If Michelle Obama’s arms deserve the names “thunder” and “lightening,” than Janet Weiss’ should be called “nuclear” and “atomic.” The drummer for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Quasi, and the now defunct all-woman power trio Sleater-Kinney, has long been admired as one of the top female percussionists in the rock world for the sheer power and complexity of her beats, and nowhere is that clearer than during her live performances.
My first encounter with Janet Weiss appropriately coincided with my inaugural indie rock show in Portland, Oregon. At this point, I’d never heard a single Quasi track, nor had I learned much about Sleater-Kinney. At the age of fourteen, my younger brother’s tastes belied his years and rural upbringing, and I at sixteen benefitted from his interests. Still too young for our protective parents to release us into the wilds of downtown Portland, my dad and another relative accompanied us to the legendary Crystal Ballroom for a show headlined by Quasi. Overzealously, we arrived at the time shown on our tickets and planted ourselves on the floor next to the stage. We sat through noisy opening acts before Janet finally emerged with Sam Coomes, Quasi’s other half and Janet’s former husband.
Janet Weiss doing double-duty with drums and vocals
While part of the power of this Quasi show derived from its status as a “first” experience, Janet’s role as the band’s drummer made this concert particularly significant for me as a budding feminist. Even ten years later, female drummers are an exception rather than a rule in mainstream bands, and it is even rarer for female drummers to play in a heterogeneously sexed band. Sure, there’s Meg White, Karen Carpenter, Sheila E., and Moe Tucker, but these drummers deploy a deliberately feminine and/or simplistic style, in effect reinforcing assumptions about women and drumming. Granted, it would be masculinist to say that the styles and skills of these women made them any less legitimate as artists, but on a gut-level, they fail to challenge the stereotypes aligning certain sexes with particular instruments.
As a girl, these alignments between sex and gender and rock performance impacted my options for self-expression; I remember asking my mother if I could play drums in the sixth-grade band, and she responded that it wouldn’t be “lady-like.” I even remember her describing women drummers as “butch,” in effect confirming a fear that drumming might turn me into an aggressive lesbian (like that would be a bad thing anyway). To be fair, my mother later back-peddled on her stance, saying that she really discouraged me from drumming out of fear of the noise it would bring into our home, but regardless, my mother’s statement still reinforced what I already felt and knew from experience—rock bands were boys’ clubs that only the bravest women could infiltrate. My feelings of exclusion certainly weren’t unique, since several of my female friends confessed to having similar feelings, and Carol Jennings’ research on girls’ identity formation and rock bands finds similar trends of sexism in local music scenes. (If interested, please check out “Girls Make Music: Polyphony and Identity in Teenage Rock Bands” in Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity. Eds. Sharon R. Mazzarella and Norma Odom Pecora. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 175-192.) In short, there are barriers to participation in rock performance for girls that do not exist for boys.
For these reasons, I gravitated toward the mainstream female singer-songwriters so en vogue in the mid to late-nineties. I accumulated a massive collection of Tori Amos memorabilia, attended not one but two Lilith Fairs, and watched VH1’s 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll with rapt attention. Still, none of this shattered my perceptions the way seeing Janet live did.
I emphasize the “live” element of the experience because Quasi’s composition resulted in a unique spatial arrangement on stage; with only two instrumentalists, Janet’s kit occupied half the stage, allowing fans closer proximity to the drummer than usual. (Note: Quasi added a third member, bassist Joanna Bolme, to the line-up in 2006.) And while Janet herself puts on a stoic game face most of the time, her drumming itself is dynamic, athletic, and unrelenting. I could throw more adjectives out there, but I will just let the drumming speak for itself.
Seeing Janet play did not change my life over night—I never joined a band, and I never bought a drum kit—but as the years passed, I gravitated toward bands like Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, and Le Tigre. These bands not only had roots in the Northwest but also placed women musicians in the forefront, addressed queer issues, and kicked ass musically. In other words, they raised my consciousness and helped me grow as a feminist.
Caption: Janet Weiss (center) with Sleater-Kinney bandmates Corrin Tucker (left) and Carrie Brownstein (right).
These days, I’m seeing more incredible women drummers, both locally and nationally. My 17-year-old cousin took up the instrument, and one of my brother’s bands featured a friend of ours beating the skins named Keely. Hannah Blilie of the Gossip has also knocked me on my ass during several live performances.
Best of all, organizations like Rock n’ Roll Camp for Girls are encouraging girls to drum, and social-networking websites like Drummergirl create a sense of community for female percussionists who might otherwise feel isolated in their respective music scenes. While there remains a disparity between the sexes with respect to drumming, these resources (limited as they may be) are a move in the right direction toward correcting it.
But for many women and girls, just seeing a female confidently and skillfully hit the drums is the first step toward breaking through a mind-set in which men are inevitably physical and aggressive as performers, while women must be soulful and subdued. For me, Janet was one of those icons that shifted my paradigms, and for that, I will forever thank her.
Other interesting articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/jan/30/gender.popandrock
Make sure to check out Dark Room, Caitlin’s rad blog.
