![]() ![]() I LOVE ROCK N ROLL □❤️□ Comment by Thiana Nascimento ![]() Hey what do you think of this radio station? Comment by Fiona Yererr Comment by 105.1 THE RAZORS EDGE RADIO So, all hail Joan Jett-an inspiration for not only a young South African teenager, but an icon to so many female musicians over the last four decades.Genre ROCK REMIX Comment by nevaeh_makemoneyīien tu gère continue comme sa Comment by Gavin Mckenzie In 2015 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone magazine included Joan Jett in their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. ![]() Billie Joe Armstrong, of Greenday has spoken of his feelings when he first saw Joan in action, “I want to be the male version of that.”. She founded her own label, Blackheart Records that has most recently released the latest L7 album.Īlthough Joan has been an inspiration for girls and women, male rockers also recognise her status. In 1994 she produced an album by one of the seminal bands of that era, Bikini Kill. She was actively involved in the Riot Grrrl movement during the nineties. However she has been a massive influence on numerous female artists since 1982. Most people only know of Joan because of ILRNR. This song spent 7 weeks on top of the US charts. By then the Runaways had split up and Joan had formed the Blackhearts, who released the song “I love rock ‘n roll”. Read about Leopard here Joan Jett performs live in the Hunter Valley, Australia. Leopard, a punk rock band from Durban had been featured on Benjy Mudie’s Six of the Best. I didn’t know until much later that there had been an all girl South African band. I knew that it was a matter of time before equality, both racial and gender would reach South Africa too. Girls were expected to be demure and pretty and to not play in rock bands! The “fuck you” attitude on display showed me that other girls were challenging the rules around gender stereotypes. In the midst of the apartheid era that photo gave a young female South African teenager hope for a better world.Īpartheid South Africa was a very patriarchal society. That picture of the five teenaged girls remained with me. Read about Joan Jett battled sexism in the music business here. The girls were called “sluts” and were never taken seriously. Joan Jett has spoken at length about how inherently sexist the rock music scene was at that time. South Africa was not the only country that had a problem with sexism, it seems. Later I read about how the Runaways had been pilloried by the mainly male music press. Without an internet to resort to, this all-girl band remained a mystery to me. I tried desperately to find out more about the Runaways, but unfortunately they never really made it into the UK magazines. She stared defiantly at the camera, eyes heavy with eyeliner. Cherie Curry live in Sydney, May 2016.īut, the girl who really caught my attention was the dark haired one, the one with attitude. Blonde Cherie Curry, demurely gazing at the camera, she must have been around 15 years old at the time. Gazing at the photo of the Runaways, two girls stood out from the rest. According to her, the Nationalist government in South African suppressed females, sexual minorities and black people, in order to maintain control. Christi van der Westhuizen has written, white South African women during the apartheid era were both oppressor and oppressed. My reaction might seem strange now, but as the academic, Assoc. I remember being a bit angry because this revelation of seeing girls rocking collided with my Christian National upbringing, “How dare they? Girls don’t play rock”. I remember staring at the black and white photo of the girls, I was dumbfounded, I couldn’t believe that there was a girl rock band. The caption noted that this was a band based in Los Angeles and that they were known as “The Runaways”. One day I was paging through the Personality, not expecting much when a picture of five young girls immediately caught my attention. I would scour my mother’s magazine, flipping through the make up tips, desperately looking for any music news that sometimes made it into the latest Personality. Personality targeted white housewives with a mix of fashion, beauty tips, recipes and updates on what Miss South Africa was doing. One of the unusual sources of music news was Personality magazine. Television was only introduced into South Africa in the mid-1970s and the radio stations were mostly controlled by the government, so a music lover like me had to rely on unlikely sources. There were the UK weeklies like the Melody Maker and NME, but there were also other sources for a young girl desperate to find out about what was happening in the outside world. Growing up in apartheid South Africa we were reliant on various sources for our music news. I saw Joan Jett and the Blackhearts in concert earlier this year. ![]()
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