Why don't girls play electric guitar?

Raggamuffin

Seems a bit pointless what jimmy page did.

all jimi hendrix did was turn all the knobs up to full and then **** around with the strings.

Phil spector was magnificent in the studio and was far more innovative than jimmy page and slash, and so was brian wilson.

I agree with muppet monarchy on the "progression" issue.
I've no idea what your talking about.
I find alot of slash's solos pointless compared to say joey santiago's solos on "brick is red" or "vamos"
J.mascis has some fantastic work as does bob mould.
I dunno the solos dont' stick out like sore thumbs taking over the song, the blend in and being a good guitarist means not doing too much, just enough.

THats why i think led zepplin are overated. All this EPIC crap, i mean they're good but jesus its not as good as the kinks or the faces or neil young.

Neil young is a another guy who can just wind off on some guitar solo and really make it fit the song such as "southern man".

Back to the girls and not listening to girl bands?

I remember interviewing Babaes in Toyland and they were pretty cool. THey were'nt ****ing doing their nails or worrying whther their hands were too small.

SLeater Kinney i also think were a good example and the fact you beleive that the music you listen to is "enough" because that entitles you to make an opinion on any muscial debate is just stupid.

i have to say if anyone really listens to music and has a really wide choice and eclectic ear for it, then i'll be very surprised if they think any of the following are musical geniuses, or think that girls can't play guitar.

SLash(guns and roses),jimmy page,metallica,van halen, iron maiden.

Did'nt those bands use to womenize?

oh girl bands The runaways, The GOGO's (sorry), Debbie gibson she counts,

Listening to different "sytles" of music will help you progress.
Classical, south american, europen gypsy jazz.....
stadium rock bands of the 80's are there to be laughed at in case you did'nt know that (bon jovi anybody???)

Giblet

Yeah ragga, people sure did laugh at Bon Jovi, they were in tears at the Concert for New York when Bon Jovi took the stage.

Do you really think I dont listen to music, do you think you're really the voice of all reason here, and that you're OPINION should be adhered to? Do you even REMEMBER what neil young was like in the 80's.

My god, I cant believe you're that narrow minded to think that I only listen to one type of music. I prefer one type over another, but dont just listen to that type. Sure you dont like any bands I like, does that mean you're stuck in a rut of Girl bands? Jesus Christ.

Led zeppelin sure didn't make that much epic "crap". Have you even ever heard the first album.

Listen you are not some all knowing entity of musical enlightenment, and progress means to open yourself to new things. As you are suggesting I do. But i thought you all hated that word.

Heres some more bands/musicans you might like.

Flatt and scruggs, Paco de Lucio, Blind boys of alabama, John lee Hooker, Buddy Rich, Rachmaninoff. I know I do.

And what Jimmy did was pointless eh, sure didn't he make his first multi million selling album in 36 hours, because of what he knew.

funktastic

Nobodys said that Page was the most innovative guitarist/producer ever but you've claimed that he wasn't innovative with clearly isn't the case.
Slash and Page's solo's aren' ''pointless'' and it can't be said that they don't fit in with the rest of the songs.OK so you mightn't like zeppelin,g n r, van halen fine, they all wrote their fair share of crap but all gelled together as a band,especially zeppelin with Plant-listen to 'Thats the way ' if all you think he does is scream,JP jones-recognised by all bassists,Page -well recognised by a lot of guitarists anyway, and Bonham who you can't deny his influence and innovation.
What do you seem to know about drums Monarchy? You need proof to hear the miking?Ever listened to 'When the levee breaks' no?Well its fairly obvious from the sound created that its the position of the mics when you do. Led Zeppelin not as good as the Kinks? well fair enough if you think so but I think they did nmore things in their career to deserve higher acclaim than a one dimensional london band who wrote a few good singles,never changed direction-hmm whats that oh yeah not very innovative I'd say like your original point.

lamda

God this has gone so off point....
Well i think a lot of the comments pretty much answer the question why arent girls as prominent in the guitar world as guys ( cos really the question why dont girls play electric guitar is damn stupid- of course we do!!) cos its this kinda crap that girls are up against!! Not taken seriously ..... i mean not "progressing" because they have small hands?!?! What kinda crap is that??? And using Slash as an example of progression?? Who the hell plays like that anymore??? Self indulgent hair metal...IMO anyway.
Girl bands have so much more to go up against - this bull**** machismo!! (Unless youre willing to sleep with some record producer... which the Go-Go's have admitted to sadly) Maybe i'll go play my guitar now.... oh no hold on I just had a manicure! Oh the trials of being a girl!!!:p

Giblet

Actually it's just going around in circles.
And I dont care anymore.
Continue sitting around eating crisps and drinking cider thinking lamenting that the pixies were the best band ever.

lamda

WOW you are so perceptive!! You just described my life down to a tee!!!:rolleyes:

NeMiSiS

"?? Who the hell plays like that anymore??? "

I do ,and what the **** do you mean "anymore" has rock died and has some pussy ass femine type folk bull**** took over ? Dont ****ing think so to be honest *sigh*

:P

NeM

NeMiSiS

..

Muppet Monarchy

You rule nemisis. I'm convinced.

lamda

Ok fair enough Nemisis! But should all guitarists be measured on the slash-o-meter??? I hope not!! :eek:

NeMiSiS

Thanks Muppet Monarchy !

:P

NeM

Muppet Monarchy

"Nobodys said that Page was the most innovative guitarist/producer ever but you've claimed that he wasn't innovative with clearly isn't the case."

Wrong. I just doubt he 'invented' those recording techniques, as you claim. Prove me wrong, hombré.

"Slash and Page's solo's aren' ''pointless'' and it can't be said that they don't fit in with the rest of the songs.OK so you mightn't like zeppelin,g n r, van halen fine, they all wrote their fair share of crap but all gelled together as a band,especially zeppelin with Plant-listen to 'Thats the way ' if all you think he does is scream,JP jones-recognised by all bassists,Page -well recognised by a lot of guitarists anyway, and Bonham who you can't deny his influence and innovation."

I'm really not interested in how proficient any individual in any band is / is not. Not interested .

"Led Zeppelin not as good as the Kinks? well fair enough if you think so but I think they did nmore things in their career to deserve higher acclaim than a one dimensional london band who wrote a few good singles,never changed direction-hmm whats that oh yeah not very innovative I'd say like your original point."

What the **** is this Kinks ****? I've never mentioned the kinks in any post. Ya gotta read the posts kids, just like I do.

As for the zeppelin thing....let me get back to ya in a tick, m'kay?

Shorty

Taken from pitchfork

Sleater-Kinney
One Beat
[Kill Rock Stars; 2002]
Rating: 9.1
I have issues with women in rock. Not so much the actual act of female human beings playing that rock n' roll music, but the entire media concept of in-quotes "women in rock." I'm tired of Rolling Stone double issues, the VH1 theme weeks, the Tower Records special displays. Condescending, patronizing bull****, all of it. Now, I won't get into the issue of the built-in misogyny in the rock criticism phrasebook; partially because I wouldn't want to endorse a paranoid shift towards excessively vigilant political correctness, and partially because I myself am guilty of occasionally over-using the adjective 'sultry.'

No, at hand is a bigger fish-- namely, that far too much writing about female musicians gets caught up with the idea that the artist must be saying something about the 'female experience.' Rather than accept these acts as just plain musicians, being a woman playing rock music is automatically assumed to be a declaration of activist intentions. Other than the obvious double-standard (when was the last time you read a review about an all-guy band's songs reflecting the male experience?), this allows the Y chromosome-dominated rock press to focus on gender while still coming off as enlightened. But what of those girl bands that just want to rock, without all that role model jazz?

Consider, for example, indie-rock darlings Sleater-Kinney, just coincidentally the subject of this review! To date, Sleater-Kinney has, in my professional opinion, been a good but not great band with a solid back catalog of energetic but slightly homogenous releases. To the majority of my esteemed colleagues, however, S-K is the three-headed coming of the woman Christ, The Great Female Hope, the band that proves at long last that, hey, girls can rawk too! Never mind the fact that girls are, after all, evolutionarily engineered to have fingers for making chord shapes and strumming, just like boys.

Saddled with such a heavy label, and with unrealistic and undeserved expectations, the three women of Sleater-Kinney could just keep on making the same album over and over again, pleasing their tiny, rabid loyalists and the leather-patched elbow crowd in the press box. Hey, the life ain't too bad for a cult band these days. But, thank god, the Kill Rock Stars trio isn't content to forever meander in that habitat. With One Beat, Sleater-Kinney have turned in an album that absolutely, positively OBLITERATES the gender card, an album so colossal that all prefixes to the label 'rock band' must be immediately discarded.

From the opening, off-kilter drum pattern of the title track, One Beat takes you on a log flume ride through a forest of monumental riffs-- a log flume ride, people! Witness the fretboard slides of "Hollywood Ending", the cocky strut of "Step Aside", the mighty, fist-pumping second half of "Combat Rock" (to which I'd like to just give a premature Forkie for Best Riff of the Year right now). Also, be forewarned that the drumstick-twirling coda of "Far Away" has been shown to provoke sudden miming of snare hits and windmill strums in laboratory animals.

Now, you might be hearing a lot of crazytalk from longtime S-K supporters that the new album is their most disappointing to date. Ignore it; fanbase discomfort is a common symptom of the breakthrough album, proving that the act has tweaked their formula far enough to piss off the vets who want their pet band to stay predictable. Kinney's definitely changed up the recipe (as they had already begun to do with All Hands on the Bad One), but all changes are positive, foremost being a new understanding of how restraint and scaling back can allow for exponentially increased rockage. "Combat Rock" and "The Remainder" stutter along a single riff, teasingly refusing to explode before building to a tantric peak. "Light Rail Coyote" and "O2" both come out with all engines blazing, but retreat to valleys of uncharacteristically subdued hush.

Also helping the cause is an increased singing role for Carrie Brownstein, who sounds more confident than ever sporting a fully developed hiccupy vocal character that plays off Tucker's wail like lime flavoring on Tostitos. For anyone of the opinion that Tucker's banshee act occasionally got out of hand on older S-K material, Brownstein's participation is welcome news for your fragile eardrums. The latest model of the Janet Weiss percussion-cyborg sings a bit, too, but her main contribution is her incredibly melodic drums, strident and full-bodied as ever.

Meanwhile, the band breaks out the required fifth-album accoutrements: horn section, strings, occasional keyboards. It might be predictable timing for the band to expand their sound, but it's handled delicately by producer John Goodmanson, who never allows the spice to overwhelm the dish (er, sonically speaking, of course). The slip-and-slide Moog on "Oh!" drives home the song's oh-woah-woah playfulness, "Step Aside"'s marching band brass lends its revolution beckoning an epic quality, and Sam Coomes' theremin on "Funeral Song" fulfills the FDA requirements for any tune that mentions haunted houses, demons, and Halloween.

So except for a closing track ("Sympathy") where the bluesy over-emoting reminds me of everything I used to dislike about the Sleater, One Beat is an uncompromising, energetic monster of a record. Most of all, it's just accessible (pardon my French) enough to be exactly what the rock world needs these days: the Trail of Dead for those put off by the Danzig-esque lyrics and relentless drum-rolling. It's a dive-headfirst-into-an-empty-pool, take-the-subway-to-Queens, snap-into-a-Slim-Jim, forget-to-bring-back the-library-books, tire-pressure-dangerously-low, sneaking-fireworks-across-the-Illinois-Indiana-border kind of album. That it's performed by three persons of the female gender is entirely beside the point, to anyone who's really listening.

-Rob Mitchum, August 28th, 2002

NeMiSiS

Ragamuffin.
"THats why i think led zepplin are overated. All this EPIC crap, i mean they're good but jesus its not as good as the kinks or the faces or neil young."

Well well well The Kinks you say..you know Page played on 'You realy got me' and 'all day and all night' ..isnt that interesting ?

Also played or worked for the following : Brenda Lee, Sonny Boy Williamson, Brian Poole And The Tremeloes, Dave Berry, Everly Brothers, The Pretty Things, Tom Jones, Lulu And The Luvvers, The Kinks, John Mayall, John Williams, Them, Twice As Much, Chris Farlowe, The Who, Crispian St. Peters, The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, P.J. Proby, Cartoone, Family Dogg, Joe Cocker, Al Stewart, Screaming Lord Sutch, Roy Harper, Maggie Bell, Dave Barry, Jet Harris And Tony Meehan, Robert Plant, Steve Stills, The Firm, Willie And The Poor Boys, John Paul Jones, The Rolling Stones, Box Of Frogs, Mannish Boys And Davey Jones, Carter Lewis And The Southerners, Neil Christian And The Crusaders, The Redcaps, Mickie Most, The Brooks, Mickey Finn And The Pills, Neil Christian, The First Gear, Billy Fury, Wayne Gibson And The Dynamic Sound, The Sneekers, The Primitives, Pat Wayne And The Beachcombers, The Lancastrians, The Zephyrs, Judi Smith, The Outsiders, Nico, The Masterminds, Bobby Graham, The Fifth Avenue, Glyn Johns, Gregory Phillips, Jimmy Tarbuck, Twice As Much, Les Fleurs De Lys, Mickey Finn And The Blue Men, Jackie DeShannon, The Dubliners, Paul Anka, Petula Clark, Cliff Richard, Johnny Hallyday, Burt Bacharch, Chris Ravel And The Ravers, Dave Berry And The Cruisers, Mickie Most And The Gear, The Pickwicks, The Blue Rondos, The Talisman, Mickie Most And The Most Brothers, The Untamed, Scott McKay Quintet, Sean Buckley And The Breadcrumbs, Philamore Lincoln, Val Doonican, The Authentics, Brian Howard And The Silhouettes, Led Zeppelin

Not comprehensive.

NeMiSiS

http://www.daisyrock.com/index_flash.htm

You go girls !!

:P

funktastic

Theres your proof of backwards echo taken from Guitar World Magazine 1999-Yeah you'll probably moan thats it just him saying it but its widely knownHow did you develop the backwards echo at the end of "You Shook Me" ?
Page: Didn't I tell you about that before? No? Well, I should because it's important -- it proves that I pioneered that effect. When I was still in The Yardbirds, our producer Mickie Most would always try to get us to record all these horrible songs. He would say, "Oh, c'mon, just try it.If the song is bad we won't release it". And, of course it would always get released [laughs]. During one session, we were recording "Ten Little Indians", which was an extremely silly song that featured a truly awful brass arrangement. In fact, the whole track sounded terrible. In a desperate attempt to salvage it, I hit upon an idea. I said, "Look, turn the tape over and employ the echo for the brass on a spare track. Then turn it back over and we'll get the echo preceding the signal." The result was very interesting -- it made the track sound like it was going backwards.Later, when we recorded "You Shook Me", I told the engineer, Glyn Johns,that I wanted to use backwards echo on the end. He said, "Jimmy, it can't be done". I said "Yes, it can. I've already done it." Then he began arguing, so I said, "Look, Im the producer. Im going to tell you what to do, and just do it." So he grudgingly did everything I told him to, and when we were finished he started refusing to push the fader up so I could hear the result. Finally, I had to scream, "Push the bloody fader up!" And low and behold, the effect worked perfectly. When Glyn heard the result, he looked bloody ill! He just couldn't accept that someone knew something that he didn't know -- especially a musician! The pompous git!The funny thing is, Glyn did the next Stones album and what was on it? Backwards echo! And I'm sure he took full credit for the effect.

La de ****in' da theres your proof. Now I expect an assessment of my post with quotes and a run through of everything I said.

Giblet

amz wtf?! some one asked for proof of something and after many a post he still wasn't satisfied, so funktastic posted an article.
Save your personal attacks for somewhere else.

funktastic

Wrong. I just doubt he 'invented' those recording techniques, as you claim. Prove me wrong, hombré

This was what I was asked, rat boy/girl and I was responding to it.I havent bull****ted through it if you bothered to read the thread. but anyway seen as your so into 'The Runaways and fixated with shoe gazing music theres no point.If you notice if havent taken offence as most of you do if anyone dares to slag any of your 'cool' bands like suede and elastica I was only responding to claims that Slash/Zepp etc wee crap.Anyway I'll let you get back to writing your self proclaimed 'unchallenging and unprogressive ' music.

Morn

Wow - A lot more replies than I was expecting - just wanted to mention a couple of things -

I was originally asking why girls play ELECTRIC guitar less frequently - so I'm gonna disregard any mention of physical things like smaller hands as electric guitar generally requires smaller hands than acoustic anyway...

As for all the rest - hmm there's a lot of off-topic stuff - but even the fact that people are pointing to girl-bands rather than bands that have girls as some of their members I think is indicative of something - maybe there is an underlying sexism in the guitar-playing world, it's certainly not universal tho - would you call G'n'R a boy-band?!

One thing did occurr to me starting off - a lot of boys take up guitar to impress girls - so maybe that just encourages more boys to start off playing...

Just my thoughts anyhow

polarbelly

woh... i just read that whole thread from start to finish... what a load of shíte... i deserve a prize

giblet you deserve a prize too... for saying the same thing so many times in the one post

for once i agree with raggamuffin, its how you play guitar

NeMiSiS

The ONLY reason lads take up guitar is to get laid,I dont care wtf they say ! Thats why I did ,wont deny that And to be even more honest theres nothing that 'does it' more for me than female musicians,specially guitar players .. seriously !!

:P

NeM

the66electric

66electric - you and me gonna fight over Meg. I pity the fool who disses Meg White. [/B]

Bring it on. Aesthetically pleasing she may be, but that don't mean **** all. Maybe you're a drummer, i am and she is cack. Minimalism is good, i am a big believer in less is more, but that C.U.N.T. pisses me off.

the66electric

66electric - you and me gonna fight over Meg. I pity the fool who disses Meg White. [/B]

Bring it on. Aesthetically pleasing she may be, but that don't mean **** all. Maybe you're a drummer, i am and she is cack. Minimalism is good, i am a big believer in less is more, but that C.U.N.T. pisses me off.

Muppet Monarchy

I don't give a rats what she looks like. In that band, with those songs, her drumming is perfect.
Have you seen them live?

stickinikki

i wanna play guitar really badly...last year i started trying to teach myself but i just didnt have time to put effort into it cus i play piano and i had exams to work for in that.but now that im doing grade 8, i can finally finish piano lessons and move onto guitar.
dunno why u specified electric guitar..most ppl that play in bands wont play acoustic (plz dont start naming bands that play acoustic stuff..notice i said most )
anywhooo..bad to my point..if i had one, oh yeh: generally , or at least from what ive heard, ud get guitar lessons using an acoustic and then if u were playing a gig ud most likely play an electric(depends on the type of music u play)..which is the same..without effects n stuff..soo any girl that plays acoustic wud be able to play electric aswell..i know lotsa girls that play guitar.

polarbelly

is that you want to be able to play really badly

or

you want to be able to play really badly


?

stickinikki

let me rephrase that:

"i want to play guitar very much"

polarbelly

so do i

stickinikki

aren't you in a band?

Shorty

So, yeah! I like biscuits!