Rock We Wrote

Yesterday the L.A. Times' Jacket Copy blog published its list of "46 Essential Rock Reads". As one would expect, this oddly numbered, arbitrary list generated its share of comments from completists and rock geeks whose favorites were excluded, or who thought that certain authors (that's you, Albert Goldman) weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Some may have had a point - I couldn't tell you if Bob Dylan's Tarantula is any good or not - but for my time, the more interesting commentary occurred on my Facebook news feed, where Pamela Des Barres and her friends discussed the fact that her iconic memoir, I'm With the Band, was one of only four books by women on the list.

In my book (ha ha) it's hard to argue with a selection that includes Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me and Patti Smith's Babel, but I have to agree that Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us, a biographic trilogy about Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon published last year, is both a dishy read and an insightful historic document, and it could have been on there (why not #47?). I was also glad to hear Miss Pamela's personal recommendations: Marianne Faithfull's Faithfull, Catherine James' Dandelion, and Bebe Buell's Rebel Heart (and it was sweet to see Buell herself weighing in, congratulating her old friend).

It definitely got me thinking, and I feel the need to chime in here with my own life-changing chick rock book, my personal "how could you leave out...?!", and that is 1995's anthology of female music writing, Rock She Wrote. Edited by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers (now the L.A. Times Pop Critic), this anthology spans from mainstream celebrity profiles to early Lisa Robinson pieces for Creem to an excerpt from Runaway Cherie Currie's autobiography (soon to hit the screen with Dakota Fanning as Currie) to Lisa Carver's "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton John," which, given my admitted Xanadu fixation, I really need to take another look at. This was the era of DIY publishing and girl power, and I remember going to a reading/ book release party for Rock She Wrote at CBGB when it came out, just as I was committing to my own career as a music journalist (which eventually allowed me to talk to my heroines like Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks, Liz Phair, and Sleater-Kinney). It was at this reading that I felt, right down to the soles of my motorcycle boots, that women weren't "as good as" men, but were in fact wonderfully different yet equally - if not more - powerful, with voices that could speak our unique truths without fear or self-censorship.

15 years and a technological revolution later, I'm not sure where that leaves us, but I guess it's worth noting that this L.A. Times list was written by a woman. Rock on, ladies!