Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[KharBevNor]

1. There are slightly fewer women than men into the heavier end of music, but not big enough to make a difference in my opinion.

You would've done so well, if only you hadn't included this point. There are FAR less women playing heavier music then men (except for maybe punk, ok tommy?  )

Except dude, that's not what he said. Read it again.

[gardenhead_]

1. There are slightly fewer women than men into the heavier end of music, but not big enough to make a difference in my opinion.

You would've done so well, if only you hadn't included this point. There are FAR less women playing heavier music then men (except for maybe punk, ok tommy?  )

This has inspired me to do some more genre specific searching. (http://www.last.fm/tag/genrename/artists is the way I'm doing it)

Top 50 metal bands (some of which aren't metal, but anyway):  SIX females. Actually as much (per capita) as the last.fm top 100, but still NOT A LOT. And Evanescence isn't exactly metal.

Top 50 punk bands. Now, punk is pretty subjective but so is metal- there's certainly a few stinkers in this top 50 that clearly aren't punk (blink 182, anyone?). Anyway: ONE. At least I think so (black flag bassist was female?), there may be a few female bassists/guitarists/drummers I don't know about. Definitely no vocalists, though.

The two traditionally 'heavy' genres out of the way, (and me having proven the over guy wrong). I thought I'd look through some more genres.

Top 50 indie bands. This could be quite interesting (i know this is a subjective/meaningless genre etc etc). Thirteen here. Less then i thought, actually. I may be out by two or three, I know all the bands there but only vaguely.

Top 50 Rock bands. Again a bit subjective. The Evanescence singer, Meg from the White Stripes and Kim from the Pixies (I hope her name is kim.. isn't there a Kim in Sonic Youth? Maybe?) prevent it from being a clean sweep.

Top 50 Pop bands. Could be interesting. 37 women! Quite impressive. 7 out of the top 10 are women.

Top 50 BANANA bands. Only Gwen Stefani gets in this illustrious tag. There aren't 50 bands, though.

Top 50 Jazz bands. I'm just going off singers for this one. (And there's NO WAY that Norah Jones or freakin' Michael Buble is jazz, ffs.) Anyway, eight of them, most them up in the top 20, though.

I'd like to do the top 50 twee bands, but I have no idea who any of the bands are and I can't really be arsed looking through all of 'em. Perhaps someone else could do this?

Anyway I'd do more but except for drone (7 girls in the top 50, I think) I don't really know any off any other genres well enough. That concludes my little survey thing, I may be out by one or two in a few places. I know I didn't count the guys but for, say, Metal and Punk, there may be over 150 of them in each genre, and I can't be bothered doing that.

Interesting to note, as well, the sausage fest that is Death Metal has TWO (Bolt Thrower's Bassist, Arch Enemy's Singer) females. Come on punk, pick up your act   

You said it yourself, these tags are very subjective. Way too subjective to actually base anything off. Also Red Peril said 'into', so I assume he means in the respective scenes in general, particularly in a band. This argument has been done to death in this thread, maybe everyone should agree to disagree?

[Caspian]

1. There are slightly fewer women than men into the heavier end of music, but not big enough to make a difference in my opinion.

You would've done so well, if only you hadn't included this point. There are FAR less women playing heavier music then men (except for maybe punk, ok tommy?  )

This has inspired me to do some more genre specific searching. (http://www.last.fm/tag/genrename/artists is the way I'm doing it)

Top 50 metal bands (some of which aren't metal, but anyway):  SIX females. Actually as much (per capita) as the last.fm top 100, but still NOT A LOT. And Evanescence isn't exactly metal.

Top 50 punk bands. Now, punk is pretty subjective but so is metal- there's certainly a few stinkers in this top 50 that clearly aren't punk (blink 182, anyone?). Anyway: ONE. At least I think so (black flag bassist was female?), there may be a few female bassists/guitarists/drummers I don't know about. Definitely no vocalists, though.

The two traditionally 'heavy' genres out of the way, (and me having proven the over guy wrong). I thought I'd look through some more genres.

Top 50 indie bands. This could be quite interesting (i know this is a subjective/meaningless genre etc etc). Thirteen here. Less then i thought, actually. I may be out by two or three, I know all the bands there but only vaguely.

Top 50 Rock bands. Again a bit subjective. The Evanescence singer, Meg from the White Stripes and Kim from the Pixies (I hope her name is kim.. isn't there a Kim in Sonic Youth? Maybe?) prevent it from being a clean sweep.

Top 50 Pop bands. Could be interesting. 37 women! Quite impressive. 7 out of the top 10 are women.

Top 50 BANANA bands. Only Gwen Stefani gets in this illustrious tag. There aren't 50 bands, though.

Top 50 Jazz bands. I'm just going off singers for this one. (And there's NO WAY that Norah Jones or freakin' Michael Buble is jazz, ffs.) Anyway, eight of them, most them up in the top 20, though.

I'd like to do the top 50 twee bands, but I have no idea who any of the bands are and I can't really be arsed looking through all of 'em. Perhaps someone else could do this?

Anyway I'd do more but except for drone (7 girls in the top 50, I think) I don't really know any off any other genres well enough. That concludes my little survey thing, I may be out by one or two in a few places. I know I didn't count the guys but for, say, Metal and Punk, there may be over 150 of them in each genre, and I can't be bothered doing that.

Interesting to note, as well, the sausage fest that is Death Metal has TWO (Bolt Thrower's Bassist, Arch Enemy's Singer) females. Come on punk, pick up your act   

You said it yourself, these tags are very subjective. Way too subjective to actually base anything off. Also Red Peril said 'into', so I assume he means in the respective scenes in general, particularly in a band. This argument has been done to death in this thread, maybe everyone should agree to disagree?

ah, it seems I misread his post. i thought he said something about how many were in bands.

Having said that, a lot more guys are into metal then girls. I only have anecdotal evidence but I think most people would be hard pressed to really think of a good argument the other way round.

[gardenhead_]

Oh ok, well I only have anecdotal evidence to support my argument that it's almost equal, men and women in metal. See, my argument is just as valid as yours. Do you see how ridiculous that reasoning is?

[MadassAlex]

Is there anyone who really believes that metal appeals equally to western female culture and western male culture?

[gardenhead_]

I don't know enough to support either side, I am just saying, the reasoning that's been used in the last couple of pages of this thread is FUCKING STUPID, GUYS!

[rynne]

Top 50 BANANA bands. Only Gwen Stefani gets in this illustrious tag. There aren't 50 bands, though.

Melt-Banana: Japanese noise-punk group with a female singer, Yasuko, and bassist, Rika Mm'.  Rika is tiny to boot, but she has no problem busting out crazy-ass basslines.

M.I.A.: "Education number one, here we go: 'banana.' Ba-Na-Na. Say it again now!"

[squishything]

Yay, controversial thread!

I read somewhere that Joey Santago's girlfriend wanted to join the Pixies in the early days, but wasn't allowed to because they "already had a chick" in the band. Do you guys (I use the word in a non-gender specific sense) think that tokenism is a significant factor in a lot of bands with female members?

[diablo_man]

hmmm, thats a point.^
dont think that is really issue, except for the bands that have made it into the limelight. those bands tend to have lots of reviews saying "its kind of mediocre, but it has a girl on bass! listen to it!" i dont really agree with the tokenism that some of them put forward. it is much easier to get an interview on TV or whatever if you have a gimmick. and some of the bands use their female members for this. (case in point: The Great Kat, who i posted earlier, if she wasnt a girl she would just be another egotistic mediocre guitar player who no one has ever heard of.)

[richardsdm]

Real life story of women sticking it to the "women vs men" physical ability debate.

When I was teaching high school marching percussion we had a female student who wanted to march the largest bass drum, we're talking 40lbs of weight.  She was absolutely tiny, she couldn't have weighed more then 80-100lbs, maybe less.  We didn't let her, not because she was a girl, but because we were worried that she couldn't physically handle it.  She would pick up that bass drum and carry it around all the time during breaks just to prove us wrong.  After the guy who played it dropped out, she came up to us and said that she was playing it and we had to give her a reason why she couldn't.  We let her.  She could carry that drum longer then the guys who were bigger then her and carried lighter drums. 

That was when I discovered that physical differences/limitations are a thing of the mind.

I wonder about the future influence of Guitar Hero/Rock Band.  Pretty much all of my friends of both genders love those games.  If cultural acceptance is the reason for fewer female rock musicians (which I think it is), I wonder if the popularity of these games will encourage more people to pick up a real guitar, bass, or kit. 

[De_El]

Maybe I'm being a pedantic prick here, but the thing is that your story is just a single instance, what's called "anecdotal evidence" and anecdotal evidence, statistically speaking, is pretty much meaningless.  You can't take a single experience and use it to generalize on all individuals in a population of people/objects/whatever. It's like an old argument against the idea of smoking causing cancer. A person can say, from their own experience, that their uncle chain-smoked everyday since age twelve and lived to be 79, dying from something other than cancer.  It's wonderful that the imaginary uncle didn't die of cancer, but the one case doesn't mean there's no connection between smoking cigarettes and cancer.

[pwhodges]

You can't take a single experience and use it to generalize on all individuals in a population of people/objects/whatever.

You can, however, use it as a cue to rethink a generalization that it clashes with, which was the earlier poster's experience - this can be seen as one of the meanings of "the exception [the single experience] proves [=tests, in this case by disagreeing] the rule [in this case the generalization]".

Paul

[De_El]

I guess I didn't quite think of it that way. The way I saw it, the presentation of his point irked me. Sorry!