The Ongoing History of New Music, Episode 753: The Most Important All-Female Bands in Alt-Rock

There was a time when it was common knowledge–common sense!–that women just couldn’t rock has well as men. Sure, they could sing, look cute and maybe shake a tambourine–but the idea of an all-female rock band was considered to be as crazy as Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Not only was this just not done, it was accepted wisdom that it couldn’t be done.

Fortunately, there were some women who didn’t get the women. And because of them, all kinds of gender barriers were broken down and we finally ended up with some measure of equality in rock.

Punk and alt-rock are very, very important parts of this story. And that’s what we’ll explore over the next two shows: The most important all-female bands in the history of alt-rock.

Songs on this week’s show:

1. Ace of Cups, “Boy What’ll You Do Then”
2. The Shaggs, “My Pal Foot Foot”
3. The Runaways, “Cherry Bomb”
4. The Slits, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
5. The Curse, “Shoeshine Boy”
6. B-Girls, “Fun at the Beach”
7. Raincoats, “Fairytale in the Supermarket”
8. Lilliput, “Ain’t You”
9. Go-Gos, “We Got the Beat” (original version)
10. Bangles, “Hero Takes a Fall”

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

• 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7
• Live 88-5/Ottawa
• 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener
• FM96/London – Sunday night at 7, Monday night at 11
• The Drive/Kingston
• 98.1 The Bridge/Lethbridge – Saturday night at 6, Sunday morning at 10am
• Rock 97.7/Grand Prairie – Sunday nights at 6.
• 92X/Calgary
• Sonic 102.9/Edmonton
• The Zone/Victoria
• The Fox/Vancouver
• Live 105/Halifax

We’re still looking for more affiliates in Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor,  Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.

If you’re in the US and you want to stream the show, I wish I could help. A performing rights organization called SESAC has made threatening noises about suing non-American radio stations who dare stream into the US without paying crazy fees. Most Canadian broadcasters had no choice but to geo-block their streams. But hey, if you know of an American station that would like to take the show, contact me and we’ll make it a priority.

Oh, and good news: The show will start running on OneFM in Singapore in May. From there. we’re hoping to go deeper into Asia and the make a run at Australia and New Zealand.

Anyone else? Love to hear from you. Just email me at [email protected].