Wendy Orleans Williams was born in 1949 in Webster, New York. Her father was a chemist for Eastman Kodak and her teachers and classmates remember her as a ‘shy, quiet girl who played the clarinet.’ I mention this because she is probably the most over the top performer to ever wander through the wasteland of punk and metal. At age fifteen, she ran away from home and hitchhiked across the country before landing up in Times Square. There she met her lifelong musical and romantic partner, Rob Swenson. In 1976, Rob was using his conceptual art degree from Yale to create experimental happenings under the banner of “Captain Kink’s Sex…
-
-
Girlschool–The Real Queens of Noise
The late 1970’s was a bleak time economically in England. Working class youth were unemployed, living off of the dole with no sense of a future. Out of this frustration and boredom, came punk rock to save the day (or so the story goes). Most of you know that story. What you may not know is that these same conditions gave birth to another musical renaissance known as The New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Inspired by Motorhead’s stripped down no holds barred approach, a new crop of bands rose up that were heavier, louder and more straightforward than the likes of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. The bands didn’t…
-
A Q&A with Kathy Valentine of the Go Go’s
Kathy Valentine is a musician and songwriter and former member of the hugely successful and influential band, The Go-Go’s. She was the principal writer of hits “Vacation” and “Can’t Stop the World” among others. She was not only a member of the first all female band to write and perform their own songs and top charts but she was shortly a member of British band Girlschool in England, started the first punk band in her hometown, Austin, TX, before moving to LA starting another band, The Textones eventually landing in The Go-Go’s, and she hasn’t stopped.
