In this advertisement for the Olivia Records compilation album Lesbian Concentrate artists included in the album are listed. Only two of the songs off the album were done by bands, “Gay and Proud” by the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective and “Kahlua Mama” by Bebe K’Roche, pointing to the preference in the women’s music community towards solo artists.
This proved problematic for the band in that they would receive the same fee as the solo-artists but have to split the money five ways. However, it also set them apart from other artists of the movement and showed women that it was valid to be in a band.
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Below, in excerpts taken from separate recent interviews, Suzanne Shanbaum and Nancy Vogl discuss Olivia’s preference towards solo artists singing love songs and the challenges the band faced because of it.
Suzanne: Well, there weren’t as many bands is the thing, as there were solo performers focusing on love songs. And that’s what the Olivia people got into, pretty much the single performers, and they would do collaborations for a particular project.
But I mean, the collective itself, the Olivia collective itself, I’m sure it had their own dynamics and their own issues, that they had to deal with, but in terms of the artists themselves, it would be mostly one person doing love songs more than protest songs.
Nancy: We were even a little too outside for even feminism, because Meg, Holly, Margie and Cris – women just wanted to fall in love with them. Their affect was middle class and non-offensive/challenging. They were singing love songs for the most part and women could (and would) just kind of fall in love with them. Our music was like, “Get the fuck up and go do something!” so we were even a little outside of our own community, it was interesting. At that time bands did have a different experience than touring solo artists because we would go to a town and the solo would be getting the same fee that we got, but we needed to divide it between five people.