It has taken the better part of a century for the predominately male-run music industry to recognize the potential of the female market. Rhino Records acted on that potential four years ago when it formed the Women's Product Development Team, a task force of about twenty women who help develop and market products geared toward women. The biggest project produced from that conglomerate is the recent R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Century of Women in Music, an overwhelming five-CD box set that, as its name implies, is an attempt to chronicle the entire century of women's accomplishments in music.

The concept for the three-years-in-the-making project actually preceded the recent salute-to-women frenzy in the music media, says Julie D'Angelo, who led the Women's Product Development Team for the project. She emphasizes that this box set was underway before VH1 presented its 100 Greatest Women in Rock special and Rolling Stone dedicated an entire issue to women in rock.

Even before those projects, the idea of the "year of the women" was prevalent among music journalists after the likes of Alanis Morissette and Jewel began to dominate the airwaves. "It just seemed like a silly phrase because women had been making great music enjoyed by both sexes for many years. So we wanted to show all the hard work that had come before Morissette had become a best seller. It shows people who paved the way."

Part of the inspiration for R-E-S-P-E-C-T stemmed from a Seventies-era work of art that the development team saw during a showing in Los Angeles in 1996 -- Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party. Chicago is quoted as saying that the artwork is a sort of reinterpretation of the Last Supper "from the point of view of those who've done the cooking throughout history." The piece of art, a symbolic history of women in Western civilization, is in the form of a triangular table arranged with thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating a goddess, historic person or important woman.

Artwork is a key feature of this box set, fashioned as a burgundy, velvet journal. Inside are eight postcards featuring illustrations by Christine Haberstock, who is also responsible for the cover's painting. One of the original ideas, according to D'Angelo, was to design the set to look like a makeup compact, but the team nixed the idea, thinking that it might turn off men and some women.

The 114-song box set spans the years 1909 to 1998, covering nearly every genre of popular music, starting with Ada Jones' "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," and ending with Liz Phair's single "Polyester Bride." Sprinkled throughout the set are soundbites by such influential figures as Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright and Anita Hill.

"I think it was especially nice to have a whole span of the era, the kind of music or people who were not in our awareness in our generations," says Yoko Ono, who is represented on the box set with one of her most accessible tracks, "Walking on Thin Ice." "It's nice to give some kind of credence to those people, those artists.

"I would like to think that women of the next generation would be inspired by us and encouraged by us but also feel that they are expressing themselves," Ono adds. "There's a danger that we've become such milestones or something that we've become classic father figures intimidating the next generation or something. I don't think it should be like that. I would like to think that I'm part of the collective reality. The collective reality of women power."

There are some glaring omissions from the set, such as Madonna, Courtney Love, and Bjork. The liner notes explain that some of these were due to licensing snafus, while other artists, like Joni Mitchell, refused to be packaged in a women-only collection. Instead, the names of those gone missing line the inside front and back cover of the CD booklet, acknowledging the fact that not all those who deserved a slot on here could be included. Anyone looking hard enough will even find some names missing from that tireless list, like Ann Peebles, Shirley Horn and Cassandra Wilson. Jazz and world music in particular are basically non-existent on here, which has irked some music critics.

"I knew a few years ago that now I'd be asking the question, 'Why isn't so and so on here?' for years to come," says D'Angelo. "Basically, the team brainstormed all the possibilities of who should be part of a set like this. That was a huge multi-paged list. Then Holly George-Warren was brought on from Rolling Stone Press to do further research and really get a solid list together, focusing on one-hundred years." The project at that time was a four-CD set, but it was pushed to five to accommodate more artists, without going too far as to make the set unaffordable. (It retails for $69.98.)

Though the CDs representing the past couple decades weigh heavily on pop music, the breadth of the package is still impressive. For the most part, these are women whose achievements have paved the way for today's preponderance of female artists on the airwaves. "Until very recently you didn't hear any songs by women back-to-back on the radio," D'Angelo says. "Until Lilith you didn't see two women on the same bill for live performances. I think there's definitely still a struggle going on. You can count the number of women who run record companies or run major music companies. I think there's still a lot of work to be done there."

"The 'women in rock' concept will be forgotten very soon I think," Ono says. "This is probably the last statement we have to make as a race of women. It's a nice conclusion to the millennium, because this is something that happened in this century -- women becoming rockers and having a difficult time. It's like putting a period to that."

MARLENE GOLDMAN
(December 9, 1999)