This month the cd that I give out to my friends focuses on women in rock, but more importantly I wanted to compile a collection of songs from women who transcended the normal preconceptions of women in popular music. These are people who instead of the conventional norm of subservient delicate lady like flowers, you find artists who are confident and more than willing to examine the power of their gender and at the same time confront the opposite gender. These are people who are also not only fearless about their sexuality, but also fearless about redefining that sexuality.

1. Oh Bondage Up Yours, X-Ray Spex: Ari Up as a teenage fashion designer and malcontent, not only breaks many a taboo by singing about bondage, but also manages to satirize Malcolm McClaren's SEX store in one three minute frenzy.

2. Typical Girls, The Slits: The biggest of the all girl punk groups to come out of England, The Slits mixture of amateurism, feminism, and a deep love of reggae manifests itself here.

3. Fairytale in the Supermarket, The Raincoats: More experimental than the previous bands on this sampler, The Raincoats managed to provide striking lyricism without flaunting their sexuality. On this, their first single, the sound is primitive but unconventional and interesting.

4. I Drink, L7: The grunge bands that rose from the Seattle scene paid lip service to feminism and sexual equality, but L7 was really the only band from that scene that was willing to rock as hard as the boys. I remember seeing them open up for The Beastie Boys in the early 90's and just completely blowing them off the stage. Here is a great example of their ability to take macho ideals, in this case the ability to hold ones liquor, and throw it back in the face of their male counterparts.

5. Land:Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances, Patti Smith: The first lady of punk on her first album mixing the dance party classic of Land of a Thousand Dances with a tale of homosexual male rape. I'm sure that this version of Land made a lot of the fans of the original nervous and uncomfortable.

6. Chelsea Girls, Nico: Nico, the model/singer who seduced a who's who of rock and roll, Lou Reed, John Cale, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop please all stand up. Here on her first solo record and backed by various members of the Velvets, she croons a chilling tale of drug abuse and uncaring excess that was day to day living at the Chelsea.

7. Lady Scarface, Lydia Lunch: A founder of no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lunch tries to move away from the abrasive sound of her band into more of a big band style for this tale of seduction and one man stand where the woman is clearly in control.

8. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, Marianne Faithful: Best known as Mick Jagger's girlfriend during the 60's and as a wasted junkie in the 70's, this album, Broken English, allowed Faithful to reemerge as a serious artist who didn't happen to be dating a prominent rockstar. There are more shocking elements of this album than Ballad of Lucy Jordan, but the Kraftwerkian arrangement and the musing about a 37 woman contemplating suicide is brilliant and striking.

9. Sisters O Sisters, Yoko Ono with Le Tigre: Kathleen Hanna, founder of ultra feminist Bikini Kill, with experimental artist Yoko Ono combining into a call for feminist uprising, great stuff.

10. Dig Me Out, Sleater-Kinney: Oregon trio who rock harder than most boys.

11. Hong Kong Garden, Siouxsie and The Banshees: The most striking woman musician to come out of the London punk scene, this great early single hinted at what was to come, as Siouxsie metamorphasized from punk to goth to artist.

12. Fujiyama Mama, Wanda Jackson: 50's rockabilly/country singer, who honestly rocked harder than most of the boys. In this case she sings a song that shows her toughness and readiness to party while at best being insensitive and at worst racist.

13. Folk Song, Bongwater: A brilliant song about Pretty Woman, sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping.

14. Mesmerizing, Liz Phair: From Exile in Guyville, this was a song that not only made clear her desire to be a star while also couching this stardom in being a woman.

15. Fuck The Pain Away, Peaches: Like a Harvard educated Lil Kim, Peaches takes her sexuality to pornographic extremes in order to make people face the perceived discrepancies between the sexes.

16. Cherry Bomb, Runaways: A group of teenage girls rocking like their male counterparts and also proclaiming their sexual prowess in the same manner, was shocking in the 1970s and still is today. Good for them.

17. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Nina Simone: Sounded like a man, sang about racial and sexual injustice, here Simone croons this down on your luck tale in a much more chilling way than Dylan ever could.

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