My record collection is taking a real battering in the old style. A couple of weekends ago a mate, Dan, came around and I played him all sorts of old NZ stuff. He found it depressing. Yes it was great music, he said, but where are they now? They were great, but they never “made it”.
True enough. But my memory is that “making it” wasn’t a high priority for many of those bands anyway. Never mind. Dan was in an odd place at the time, obsessed with failure - which at least made a change from humiliation.
Anyway, last night I pulled out an old Joe Tex soul album and was reminded of one peculiar musical phase I went through: my sexist pig stage.
Joe launched into a song called A Woman's Hands, which starts off almost like a women’s lib song: “A woman’s hands weren’t meant to work hard, all the time.” But pretty soon you get to the chorus where you find out exactly what a woman’s hands were “may-ay-ay-ade for”.
“To make her man some bread,
fix him a good cup of coffee,
and put his children to bed.
That’s what a woman’s hands,
were may-ay-ay-ade for”
I’d been turned on to sexist music when I came across a total classic from a bluesman called Lightnin' Hopkins. This guy was a slide maestro, and at least on the album I had, Lightnin' Strikes, very smooth, not that rough Chicago style at all. Really laid back. Except for a song called “Shake Your Moneymaker”.
“You gotta roll your money-maker.
Baby you really can shake ‘er.
Move your money-maker.
Baby it feels alright.
You gotta move your money maker,
All night”
For the life of me I can’t find any reference to this track, but the guy appears to have put out several albums by that name. I did come across another track tantalisingly titled “Let me play with your poodle” which you can check out here.
I used to actively collect such songs. There were lots of other examples, but I forget them now. Some are obvious (James Brown's "This is a Man’s World"), but most were pretty obscure. Anyway during this phase, and for quite a long time after, until I was forced to sell key portions of my collection to keep me in beer, I used to give these tracks a spin when we had guests.
Back in the 80s and well into the 90s, you see, NZ crawled with arch PC-type feminists. I’ve got nothing against feminism, it’s the PC stuff I hate. It’s a real downer, you know. And back then the two were pretty inseparable. Everybody was way too serious.
Anyway I used to play these songs because, around ours, it was the only way to get the PC crowd out of the house!
And when you told them the blues was equal opportunity sexist, they wouldn’t listen. Try and tell them about Bessie Smith singing about that good ol’ “Round Steak”? Forget about it. You couldn’t get a word in.
“Sisters don’t need yo' round steak no mo’, brother.”
Feminist baiting, I’ll confess, was one of my favourite activities. Juvenile? Yes. I know. But talk about a laugh!
I came across another relic of those times online the other day. An article about the glass ceiling in the IT industry. Rereading, I think it has some nice turns of phrase, but God did it create a stink.
Email had only just been rolled out in my workplace. Did I get a good flaming? Tell me about it.
In the end it was the use of the word “little” I was found guilty on, by a one woman jury of my peers. That’s what it came down to. But hey, how come there weren’t any salary and employment statistics on what was the fastest growing industry in the country? That, it seems to me still, was the real issue.
I’ve left all that sexism stuff behind me now, of course. It went out with the LPs.
It was just a phase, anyway.
Honest.