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Olivia continued, funded by annual record sales of around 150,000, but a financial model based on what Dlugacz calls “bootstraps and magical thinking” saw it struggle. But the community had too many problems with that.”įollowing targeted attacks on the label by lesbian feminist author Janice Raymond, and boycott threats, Stone left. She’d given up her privilege as a man to become a woman. But it sat with all of our politics, because she was ‘woman-identified’. “Someone phoned me,” says Dlugacz, “and said, ‘Do you know Sandy’s a transsexual?’ I had to go back to my radical lesbian collective and explain to them that, yes, she was. But then this group of radical lesbian separatists called the Gorgons put out a death threat on our sound engineer, Sandy Stone.” “Loud, raucous black women having a good time. “It was me, Mary, Gwen and Pat,” says Tillery. In 1978, Dlugacz organised The Varied Voices of Black Women tour, intended to keep the spotlight on this quartet. We were keen to promote women who spoke to the African American black woman’s experience of being a lesbian.”Ĭris Williamson in 1974, in the cover shoot for The Changer and the Changed. “That was a big statement within the women’s music movement,” says Dlugacz. The album featured Olivia’s white folk stars (Christian, Williamson) alongside women of colour: Gwen Avery, Mary Watkins, poet Pat Parker and Tillery. One point of solidarity came with 1977’s Lesbian Concentrate LP, a “lesbianthology” of songs and poems by Olivia artists released in response to the Save Our Children anti-gay crusade by 60s pop singer (and brand ambassador for the Florida citrus commission) Anita Bryant. I realised there was no way my music was going to compete with Meg and Cris.” I discovered a lot of straight white women were listening to my music wondering, ‘Should I love a woman?’ But there were others who only wanted to hear music by white women. Judy was inviting women of colour into what was then a very white collective. I was a producer, played drums, sang background vocals. “I’d seen the racism in the industry,” says Tillery.

The group knew Tillery because she lived locally, in Emeryville, “which was 95% lesbian” but also because she’d been a big name on the late-60s west coast rock scene, as lead vocalist with San Francisco psych-soulers the Loading Zone and then as solo act Sweet Linda Divine. “I first heard about Olivia when I was asked to produce their all-female rock group, BeBe K’Roche,” says Tillery.

It was all about creating a safe place for women, a room of my own, as Virginia Woolf said.” “Those two albums spoke to women’s lives. In their first year, following a relocation to California, Christian’s LP I Know You Know sold 60,000 copies while Williamson’s The Changer and the Changed exceeded 180,000 – extraordinary figures for an independent grassroots label. They didn't feel alone any moreĪnd it was a success. Musicians, producers, engineers.” Those albums spoke to women's lives. “Our premise was that everything had to be done by women. “We were radical lesbian women with strong political backgrounds with the Furies,” says Dlugacz, referring to the DC lesbian separatist group.

SHROOK MUSIC HOW TO

What they didn’t have was any knowledge of how to run a label. In Christian and Williamson, Dlugacz knew they had the artists – impassioned folk singers with songs of hope, love and unity in the tradition of Joan Baez and Laura Nyro. We said, ‘This is what we’re gonna do with the rest of our lives.’” “We knew music could cut through homophobia and bring strength. “The idea became so profound,” says Dlugacz. Light-bulb moment … the Olivia Records collective in 1973, with Judy Dlugacz far right.

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