Since Yesterday: Carla J Easton Guest Blog
Musician Carla J Easton and her co-director Blair Young have a hit on their hands with their lovingly conceived feature length documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands. Named after the classic Strawberry Switchblade single, the film spotlights a selection of ace but neglected all-girl outfits from down the decades, most with short but sweet (and sometimes sour) careers, from Sixties sister act The McKinleys via the spiky post-punk sounds of Sophisticated Boom Boom to the riot grrrl explosion of the Nineties. The film is a celebration of these musicians’ spirit and an indictment of their poor treatment by the music industry.
Carla Easton and Blair Young Photo by Euan Robertson
There is another chance to see the film when it is screened at The Pyramid at Anderston on Sunday 17 November. Glasgow Music City Tours are delighted to be involved – our lead guide Fiona Shepherd will host the post-screening discussion with Carla and fellow female trailblazer, the legendary rock photographer Jill Furmanovsky who is in town to promote her joint exhibition with Sheila Rock, Rebels and Renegades, at Street Level Photoworks.
We spoke to Carla ahead of the screening to ask her more about the film.
Where did the idea for the documentary come from?
We were talking about how girl bands are represented in music videos and the conversation went along the lines of ‘it’s weird how there’s not been that many girl bands in Scotland’ and that became the moment. Blair knew of a couple, I knew of a couple, when you combine that with research you realise there’s loads – more than what’s in our film. A week after that conversation we were interviewing Jeanette from the McKinleys. I think I’d tracked her down to Dunbar based on her sister’s obituary. That was eight years ago, so it’s a long time we’ve been working on it.
What was the criteria for inclusion in the film?
I know that a lot of people are going to be asking ‘why are Altered Images not in it, or Garbage?’ but we wanted the focus to be all-girl bands.
We’ve kept the genre of music within rock and pop but there’s a whole folk scene that went on in the Seventies and when The McKinleys were happening there were easy listening groups like The Karlins and The Modelles. It was quite hard putting in those barriers especially when you are trying to platform. I guess it’s one of the paradoxes of the film.
I struggle with the term ‘girl band’. You’ve just started a band with friends and you either embrace the term or kick against it for whatever reasons. I struggled with the paradox of the film itself because quite a lot of the bands in the film talk about how they would be lumped together in journalism or by promoters and I’ve done that in this film so we just tried to be as respectful as possible.
There’s some bands in the film who said ‘we definitely wanted it to be all girls’ so it is almost a statement in itself and it is political. The Ettes in the Seventies saw all these young lads doing it and thought we can do it too. They talk about how it was dangerous to be a young girl in the audience so for them onstage they were in a position of power and less vulnerable so it does become a political statement.
I guess what it does on a cultural level is raise bigger questions of why hasn’t there been another girl band from Scotland to make the Top 30, never mind the Top 5, since Strawberry Switchblade in 1985, or why isn’t there a girl band equivalent of The Rolling Stones or Coldplay or U2 that is worldwide stadium-selling band that is still going.
The Ettes, photograph courtesy of The Ettes
What would you like people to get out of the film?
For me the takeaway from speaking to so many incredible women and reflecting on the interviews is that we probably need to redefine what success is because the story arc of our film is ‘here’s a band that looks like they’re going to make it – they don’t’, ‘here’s a band that do make it – they get dropped’ or the pressure’s too much and they split up.
The barriers facing women in terms of becoming a mother, ageing, how you look, I don’t know if men experience that the way that women do working in the arts so because of who you are there is a limitation to your success. But all the bands in our film had successes in my eyes. So if we redefine what success is, that allows for more voices to come through.
I don’t want to just focus on the past. I hope the film is not just nostalgia. We’ve tried to include organisations and activists pushing for change today. The stats at the end of the film are pretty shocking and you hope people think how can I be part of the change? By writing people back in from the past, you realise this is a decades long fight. There’s this whole line of great bands that came before Teen Canteen. We didn’t even know it and what if we had known it?
Meeting some of the women, they were so surprised to even be contacted but for me it’s really important that they know that what you did mattered and it still matters today when we’ve got festivals not signing up to 50/50 line-ups and we’ve got the Misogyny in Music report published in January. And it was probably worse in your time and you still got up and did it.
Photograph by Euan Robertson
Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands, the Pyramid at Anderston, 17 November, 5pm-7.30pm. Tickets here: https://thepyramid.scot/events/event/since-yesterday-the-untold-story-of-scotlands-girl-bands-15/
Rebels and Renegades: Jill Furmanovsky, Street Level Photoworks, 16 November 2024 – 23 February 2025
https://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/event/Jill_Furmanosky
Rebels and Renegades: Sheila Rock, Street Level Photoworks, 16 November 2024 – 23 February 2025
https://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/event/Sheila_Rock