Joining a Band1

Abstract Typically, a male band starts when a group of friends (usually at the same school, of the same age, and living in the same locality) gradually evolves into a rock group.2 My research suggests that in the past this has not been true of female bands, none of the bands I researched in the 1980s emerging in this way. Amongst the 1995 sample, a handful did but there were often important mediating factors. Two female school student bands developed in the early 1990s in the unlikely setting of an Oxfordshire village, Eynsham, where a single male youth worker played a pivotal role in encouraging girls to set up bands. He paid for and arranged tuition for them from Oxford band members, provided free rehearsal space and access to equipment, and set up prestigious gigs for them in Oxford. Insofar as there has been a change during the 1990s I think this can be related to changing fashions. Since more female school students see playing in a band as ‘cool’ there is a slightly larger pool offemale musicians. However, because bands arise from friendship groups, the tendency among teenagers is to have boy bands and girl bands rather than mixed ones, and this is borne out by my research. Kathryn (Frantic Spiders): ‘It was just doing it with our friends, who were girls.