Daddy be gay and eat candy!

This proves that women are better than men
Oh, Daddy be gay
This proves that women are better than men, they can go down to hell and come straight back again
Daddy be gay and eat candy

The title of this post comes from a song that I sang last night together with a group of amazing women at the Music & Liberation exhibition at Space Station Sixty Five in London. (I don’t have my London-centric hat on either: it just toured the UK, you might have seen it already.)

The opening was attended by women from kickass bands of the 1970s and 1980s, including Ginger & Spice, Sisterhood of Spit, Clapperclaw  and the York Street Band:

(c) John Walmsley 1979

These women rocked out, made music and wrote wicked songs, but were mostly unheard by the larger world. Last night, and the exhibition as a whole, was a celebration of them. I WISH I could remember the band name of the two awesome women who performed – complete with air bass guitar! – one of their songs about the invisibility of women in history:

Where are the women’s faces?
Our lives leave no traces
There is no place
For us in your chronicles
History is no place for a lady

Edit! This ace performance was by Clapperclaw. I forgot to mention you can buy a CD of recordings from lots of the bands featured in the exhibition.

Lest this all sounds totally po-faced, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard during that performance, which was complete with the audience supplying boom-tish drum beats, the aforementioned air guitar and a pretty sexy refrain.

Go check it out, at  Space Station Sixty-Five, Building One, 373 Kennington Road, London SE11 4PS, until 13 January, then the materials will be accessible in the Feminist Archive South and Glasgow Women’s Library.

Here are some images nicked from postcards from the exhibition:

Shocking Pink Benefit poster, Feminist Archive South

I think my favourite part of this is the “creche by men against sexism”.

Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band poster from Feminist Archive South

Just outside the exhibition space is a collection of buttons, badges and pins from feminist movements past, pretty inspiring (by which I shallowly mean, “I want these to pin on my denim jacket, I’m inspired to rock some early 1980s fashion and maybe get a mullet?” plus you know feminism and stuff):

And obviously we ended the night drunk and scrawling pro-women temporary graffiti on the night bus, pretty sure we go through to people on the 59 to Streatham and maybe changed some minds and lives with this?