Ever since we recorded OK, Fine, we have accused Steve of hating female-fronted music. He had his iPod (I'm sorry, "Creative Zen") plugged in to the car stereo and we were trying to find some female vocals we could show to our mixer as examples of effects we wanted. I was sort of horrified that I only found one female vocalist aside from Bjork and Pretty Girls Make Graves and I accused Steve of being sexist. Oliver quickly jumped aboard the "Steve hates women" bandwagon, and it became a band fact.

This past weekend, on our long drive up to Arcata, Steve felt determined to analyze the accusations further. Though the percentage of female (or dual) fronted artists in his overall collection was in his words, "Not great," he had about 30 in total--which, as it turns out, is only six fewer than in Oliver's collection, whose reputation as an enlightened male has so far remained unscathed.

Spurred by this contest, I decided to look through my own music collection. This was more complicated than I thought it would be and I had to employ a lot of rules to make it an accurate reflection of my music tastes. To begin with, I eliminated any artist that I didn't put in my collection myself (and don't listen to), such as things my fiance gave me or artists that appear on soundtracks. Secondly, I left out any artist that has only written one song that I like. To me, this is a sign that the artist got lucky and wrote one good song, more than that I like their music in general. Thirdly, I eliminated all of the classical artists. I did this for two reasons: one, they don't perform their pieces (which are mostly played by co-ed orchestras), and two, I have never in my life heard a classical piece by a female composer. I've read about their existence (some had famous love affairs with male composers) but due to the social climate of Europe in the 18th century, they were few and far between. It just seemed unfair.

In the end, my music collection turns out to be 52% male fronted, 36% female fronted and 12% dual fronted. No small feat considering that only once have we played a show where the majority of performers that night were female. I think being in a band is slowly turning me into a feminist. Where are all the women in music? Anyone?