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Milan Hughston, Chief Of The Library, MOMA NYC, with DYKE A Quarterly. Photo: Liza Cowan
DYKE A Quarterly is archived at the Museum Of Modern Art Library in NYC. Today I went to see it in situ. My host was Milan Hughston, Chief of the LIbrary & Museum Archives. I assure you, it was very exciting.
And for total referencing- and infinite regression of referencing- you can visit their TUMBLR where they documented the visit.
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This article is long and I plan to transcribe and write commentary on the whole thing. I will be adding more in bits, as I get them done. So stay tuned and check back. And, as always, feel free to chime in.-Liza
Rated XX: Recorded Women's Music. 1976. Review by Liza Cowan. Click to enlarge images.
This article is about my reactions to all the women’s music released on records and tapes to date. I define women’s music as music that is made by, for and about women. What this means, in effect is that women’s music is Lesbian Music. I am always offended to see women’s records for sale in straight stores. I have seen them in movement and “peoples” stores all over the country, and I don’t think they have any business being there. I do not want men to even set their beady little eyes on our culture; the thought of them actually buying or listening to women’s music is nauseating to me; and they most certainly should not be allowed to make money from women’s music. I have also heard stories about musicians from the women’s music community telling the patriarchal press about women’s music, and telling mixed audiences about women’s private business. I consider this to be a breach of confidence. The only women I know who limit their music distribution are Alix Dobkin and Linda Shear. Alix sells Lavender Jane Loves Women in women’s and gay stores only. Living With Lesbians sells in women’s stores only.
This article has been very hard for me to write because I am writing about so many different women, there is so much to say, and I have had to write about the things that I did not like about each record. There has been a movement dictum that we are not to criticize our ‘sisters’ and if someone does criticize it is called ‘trashing’ and everybody gets mad. I think this is absurd. When Alix writes a song I give her word by word criticism. If something is not clear, or inaccurate, or sounds wrong, I tell her. I think about what se has written, and I respond to it. When I am writing I always go to Alix for her to criticize my work. She tells me which parts are confusing or awkward, or suggests words. If I don’t know how to express something we discuss it until I can get a clear idea of what I want to say. We depend on each other for this. It has not always been easy. Sometimes it hurts, and I want to say, “It’s my writing, butt out!” but later I usually find that what she has said is true. She feels the same about my criticisms of her work. Penny, Smokey, and Mary also criticize our work, and each others’ work. The more we do it, the easier it gets.
Please keep in mind when you are reading this, that for each song or record that I dislike, there are women who love it, and equally, that each one I like has women who don’t like it. There are as many ways to perceive these records and tapes as there are women to listen to them.
I hope you all get a chance to buy or listen to all of these records and tapes. They are our culture and our history.
I discovered the women’s liberation movement in 1970. That same year I started to do feminist radio on WBAI in NYC. I worked on a program called Electra Rewired which was a weekly live feminist show. At first there were three women working on it, and my job was to find music. Sometimes I would ransack the station record library to find women composers. Pauline Oliveros and Ruth Crawford Seeger are two I remember playing. We would play Joan Baez, Judy Collins and other folkies. A year later I was doing the show alone. I played The Marvelletes, Carole King, Dionne Warwicke, Alice Coltrane, Dusty Springfield, Joy of Cooking, Billie Holliday, Carol Hall, Mary Welles, Denise LaSalle, Laura Nyro. The closest I could find to feminist lyrics was in songs like Natural Woman and Respect as sung by Aretha Franklin and Mama Didn’t Lie sung by Jan Bradley. “The greatest passion in this man’s world is making eyes at every young girl. To have one is how they get their kicks, but not me, because I know their tricks.” Another one was the Honeycones; The Day That I lost You, “you know, men are full of schemes, they’re masters of getting control of our minds and making us dependent on them.” Too bad that in this song she “found identity with someone else”. One of my favorite songs to play on the radio was I Hate Men from the Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate. At this time the only song I’d heard written by a feminist was Tired Of Fuckers Fucking Over Me by Bev Grant, which I could not play over and over on the radio. It was during these years that I first became conscious of the sexism in the lyrics of rock songs.
In 1972 the Chicago Women’s Liberation rock Band and the New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band released their joint album, Mountain Moving Day. Each group recorded one side of the album. In the pamphlet enclosed in the record they say, “We didn’t want to write the female counterpart of songs like Under My thumb, Back Street Girl, It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World, where men say to us, “you’re beneath contempt and we will celebrate your degradation.” As performers we didn’t want to get off by trashing the people we played for, and we didn’t want to have a star backed up by a squad of secondary musicians. But what did we want, anyway? We knew that we wanted t make music that would embody the radical, feminist, humanitarian vision we shared. And the lyrics were the obvious place to begin. The field was wide open. Most of the rock songs that woman have sung till now were about the pain men cause u – the pain that’s supposed to define us a women. We didn’t want to deny that tradition (women struggled hard for the right to sing even that much) but we wanted to sing about how the pain doesn’t have to be there – how we fight and struggle and love to make it all change…”
For some reason, I never heard this record until last week. As soon as I heard it I fell for it. It is full of turn-of-the-decade sisterhood energy, and, although I didn’t hear it at the time, it clearly brings back all the feelings I had when I realized how thrilling it was to be a woman on the verge of changing my life and my consciousness. In So Fine by the NHWLRB, Judy Miller says, “Now I want to say something about how we got to feel so fine. We haven’t always been this strong, and we’re not as strong now as we
Re gonna be. I takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of pain, too. We used to think that women really were inferior. We used to think we were only good for: pleasing me, having babies, doing housework, having shit jobs, doing volunteer work, and –you know- sex! We didn’t know that women could get together and” play rock music, fix our cars, give abortions, love our sisters, stay single, choose our own lifesyle and – you know – say No!” the WWLRB is really powerful in its lyrics and the way they are spoken and sung. From Secretary by Sherry Jenkins: “Get up/Downtown? Think Ill talk to Alice she may understand? No Trust/Big Bust/ Wonder if the new girls lives along/ men’s eyes/fantasize/Jodi wants to tell the boss to get off/Elevators/See you later’s / Tell all the girls, noon in the lunchroom/ And maybe we’ll all wear pants tomorrow.” The whole album is beautiful, strong, moving and funny. It is excellently engineered by Susan Jenks. The musicians and the arrangements are also excellent. The album was produced and distributed by Rounder Records, which is, or was then, mostly men. It is, to me, the musical equivalent to the book, Sisterhood Is Powerful.
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DYKE A Quarterly, No. 2. Linda Shear, Who Gets Left Out When The Music Starts.
exerpt:
I am not interested in being a WOMAN musician, doing what the “Movement Women Musicians (even, and sometimes especially Lesbians) define as Women’s Music. I have heard myself discussed within the words of “us” and “we”. But you and I have very different views about who “we” are, and who the enemy is.
We confront a struggle to survive with very different assumptions. As we compute, analyze, judge, and utilize our experiences as Lesbians, musician, and women, in very different ways.
You want to deal within a broad category because “our lives are so complex”. I say that our lives are some complex because we Lesbians have dealt too long with a broad category. We have Helped build broad categories, and then discover that our Lesbian identities become lost in these universal, patriarchal-motivated, subversive broad categories. And I am bitter about being banned from the “movement concert-circuit” because I will not sing my songs for men.
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We proposed an issue on Lesbian media. It was going to be issue No. 7. The magazine folded before we could publish it, which is a great shame. Irene Young took these amazing photographs so at least we have this stunning graphic.
DYKE A Quarterly, No. 6.1978. Back Cover. Photos by Irene Young. ©Tomato Publications 1977, New York
Women's Buttons in DYKE A Quarterly. Send us a button* of a photo of buttons to be used in a photo essay on Women's Buttons in DYKE #7, Lesbian Media.
This issue will feature essays, interviews, resource lists and graphics on different forms of Lesbians communications: magazines, newspapers, letters, posters, buttons, fliers, video, films. We are looking for articles and news for this issue
DYKE pays for everything it prints. Remember we will always print non-theme related articles, so don't hesitate to send other work,
A subscription to DYKE, A Quarterly costs $8.00 for four issues. A single copy costs $2.25 in women's and gay stores. $275 by mail. Please address all correspondence, submissions and make checks payable to: Tomato Publications, 70 Barrow Street, New York, NY 10014.
*Please send us a button or a photograph of your favorite woman's buttons. Please tell us the size and colors of the buttons if you send us a photograph. Please tell us, if you know, when it was made, who designed it, what is the event, place, group action or idea that it describes. We would prefer to keep the button if you have doubles, be we can arrange to return them to you if you request. We will not return photos. Please send clear, sharply focused, black and white prints. No slides please. Thank you.
Photographs: Irene Young
LESBIANISM IS REVOLUTION
1" purple and white, designed by Denny Covallo for Gay Women's Liberation Front, New York City Circa 1970
DYKE
1" purple and white
circa 1974
STARS AND DYKES FOREVER
1" red, white, blue,
designed by Delia Davis & Denise Wong
New York City, 1973
AMAZON WARRIOR
1" black and white
drawing from Greek Vase
California, circa 1975
TYKES & DYKES
1 1/2" black and white
designed by Tykes & Dykes
New York City, circa 1976
LESBIANS IGNITE
1" red and white
?Philadelphia circa 1974
Photos by Irene Young. ©Tomato Publications 1977, New York
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DYKE A Quarterly No. 5, Back Cover, Photo by Irene Young. 1977 @Tomato Publications. T-shirt design by Jymme Golden.
Women's T-Shirts in DYKE A Quarterly. Send us a photo* of yourself to be used in a photo essay on T-Shirts in DYKE #7, Lesbian Media.
This issue will feature essays, interviews, resource lists and graphics on different forms of Lesbians communications: magazines, newspapers, letters, posters, buttons, fliers, video, films. We are looking for articles and news for this issue
DYKE pays for everything it prints. Remember we will always print non-theme related articles, so don't hesitate to send other work,
A subscription to DYKE, A Quarterly costs $8.00 for four issues. A single copy costs $2.25 in women's and gay stores. $275 by mail. Please address all correspondence, submissions and make checks payable to: Tomato Publications, 70 Barrow Street, New York, NY 10014.
*Sent us a photo of yourself or a friend, or a group of friends wearing your favorite woman-made T shirts. If you know, please tell us who designed the shirt, when it was made, what the event, place, group or idea that it describes, and any other information you consider relevant. The photo should be clear, black and white. We won't be able to return photos. No slides please. Thank you.
Photo by Irene Young
We proposed an issue on Lesbian media. It was going to be issue No. 7. The magazine folded before we could publish it, which is a great shame. Irene Young took these amazing photographs so at least we have this stunning graphic.
Inside front cover, DYKE A Quarterly No 5. 1977. Photo by Irene Young. @Tomato Publications
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In issue No. 4 we broke form to publish a poster instead of a magazine. Along with the gorgeous 4-color poster, designed by Debbie Drechsler and printed by Tower Press, we sent a magazinelette, envelope sized, with letters and responses. Our readers were baffled.
DYKE A Quarterly, Issue No. 4. cover. Illustration by Debbie Drechsler.
NOTE FROM THE ARTIST
I was halfway through college, studying graphic design, when I started doing drawings for the New Women's Times, the feminist paper in Rochester, N.Y. It wasn't a conscious decision - I still don't know what I was thinking when I called them, but within six months, I developed a strong feminist consciousness, declared myself a Lesbian and left school. Now, I do odd jobs to make money and spend as much time as possible trying to visually describe what it means to be a feminist Lesbian.
Doing a poster to celebrate DYKE magazine's first anniversary felt as natural as doing more personal drawings. Basically, I wanted to say that any and all of us can be Lesbians, and are. Also, I wanted to show the real strong pride that we should all feel about ourselves.
Debbie Drechsler.
Debbie Drechsler is still working as an illustrator. See her website HERE
Flier for DYKE A Quarterly,Wanted: Poster Design. Illustration by Liza Cowan
More about our decision to change format HERE
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Just a few months before she died, Alice Austen made her second appearance in LIFE Magazine.
Alice Austen Day. Life Magazine, October 29, 1951
"Alice Austen, America's first great woman photographer, had been rescued from the poorhouse and oblivion by the sale of her superb collections of pictures (LIFE, Sept. 24). But until this month the 85-year-old artist had never had a public showing of her work. On Oct. 7, however, the Staten Island Historical Society, custodian of her photographs, celebrated "Alice Austen Day". More than 300 of Miss Austen's old and new friends crowded into the museum to look at her pictures and say hello to her once more. Miss Austen herself was an hour late. Worn out by a television appearance two days earlier, she at first refused to come. But her friends convinced her that she would enjoy herself, and enjoy herself she did. There were speeches and orchids and gifts and refreshments, but above all, there were friends. Some, like Mrs. Charles Barton had posed for her in the old days on Staten Island. Others, like Coapes Brinley of the Staten Island Historical Society, helped win recognition for her work. Miss Gertrude Tate, her closest friend, had lived with her for 27 years at the Austen home until the two ladies lost their money and the home was sold.The old lady in the wheelchair knew how to get the most out of every moment, although she mostly wept when Mrs. Barton bent over to kiss her hand. As the newspaper and magazine cameras recorded the afternoon, Photographer Alice Austen said proudly, "I'd be taking those pictures myself if I were 100 years younger." When the pictures and the refreshments were over, she went back to the private nursing home where she now lives, a little tired by the festivities but glad that she had lived to see Alice Austen Day."
Alice and Trude, now Mrs. Charles Barton, donned corset covers and petticoats and posed for this wicked picture taken 60 years ago on Staten Island. Alice Austen, LIFE Magazine 1951
Deeply Moved, Alice Austen bites her lips as old friend Mrs. Barton impulsively kisses her hand. Mrs. Barton now lives in New Jersey but visits Alice often.
HIGHLY PLEASED, Alice Austen beams up at Gertrude Tate, who lived in Austen home, took trips to Europe with her, nursed her during arthritis attacks.
For more on Alice Austen see HERE and also visit the Alice Austen House Museum Website
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