Rock Returns to Its Old Boys’ Network Roots

Remember just a few years ago--before Hole and Garbage and Alanis Morissette and Lilith Fair--when it was rare to find a prominent woman among rock performers?

Now, at a time when women are thriving in pop (Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera), hip-hop (Eve, TLC) and country (Dixie Chicks), once again there’s a dearth of female voices in the rock world.

In fact, the pre-Lilith years are starting to look like the good ol’ days to many, compared to the world dominated by Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, to whom the ideal women seem to be not peers but porn stars.

“We’ve gone back not just to there being no female presence in rock, but to women-bashing,” says booking agent Marty Diamond, one of the Lilith Fair co-founders.

“It does concern me to see people using strippers onstage and to see these girls out there [in the audience] lifting their tops off,” says Jill Cunniff of Luscious Jackson, a former modern-rock radio staple. “Unfortunately, the girls who go to those concerts are trying to fulfill that role and it’s really sad. It’s discouraging and frightening.”

Alan Light, executive editor of Spin, has just finished overseeing a large year-end story examining the testosterone-fueled trend in rock, and he wonders if it’s in part a reaction against the female focus of recent years.

“There’s a question of how much [the current trends] are coming from a backlash to the women in rock two years ago, when rock was taking a more female-informed, more sophisticated sensibility,” he says.

Kevin Weatherly, program director of KROQ-FM (106.7), admits that it’s become difficult to get much of a female perspective on the air of late--in fact, there’s not a female voice to be found in the 20 songs currently being played most on the station.

That’s a sharp contrast to three years ago, when the station dedicated one of its two Christmas concerts at the Universal Amphitheater entirely to female artists, including Garbage, Jewel, Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos. The lineup for this year’s Christmas concert, planned for Dec. 11 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, will probably feature just one or two women. (Expected performers include Foo Fighters, Blink-182 and Save Ferris, which has a female lead singer in Monique Powell.)

“Even Fiona Apple, who I think has put out an amazing record and is a superstar artist who definitely appeals to [KROQ’s age] demographic, as far as the texture, it’s a tough fit on the station,” Weatherly says.

“But I don’t think we’re neglecting [new female acts that are] compelling and deserving to be on KROQ. If we are, we’d love to know. I don’t know if there’s a female Fred Durst out there, but Courtney Love and [Garbage’s] Shirley Manson and [No Doubt’s] Gwen Stefani have proven there’s always room for star acts that make great music.”

And both he and station music director Lisa Worden reject the notion that the current rock climate is not just inhospitable to women but outright hostile.

“I haven’t really noticed hostility toward women in these songs or from the artists,” Worden says. “And if you’re an intelligent woman, you don’t care if [Durst] dates strippers and writes songs about them. It doesn’t affect you.”

LOST OUTPOST: The record label formed by R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, former Smashing Pumpkins manager Andy Gershon and Mark Williams, who as an artists and repertoire executive at IRS Records and Virgin Records signed both those acts, is dissolving. Outpost Recordings will apparently cease operations less than a year after its parent, Geffen, was absorbed into Interscope.

Williams says that Outpost never felt at home at Interscope and has reached terms to leave the company. Meanwhile, talks with others, including Michael Ovitz and RCA, about picking up the label didn’t work out, so Outpost is expected to call it a day. It leaves its two best-known acts, Days of the New and Crystal Method, with Interscope as part of the settlement, with the fate of such other promising acts as alt-country group Whiskeytown, rootsy hip-hopper Hotsauce Johnson and Canadian singer-songwriter Hayden up in the air. Williams is working to find them new homes on an act-by-act basis.

The three partners also appear to be headed their separate ways. Litt is considering new production assignments, Gershon has a film in development at New Line and is weighing some other options, while Williams says that he hopes to find a new position in the music business suited to his interests in discovering and developing acts over a gradual arc, a philosophy he says doesn’t fit in with the current hit-driven mind-set of the major corporations.

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH CUT: Jewel’s feature film acting debut in “Ride With the Devil” is still weeks away from hitting the screens. But reviews of her appearance in the film’s trailer were not exactly kind last week at the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz before a showing of “Being John Malkovich.”

Of course, that’s not exactly a Jewel crowd, but the mere appearance of the singer’s name on screen drew hisses from the audience, while a clip of her speaking a line (rather stiffly) was greeted by titters. When a title card touted Jewel’s song featured in the soundtrack, outright laughter erupted from the viewers at the cross-marketing push. Ouch.