Posts
"Just close your eyes and then remember the thoughts you've locked away. When tomorrow comes you'll wish you had today" - Since Yesterday, Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade's Since Yesterday came out in October 1984 just after I'd turned sixteen. I loved it so much I even bought the album but despite Since Yesterday reaching number five in the UK charts, they faded away pretty quickly. The follow up single, Let Her Go, reached number 59 and a cover of Dolly Parton's Jolene got to number 53 a year later. Remarkably, Since Yesterday still remains the only single by an all girl Scottish band to ever reach the UK top thirty.
Carla J. Easton and Blair Young's new documentary film Since Yesterday:The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands (shown on Wednesday evening at the Rio in Dalston as part of this year's Doc'n'Roll film festival) charts the story of not just Strawberry Switchblade but many other Scottish girl bands from the early sixties (The McKinlay Sisters) to recent decades in the form of Carla J. Easton's own TeenCanteen.
Most of whom are pretty good and some of whom are excellent. None of them, however, had a great deal of lasting success and the reasons given in thus unfailingly feminist film are the ones you may well, predictably and depressingly, expect. Misogynistic record company executives fearful that band members would fall pregnant (which, to be fair, a significant number did - though it's worth remembering that paternity exists as well as maternity and that never seems to hamper a male musician's career) or not dress sexily enough to win over the male fans. Equally outdated beliefs about women being unable to properly play, or even tune, their instruments and, worst of all, sexual harassment that would now be classed not as harassment but as assault.
They were different times - you may
think - but statistics trotted out at the end of the film prove that,
despite outliers like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, the music
industry is still pretty much a boy's club, Maybe not as much
as it used to be but that doesn't mean there's not still work to be
done.
Out of the bands featured, Strawberry
Switchblade are - obviously - my personal favourites but post-punk John
Peel session regulars Lung Leg, indie festival stalwarts The Hedrons,
and Beatles supporting The McKinlay Sisters (who also supported
The Rolling Stones at Wembley Arena becoming the first ever girl band
to play that venue) all should have been bigger, and more celebrated,
than they were.
Honourable shouts, also, go out to the punky Ettes, Sunset Gun, Hello Skinny, Melody Dog, Pink Kross, and His Latest Flame (whose production and style shouts indie band on a major label given a makeover, late 80s/early 90s a bit too loudly) - many of whom, along with Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall of Strawberry Switchblade - are interviewed here. There are also nods to the inspiration of American girl bands like The Supremes as well as grudging mentions of male Scottish bands that supported them, hung out with them, or otherwise.
Bands like Simple Minds, The Pastels,
Franz Ferdinand, The Fire Engines, and The Scars and, yes, all of those
bands went on to be a lot bigger than most of the Scottish girl bands
which does say, sometimes with a heavy hand - but it's been
sixty fucking years since The McKinlay Sisters released their first
record, something quite important about the misogyny, sexism, and male
dominance of the music industry. Both in the past and in the present.
The bands featured in Since Yesterday are too niche for this film to have as powerful an effect as it deserves to (and the cringe inducing Q&A at the Rio won't have helped either) and that's a real shame as there have been there, there are, and there will be again some great girl bands coming out of Scotland. There are some great girls bands all around the world. It'd be nice if one day we could just call them 'bands' and not have to worry about the gender make up of their members. But we're not quite there yet.
