Weenie Roast: No Women Aloud?

“Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman,” sang Tammy Wynette. KROQ isn’t making it any easier.

“The world-famous KROQ,” as it styles itself, will stand by its men, and only its men, when it stages its seventh annual Weenie Roast & Luau all-day alterna-rock fest at Irvine Meadows.

Attendees at the show this Saturday, always one of the season’s hottest tickets, will see 15 bands on two stages. Barring unbilled female guests or backing singers, 65 musicians will perform, not one of them a woman.

Females will be seen--it wouldn’t be a Weenie Roast without girl-watching video operators panning the crowd in search of something titillating to put on screen between acts--but not heard.

Is this intentional discrimination? Certainly not. If KROQ could have gotten Hole, Garbage or No Doubt, all female-fronted staples of the station’s playlist, it would have been overjoyed.

But is this lapse, though not intentional, nonetheless sloppy and disgraceful? Absolutely. Especially when one considers that the two previous Weenie Roasts were fueled almost exclusively by testosterone.

The banjo player in Squirrel Nut Zippers and an inaudible guest keyboard player for Blur in ’97 and singer Monique Powell of Save Ferris in ’98 were the only female musicians on the stage. The show this weekend will bring KROQ’s grand total to one unbilled and two billed women out of some 170 musicians over a three-year span.

KROQ wasn’t always so lopsided in its booking: The first four Weenie Roasts each featured two to four bands with female members; out of 48 bands that played those shows, 12--that’s 25 percent--included women. Garbage in ‘96, Hole and Elastica in ‘95, the Pretenders in ’94 and X in ’93 provided some of the most memorable performances in Weenie Roast history. And the station consistently has landed prominent female performers for “Almost Acoustic Christmas,” a more intimate annual holiday show.

“That’s the way the cards fall,” said Lisa Worden, KROQ’s music director, who is a key figure in putting together the Weenie Roast bill. Worden said the goal is to reflect what’s being played on the station at the moment. Some of the top bands with women were invited but couldn’t make it. Does gender balance figure in the organizers’ thinking? “No, it’s not a goal.”

Worden’s stated booking aim of reflecting the station’s playlist is obviously flexible: in an echo of the KISS comeback at the ’96 Weenie Roast, KROQ’s big coup this year was landing Metallica, an arena-packing heavy-metal kingpin that achieved its fame with barely a whisper of airplay on KROQ. So the real goal is to put on what Ed Sullivan used to call “a really big shew”--not that the station’s mainly teen- and 20-something listeners would know who Ed Sullivan was. Isn’t that legit and traditional?

Sure. Bring Metallica, and line up Ozzy Osbourne and an Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson duet for 2000 and 2001 if that will create the most hoopla. But a radio station that holds a government license to milk money by monopolizing publicly owned airwaves should have a moral and social mandate to serve as a forum for a range of voices.

The Weenie Roast, KROQ’s biggest annual event, makes a statement about where the station stands. The message, unintentional as it may be, is that KROQ doesn’t think there are many women rock artists who matter. In fact, the biggest story in rock over the past five years has been the emergence of women, at long last, as the full creative and commercial equals of men. Yeah, the Weenie Roast has been right on top of that one.

The problem isn’t just KROQ’s. Jim Kerr, alternative editor for the trade publication Radio & Records says it is just beginning to dawn on modern-rock programmers that they may not be putting enough female rock voices on the air nowadays.

Last week’s Billboard chart of the top 40 modern rock tracks included just four songs by bands with female singers or players: the Garbage-Hole-No Doubt triumvirate, plus newcomers Len. “It’s disingenuous to say women aren’t making good records,” Kerr said. “It’s an issue that is in the very early stages of discussion.”

KROQ prides itself on being the leader of the pack among modern-rock stations, but its Weenie Roast bookings don’t reflect any desire to lead on this issue. This year, it could have moved ahead by looking back, lending variety by inviting significant acts from the station’s past. The Bangles and the Go-Gos, the most popular girl-rock bands of the ‘80s, are both reunited for the summer. Why not them?

How about instigating a reunion show by the original Berlin lineup? And the Pretenders and X--this time with the all-original lineup--would be welcome voices on any festival. Why not invite L7, the crunching L.A. female-rock pioneers--to match its decibels against Metallica’s and Limp Bizkit’s?

Or maybe get creative and set up a collaborative meeting of L7 backing Joan Jett? Or have Jett lead a Runaways reunion. You think the place wouldn’t explode at the eruption of “Cherry Bomb?”

As for more current-vintage acts: Why not give a preview of the July 17 Lilith Fair show scheduled for the Rose Bowl? With that many seats to fill, Lilith would probably appreciate the promotional help, and Lilith acts Beth Orton, Sixpence None the Richer and Luscious Jackson all have been presences on KROQ playlists.

How about branching into dynamic funk with MeShell Ndegeocello?

And why in the world hasn’t KROQ jumped all over the most vital rock arrival of the late ‘90s, the all-female trio Sleater-Kinney? Is it because they don’t have major-label grease behind them--just incredibly catchy, vibrant and jolting music? Pennywise, a well-established punk rock draw that records for Epitaph Records, is the only indie-label band on the Weenie Roast.

You can catch Sleater-Kinney’s O.C. debut July 4 at Oak Canyon Ranch; they’re playing the “This Ain’t No Picnic” alternative-rock festival, which managed to book three acts featuring women among its 11 top-billed attractions, plus at least one other on the undercard. Maybe KROQ could send a scout over and see what it’s missing.