A few posts down:
"While I appreciate John McFerrin's writing and the fact that he has kept his site going all these years (and, I think, has gotten out from under the 'George Clone' cloud that haunted his early years) he's got a major blind spot against female artists. He has done in depth reviews of the complete discographies of over 60 artists and not a single one of them is a solo female or female-fronted act. The only women discussed on his entire site are members of male dominated groups (Talking Heads, Sly & the Family Stone and Velvet Underground). I tried to overlook this for a long time, because tastes are tastes, but it's really become a glaring omission for me in recent years.
In fact, if I look over his list of the music he owns, he barely owns anything by women. In addition to the three groups above, he's only got albums from the following artists:
Mixed Gender Groups: ABBA, Arcade Fire, Blondie (1 album), Fleetwood Mac, Mamas and Papas (1 album), Wings, Pixies, Renaissance, Sonic Youth (1 album), X
Solo Female Artists: Kate Bush (only 3 albums), Neko Case (1 album), Carole King (1 album), Joni Mitchell (only 2 albums, and they are Clouds and Blue)
For someone who has taken such pains to educate himself in jazz, classical, rock, etc., it seems like he is really overlooking the contributions of women to popular music."
I am very irritated by this post and find it fairly creepy. The itinerary of artists that I have followed for my site is primarily based off an off-the-top-of-my-head list of artists I had interest in getting to know better someday that I cobbled together when I was 22. In turn, a very large portion of my music buying since then has been devoted to filling out the discography gaps in a list that I largely shackled myself to when I was 22. My music purchasing outside of that list has largely been slowed by my additional growing interests in classical and jazz, and in both cases I've largely been buying music off of lists provided by other people that have a lot of men on them.
I assure you that my lack of Joni Mitchell is a topic that has crossed my mind several times, and what happens is that I think "oh I should buy more of her stuff, I like her" but manage to forget those words when I'm actually buying music. This also applies to many other people.
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