Two quadruple portraits from the history of Rock 'n' Roll

Can: Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt/Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit

Surprisingly perhaps, but Can had never been in a Top 100 before this year. I never owned a record either. I think I had a tape once with some of their music on it. Holger Czukay was once listed as a solo artist in the very first Top 100, that of 1983. Malcolm Mooney was in the Top 100 of 2011. He was intermittently associated with Can as a singer. He is not included on the track Millionenspiel, a song from The Lost Tapes with old recordings that appeared in 2012.

Sonic Youth: Thurston Moore; Kim Gordon/Lee Ranaldo; Steve Shelley

Fellow experimental avant-garde rockers Sonic Youth however, were in the list multiple times. The last three years with the song Shaking Hell from Confusion is Sex. [1983] The two paintings above are kind of a pair. I intended every quarter of the canvas featuring a band member but the Sonic Youth painting that I did first was so tedious that I amended the idea when I started the Can painting.

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth, pencils and spray paint on paper, 11x14, 2020

The same recording of Shaking Hell from the 1983 Confusion is Sex LP was also featured in last year's 100. I learned about the song however watching the film Rock My Religion by Dan Graham. It was Graham, a friend of Kim Gordon, who commissioned the song for inclusion in the film. The image I chose to work from was an image by that in my mind best represented the four individuals in the band (from left to right): Steve Shelley; Thurston Moore; Lee Ranaldo; Kim Gordon. The photo taken by Chris Carroll was used in Rolling Stone Magazines and is much more recent than the recording of Shaking Hell. The drummer in heard in the recording is Jim Sclavunos, who was a member only briefly in 1983. Steve Shelley joined in 1985. Vocals on the recording are by Kim Gordon.

The Woman in the Band

Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Mark E Smith and Brix Smith of the Fall
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Gaye Advert is billed as the first female punk rock star. She played bass in the Adverts. I think she may have inspired women to pick up a rock band instrument as (I assume) Suzi Quatro inspired her to start playing bass. Many guy bands following the Adverts had a women in their line-up. Often she is or becomes married to another band member. Brix Smith Start, guitarist in the Fall was married to Mark E Smith, Tina Weymouth who plays bass for the Talking Heads to drummer Chris Frantz. Kim Gordon, bass player in Sonic Youth to Thurston Moore. In Sonic Youth all members were equal and when the marriage between Gordon and Moore ended the band split up. The Fall, however, always was Mark E's band and when Brix and him split the guitar player was simply replaced. The band finally broke up in 2017 when Mark E Smith became too sick to perform. He died in 2018. 

The punk-rock movement certainly empowered women to pick up instruments traditionally played mostly by men, and to form their own bands. The process towards gender equality in rock music started in 1976.