists, label heads, writers and marketing executives. She notes, “The person that I want to reach is that 14-year-old that’s playing the guitar and gets told she’s not cute enough to play the guitar. Because that to me, is debilitating.”

DeSantis also hopes that the female musical community now united by the ROCKRGRL conference can provide the necessary strength to battle both the media’s negative portrayals of women in music, as well as certain magazines’ complete failure to cover female-led acts. What she hopes for is equality, plain and simple.

“I want to see in my lifetime, women artists to just be artists,” she explains. “I know that sounds a little convoluted when I’m having a conference for women, but I think the only way for things to change is for everybody to do their part to make it change. And to say, that maybe it’s not them all the time. Maybe the system needs to change.

“I live by this old mantra, which is if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” she concludes. “I think talking and complaining is really cheap. To me, if you talk about something and you complain about something, the only way to change it is to change it.”

To the ROCKRGRLs who attended DeSantis’ festival, these words ring true. If the overwhelming sense of community that the conference provided is any indication, we are well on our way to at least making our voices heard. Even if it is just on the bus.

Check out the ROCKRGRL website here.

Email Tizzy Asher

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