Sharon Ann Cheslow[Andersen & Jenkins 2001 p. 93][Hornreich 2002][Hornreich 2008]
Biography
Cheslow was born in Los Angeles, California. She has a B.A. in
Intermedia from
Mills College, attended graduate school in
Music at California Institute of the Arts, and completed a Master of Library and Information Science degree from San José State University.
She has worked or taught at Mills College's Olin Library, Stanford University, Bay Area Video Coalition, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Cruz, and California Institute of the Arts.
As a pioneer on many levels, she has collaborated with numerous musicians and artists. Her work crosses boundaries and addresses subject/object relationships.
Early years
Born in Los Angeles, Sharon Cheslow grew up in the Jewish area near Wilshire and Fairfax in a Reconstructionist Jewish family.
[Gibbon 2008][Cheslow 2008 p. 3-11] In an introduction to an interview with her mother for
Interrobang?! Anthology on Music and Family, Cheslow wrote that her maternal great-grandmother emigrated from
Kolomyia (in present-day Ukraine) and had a professional violinist father.
Cheslow's mother graduated from
UCLA, became a teacher, and was an American civil rights movement advocate.
Her family moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs in 1967 after Cheslow's father, a
Caltech graduate, got a job with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
They first moved to Silver Spring, MD and then to Bethesda, MD where she experienced
antisemitism.
Cheslow listened to rock and roll and was influenced by her parents' love of music, especially
Folk music protest music – one of Cheslow's earliest memories is of listening to her parents'
Bob Dylan records.
As a young child, Cheslow started singing and playing guitar, as well as taking photographs.
D.C. bands and publications
Cheslow was influenced by the
Beatles,
Yoko Ono,
Patti Smith,
The Slits, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and
jazz.
Her first band Chalk Circle, as guitarist, grew out of her friendships with Anne Bonafede, Henry Garfield (later
Henry Rollins), and members of the
Teen Idles and Untouchables around late 1979/early 1980.
[Andersen & Jenkins 2001 p. 57] They shared a love of
Bad Brains and California punk. When the D.C. hardcore scene became more macho and male-dominated, Chalk Circle didn't fit in and were put down for being all girls.
[Klein 1997][Andersen & Jenkins 2001 p. 93-94][Azerrad 2001 p. 150-51] But they got support from
art punk bands such as
Half Japanese and
Velvet Monkeys.
Cheslow attended University of Maryland and first learned about
feminist theory through
film studies classes with Robert Kolker.
These experiences led Cheslow to examine and write about the role of women in music.
Cheslow stated, "My main goal was to write about music from a female perspective, and that included writing about the fact that female musicians weren't taken seriously."[Andersen & Jenkins 2001 p. 115][Azerrad 2001 p. 145] It also featured an interview with The Raincoats. Along with doing bands and zines, Cheslow had a radio show on freeform radio station WMUC-FM.
With Cynthia Connolly and Leslie Clague, she compiled the seminal photographic punk oral history book Banned In DC: Photos and Anecdotes from the DC Punk Underground (79-85) in 1988, which documented the early 1980s Washington, DC hardcore punk scene.
A retrospective Chalk Circle release, "Reflection", came out in 2011 on Mississippi Records and Post Present Medium.
California years
Bands
Cheslow moved to
San Francisco in 1990, continued to collaborate with musicians in D.C., and was an influence on
Bikini Kill and
Bratmobile.
In the 1990s she was in
indie rock bands Suture (with Dug E. Bird of Beefeater and
Kathleen Hanna), Red Eye (with Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses), and The Electrolettes (with Julianna Bright, later of The Quails). Her recordings came out on
Dischord Records, Kill Rock Stars, and her label Decomposition. She played guitar and bass and was a singer and songwriter for all three bands, although Hanna was the main vocalist and lyricist for Suture. Suture performed at the International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia, Washington in August 1991.
Publications
Cheslow's experiences with
riot grrrl, while in Suture during 1991–92, inspired her to compile a list of women involved in punk that recorded from 1975 to 1980. For an Experience Music Project Riot Grrrl Retrospective oral history interview in 1999 she said, "There's this whole history out there...And it's not just punk music. It's in rock 'n' roll, it's in jazz, it's in blues, it's in experimental and avant-garde classical music; in every one of these genres, women's history is lost. Women are seen as an 'other.'
In the mid-1990s, Cheslow published her comprehensive list of these late 1970s punk women in
Interrobang?!, and it became available as an online list.
[Kearney 2006] The list was also influenced by
Lenny Kaye's compilation LP
,
Judy Chicago's art installation
The Dinner Party, and
Lucy Lippard's book
Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972.
Interrobang?! #2, published in 1994, also featured an interview with Cork Marcheschi of Fifty Foot Hose. In 2000 Cheslow edited an anthology on music and transcendence as Interrobang?! #4 which featured writings contributed by Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, Nicole Panter, The Tape-beatles, Niko Wenner (of Oxbow), Marc Kate (of I Am Spoonbender), Allison Wolfe, and others. Cheslow edited and published the book Interrobang?! Anthology on Music and Family in 2008, with contributions by Cynthia Connolly, Pauline Oliveros, Ian MacKaye, Alan Licht, Jean Smith, Anna Oxygen, Bill Berkson, Kevin Mattson, Resipiscent, Matthew Wascovich, Erika Anderson, Janet Sarbanes, and Sara Wintz.
She is a contributor to Thurston Moore book .
Coterie Exchange and other collaborations
While studying
intermedia arts at
Mills College in the music department, Cheslow began performing and exhibiting experimental music,
sound art, and installations. In 2000, she participated in the first
Ladyfest in Olympia with her composition
Geodessy for Guitars (for Yasunao Tone), collaborating with sisters
Wendy Yao and
Amy Yao from Emily's Sassy Lime in the experimental sound installation
performance art Coterie Exchange project, during an art exhibit curated by
Audrey Marrs.
Cheslow's
and explorations are documented on the CD,
Lullabye from the Sky, released in 2002 on Decomposition under the name Sharon Cheslow and Coterie Exchange. It featured collaborations with Tim Green, Julianna Bright and members of
Deerhoof among others. The project was the audio component from sound installations she had been performing.
In 2003
Fan Music: Winds of Change was featured at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. Her videos to the tracks
Dream/Construct and
September Son are on two Kill Rock Stars video compilations. In 2004 she toured and collaborated with
Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, and Chuck Bettis.
Cheslow moved back to Los Angeles in 2005. Since then she has collaborated with Weasel Walter, Liz Allbee, Neil Young (Fat Worm of Error), Christina Carter (Charalambides), and Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers).[SS 2002]
In 2006 and 2007 she presented the Coterie Exchange sound event Sonic Triptych in California and New York. Multiple, random sets of three performers were instructed to represent themselves through sound in order to facilitate participatory, collaborative action.
Videography
-
Dream/Construct on Video Fanzine #2 (NTSC VHS, Kill Rock Stars, 3 October 2000, KRS300) [1]
-
While the City Sleeps and September Son on Sharon Cheslow Video Shorts (DVD, Decomposition, 2004, DE08)
-
September Son on Video Fanzine #3 (NTSC DVD, Kill Rock Stars, 12 July 2005, KRS400) [2]
Discography
Albums and compilation appearances
Chalk Circle
-
Mixed Nuts Don't Crack compilation LP (1982)
-
Time Clock = Hole in Head compilation cassette (1983)
-
We Gots No Station compilation cassette (1984)
-
Reflection LP (2011)
Bloody Mannequin Orchestra
-
Time Clock = Hole in Head compilation cassette (1983)
-
We Gots No Station compilation cassette (1984)
-
Roadmap to Revolution LP (1984)
-
Streetlights in the Dark cassette (1985)
Suture
-
A Wonderful Treat compilation cassette (1991)
Red Eye
-
Static Storm cassette (1998)
Electroletes
-
Plug Me In cassette (1998)
Solo, Coterie Exchange, Collaborations
-
Lullabye from the Sky CD (2002) with Coterie Exchange
-
If the Twenty-First Century Didn't Exist CD compilation (2002) with Sharon Cheslow
-
Uncertainty Rides the Waves CD (2004) with Coterie Exchange, KIT
-
Collaborations CD (2005) with Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, Chuck Bettis, Jerry Lim, Kris Thompson
-
Macro-Eden LP compilation (2006) Sharon Cheslow
-
Less Self is More Self CD compilation (2006) with Trebville Exchange
-
Plants That Kill CD (2007) with Liz Allbee, Weasel Walter
Singles and EPs
-
"Pretty Is" 7-inch EP (1992) with Suture
-
"Special Delivery to My Heart" 7-inch single (1995) with Red Eye
-
"Octane Lies" 7-inch single (1999) with Electroletes
Notes
Further reading
External links
