Woman's Hour: Women in Music Special; The First Time – radio review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/18/women-in-music-special-review

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There was a fair bit of excitement about the <strong>Woman's Hour: Women in Music Special</strong> this week. Tasked with making sense of the momentum surrounding a certain hammer-licking pop star and, you know, all women in music in 2013, Lauren Laverne pulled together a panel to knuckle out the most damaging and irritating aspects of "the biz".

Step forward Charlotte Church (who also delivered an admirably sane, commonsensical Peel lecture on Monday), original riot grrl Kathleen Hanna and the open-letter writing, Kickstarter-funded, New York artist Amanda Palmer.

"I don't want to have the onus of perfection on me," said Hanna, the debate's chief sage. "That's a real detriment to women making great art. We're supposed to come out and be completely perfect lest we be judged a thousand times harsher than our male counterparts."

Counterparts who, it turns out, were conspicuous entirely by their absence. I'm a massive fan of Laverne (more on that in a whole other column) and Woman's Hour is my daily radio jam, but as nice as it is to listen to great women being great, surely this smart, creative, likable lot were preaching to the converted?

Empowering women to speak their mind and inspire other women – all this, I totally get. But sealing off the debate into a slot where men aren't even expected to tune in, care, or contribute is reductive; addressing the imbalance of power in the industry and challenging sexism isn't only a women's issue. Sure, I wanted to hear from Lauren Mayberry, frontwoman of Chrvches, on her refusal to accept threats of rape from "music fans" as an industry norm. But I also wanted to hear one of those fans taken to task. Church relating her experience of being exploited by middle-aged, male music execs? Yes, let's hear it. But get one of those guys on. Put them on air, pull them apart. Without that, the conversation is just a temperature check on an issue close to boiling over.

The very brilliant David Lynch is opening guest on a new series of <strong>The First Time</strong> (Radio 6). Lynch is, as expected, otherworldly; on air, he sounds like a midwestern, wartime radio announcer (perfect, really) and although it's supposed to be a show about the music that means most to him, fewer songs and more of him talking would have been much more rewarding.

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