The Sneering Seventies

As a continuation of my earlier girl groups/ girl rockers post I'm going to be bringing you a selection from each decade. Here we have the 70s,,,,when everything changed.

First we start off with a fictional band The Carrie Nations originally called The Kelly Affair. They were created by Russ Meyer for his movie Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls in 1970.



One band that is rarely remembered is the all girl rock band Fanny, fronted by Phillippines born June and Jean Millington. The Millington girls moved to California in the mid sixties, heard The Beach Boys and never turned back.
David Bowie said of Fanny "One of the most important female bands in American rock has been buried without a trace. And that is Fanny. They were one of the finest rock bands of their time, in about 1973. They were extraordinary... they're as important as anybody else who's ever been, ever; it just wasn't their time."


There was also this awesome band called SHE from the Bay Area. They were sometimes called The Hairem. Not much video stuff for this band but I like their sound.


Russ Meyer liked to try to take credit for all the girl bands that came after Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, but I think it might have had more to do with the emergence of glam rock that was brewing in the early 70s, allowing both guys and girls to approach rock from a more androgynous angle.

So obviously there is a ton that is owed to The Runaways. But I'm going to have to do a whole separate post on their forerunner Suzi Quatro because really she deserves her own post.
Here you can see the obvious glam rock influence with Joan Jett and The Runaways covering Slade's Mama Weer All Crazy Now.

And Cherie Currie's spin off from The Runaways when she teamed up with her twin sister Marie is also very obviously Glam inspired though in a lighter more feminine way.


Punk was also an environment that allowed girls to get more involved, maybe because it was new and the rules weren't already so formed.




The Slits didn't really cut their first album till 1979 so here's a clip of them screwing around earlier in the 70s in the movie Jubilee.


The late 70s are when bands like The Slits, The Raincoats, Souxsie and The Banshees, Mo-Dettes, and others started finally flourishing in the post punk funk/reggea inspired rock started coming out. It was still rough and tumble but you could dance to it and girls started really dominating.