Viewpoint, Sally Timms on the Lilith FairBy Sally Timms |
Two major festival events of the
summer most likely breathed
their last this year.
In July, Woodstock '99 ended on
a note of wanton violence and
destruction when some of the
200,000 young attendees,
exhausted from three days of
sweltering heat and a lack of
toilet facilities, destroyed
vending outlets and set fire to
cars and broadcast towers.
Aside from the rampant
profiteering, Woodstock '99
harked back to the poorly
conceived rock events of the
'60s such as Altamont--except
now you have to pay $180
dollars for the privilege of
standing in a concrete bunker
and dealing with scarcity of
functional toilets . As the
Woodstock organizers retreated
to lick their wounds and count
their money, most potential sites
were backing away from holding
the festival in the future.
Sarah McLachlan decided to
pull the plug on Lilith Fair for very
different reasons. She felt that
the festival she started three
years ago to prove that an all
women festival lineup could be a
moneymaker had run its course.
Lilith Fair quickly became one of
rock's highest-grossing concert
events, featuring many of the
best known female rock artists.
But it's not been without its
detractors, and many of those
critics have been women
performers. One of the main
problems has been Lilith's focus
on white singer-songwriters in
the folk and rock traditions.
Organizers have said that they
have been turned down by
edgier artists. Long a critic,
Courtney Love and her band
Hole signed on, then off again
without explanation, and L7, an
all-woman punk band, hired a
plane trailing the banner
"Bored? Try L7" to fly over one
Lilith Fair venue.
Many of the attempts to bring
more artists of color onto the bill
have smacked of tokenism, and
for female musicians who exist
outside the mainstream, Lilith
represents the triumph of the
goody-goody girls, whose safe,
somewhat ethereal music
doesn't challenge the standard
notions of how women players
should present themselves.
Even my beloved Spice Girls
would seem too raucous here.
Unlike the testosterone-fueled
Woodstock, the atmosphere at
Lilith was a sweet and gentle
one. On the main stage,
performers frequently guested
on each others' sets and the
camaraderie, which seems
quite genuine and touching,
extended out into the audience.
Gay and straight women
wandered around arm in arm,
girls in angel wings and stick-on
"girls rule" tattoos floated by.
There were younger sisters,
older mothers and the
occasional boy in makeup and a
dress. Booths for the National
Organization for Women and
animal rights groups attracted
small crowds and signed up new
members.
As with all these large
sponsor-driven events, the
contradictions were everywhere
and political incorrectness
poked its head out at every
opportunity. If anyone thought it
ironic that Biore (makers of
beauty products) funded the
Association for Anorexia
Nervosa's literature, or that
Camel cigarette representatives
handed out promotional packs
of cigarettes close to the booth
for the Campaign Against
Breast Cancer, they weren't
saying. After all, there was
shopping to be done at the Lilith
Village, where concertgoers
could browse the huge array of
posters, jewelry and other
paraphernalia.
Compared to Liliths in other
cities, Chicago's lineup was an
uninspired affair. Liz Phair, Cibo
Matto, Mya, Queen Latifah and
the Pretenders weren't on the
Chicago bill, and with the
exception of the Dixie Chicks'
sassy, high-energy set and
Sheryl Crow and Susan
Tedeschi's impressive musical
chops, all three stages featured
insipid folk-tinged music. The
smaller stages were missed
opportunities for risk taking --
this is where grrl rock bands like
the Donnas or Sleater-Kinney
could have created some
much-needed variety. I longed
for something unruly --
something that said it's okay to
be hairy and witchy and mad.
Even the "womyn's" fairs of the
'70s, with their drum circles and
cervical inspections, started to
seem appealing.
Ideally Lilith would find room for
mavericks like Yoko Ono, Bjork
and PJ Harvey, even Patti
Smith--women who are
respected not only because they
trash musical conventions but
also because they play around
with the idea of femininity itself.
Of course that's expecting too
much; Lilith Fair is, after all, just
a well-coordinated,
highly-commercialized rock
event, coated with the thinnest
veneer of liberal feminism. But
as we were subjected to yet
another song about angels
during Sarah McLachlan's
closing set, I wished we could
invoke some of the spirit of
Woodstock '99, and take all
those Biore beauty products,
tie-dye T-shirts and Camel
cigarettes and light a huge
bonfire. Then as the flames rose
up, all the women would dance
around it howling at the moon
like crazed banshees.
That's my kind of Lilith!