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BY marni davis
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ON TRIPOD
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The Cigarette and the Damage Done: Bernadette Noll and her sacred smokes.
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SLIM/SLAM RESOURCES
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Call the Virginia SLAM! Hotline to get latest info on protests of Philip Morris's venture into the music industry: (212) 802-7226
National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids: (202) 296-5469
American Medical Women's Association: (703) 838-0500
Women's Legal Defense Fund: (202) 986-2600
Action on Smoking and Health: (202) 659-4310
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RELATED POD
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Women's Issues
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Meet the women, surf the pages, and join the conversation, in the X-Squared Pod.
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Martha Byrne's album on the Virginia Slims record label. It gets better. You can listen to Martha croon
It's A Woman Thing in Real Audio. Don't say we didn't warn you.
(Click on the dualing divas logo to see the whole Virginia Slims ad.)
THIS JUST IN:
May 15, 1997: The Virginia SLAM! has been confirmed for Thursday, June 12th, at Wetlands Preserve in New York City. Leslie Nuchow will be performing, as will Toshi Reagon, Patti Rothberg, Sophie B. Hawkins, and Jill Sobule. The group's press release emphasizes that the short time frame prohibited many interested artists from performing; several, such as Bonnie Raitt and Annie Lennox, are "sending letters of support."
The press release also mentions that the SLAM! has taken on yet another
producer: Michael Martin, the Executive Director of Concerts for the
Environment. From a do-gooder perspective, Martin is a major player — he's
organized Earth Day stadium shows for the past six years, and has worked with
an impressive list of bands on behalf of Rock the Vote and numerous
environmental causes. So even though the New York SLAM! failed to turn into
the huge event they'd hoped for, Martin's presence indicates that this saga
is very possibly not over.
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Leslie Nuchow has been running up and down the block for the last hour, confronting passers-by and waving bright yellow flyers in their faces. On Bleecker Street — the heart of Greenwich Village, and the cheesiest section of town south of Times Square — people don't tend to stop for ranting strangers. But her rant ("the tobacco industry is using women musicians to sell cigarettes!") is provocative enough to make people take a flyer, and maybe stop to sign a petition.
Nuchow was one of the women invited by Woman Thing Music (as in "it's a woman thing," the new Virginia Slims advertising slogan) to take part in their "Dueling Diva" concert series. After a good deal of soul-searching, she said no. And then she began to protest.
On this wet and unseasonably cold April night, she stands outside The Bitter End — a club smack in the middle of the block — with ten or so protesters, holding signs ("VIRGINIA SLIMS KILLS WOMEN" and "IT'S HARD TO SING IF YOU CAN'T BREATHE") and heckling people going in and out. Inside, local all-girl band Antigone Rising is playing in front of a Woman Thing/Virginia Slims banner, surrounded by Woman Thing paraphernalia: matchbooks, T-shirts, and an audio/video listening station. A crew of Philip Morris spokespeople eyes the scene out front. They are obviously not pleased.
But they shouldn't be surprised. When cigarette company Philip Morris announced that it was founding Woman Thing Music, a record label to promote their Virginia Slims brand, they might have expected to be called on the altruism of their claim to provide "a forum for female artists to launch their singing careers." Such disingenuousness on their part is nothing new; Virginia Slims' advertising and promotion have long co-opted feminist themes, much to the dismay of women's movement activists.
Woman Thing isn't just signing young female artists to their roster; the label is funding their recordings and providing tour support. Advertising and promotion are heavy, too, although heavily tied in to the parent company's other product: CDs from the Woman Thing label will only be available where cigarettes are sold. Buy two packs of Virginia Slims, get a free CD.
It's a double threat. Not only is Philip Morris using chick-rock to target young women as potential new smokers — and attempting to subvert the FDA's efforts to limit cigarette advertising directed at the underaged — but they're using young women artists to do it. Woman Thing offers a level of exposure and financial backing that's hard to turn down, especially for struggling musicians in a glutted market. It's the sort of opportunity that bands dream of — if they have no compunction about the fact that their music will be used to sell cigarettes. (Thus far, there's only been one signing: Martha Byrne, a.k.a. Lily on "As the World Turns." Look in the left column for a Real Audio clip of "It's a Woman Thing.")
The Woman Thing series of "Dueling Diva" contests throughout the country showcases female musicians who vie to open up for Byrne. Nuchow told a friend about refusing the Woman Thing offer, this friend told someone at the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, and soon Nuchow was speaking at a convention in Washington D.C. The New York Daily News wrote up the story, and appearances on Good Morning America and MTV followed. Then the record labels — legitimate majors — started calling.
Never has the old saw "doing well by doing good" been more appropriate.
Nuchow's moral quandary has evolved into the best thing to have happened to her career, but the place she's at now — where activism meets opportunism — is fraught with potential pitfalls. Is she setting herself up as representative of a progressive alternative to corporate sponsorship, and if so, how far is she willing to go with it? When the inevitable "smart career move" comes along, what if it clashes with the "purity of the cause"? There are certainly points at which the two are mutually exclusive.
As far as Nuchow is concerned, this is a non-issue. Her stated goal is simply to tell tobacco companies that they're not welcome in the music industry, and to prove by example that it's possible to succeed without compromising your beliefs. "It wasn't enough just to say no to them," Nuchow recalls. "I wanted to say yes to something better." To that end, she has commandeered a series of New York City protests against Woman Thing (at clubs where Dueling Divas contests are being held) and she's working to create a space for young women musicians to play and support themselves without taking morally sketchy funding. She's also attempting to put on a show called the Virginia SLAM!, an anti-tobacco industry response to Woman Thing's presence in New York, and she's looking for a way to parlay the event into a CD, or even a label of its own.
As great an idea as the SLAM! is, however, its potential impact at this point is iffy, and has been since the committee ended the relationship with Virginia Giordano, the concert promoter they originally hired. When they first started working with Giordano, it seemed a perfect match; she is one of New York's last independent promoters, and has long been entrenched in the women's music scene. (Ani Difranco and Sweet Honey in the Rock are among her regular clients.)
She's also a former employer of Nuchow's, and a fan of both her music and her cause. "I loved the issue," says Giordano. "I thought the women [on the SLAM! committee] were great, so I got involved." After sketching out a letter of agreement guaranteeing Giordano a compensatory fee — which irked the committee, according to Maura Spery, the SLAM!'s budget director, since they were spending thousands of dollars out of their own pockets — she started contacting talent agents about finding a nationally-known headline act.
Three weeks into her work for the SLAM!, which included securing a $25,000 contribution from the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids and reserving a venue for the show, the relationship between Giordano and the SLAM! committee began to deteriorate. The reason depends on who you ask. According to Giordano, the committee started waffling on the terms of the agreement, then inexplicably turned the matter over to their lawyer. Fearing that a deal which had been signed three weeks earlier now offered her no protection, she put together a more formal contract and insisted that it be signed by the end of the week.
Spery tells a different story. "We'd signed a letter of intent regarding payment, but left a few things open. Then one evening we got to her office for a meeting, and she'd changed the document, and there was all this language that we hadn't discussed or agreed to." Spery recalls that Giordano "went over the edge, totally irrational" when the committee refused to sign it on the spot.
This was on Wednesday, March 26th. The following Friday at noon, the committee called to tell her that they were coming right over to her office to sign the agreement. Three hours later, they called back; they had changed their minds, and she was, essentially, fired. "So I called the Center," Giordano says, "because one of the agreements I'd made [with them] was that if the concert didn't happen, the money would be returned. If I wasn't on the project, how would I guarantee that?" The Center for Tobacco-Free Kids stopped the check.
Relations between the parties have since gotten uglier; the committee is now refusing to pay Giordano a fee, so she's threatening to sue them, and they're threatening countersuit. Meanwhile, the SLAM! committee has found a new promoter — Nuchow's booking agent, who has organized several benefit concerts over the past few years — and they're planning the SLAM! for mid-June, at either Wetlands (a politically progressive mid-size rock club in Tribeca) or Town Hall (a formal concert venue three times the size of Wetlands). But they have yet to find a headliner, and are thus stuck in a bind: They won't be able to nail down a venue or a date until they know who's playing the show, but it's unlikely they'll find a nationally touring musician to agree to do the SLAM! until both date and venue are solidified.
As June rolls closer and little is confirmed, it seems likely that the show will end up happening in the smaller room, featuring only local, unsigned acts. A fun and empowering evening, to be sure, but lacking the impact it could have had. Nuchow and Spery remain optimistic, however: A recent meeting with several socially-conscious companies like Ben & Jerry's and the Calvert Group reassured them that they'd done the right thing in breaking with Giordano. And they continue to hold out hope that their new allies will help bring some big names to the SLAM! (This just in: The Virginia SLAM! has confirmed venue, date, and artists, as of May 15, 1997. Update at left.)
It's tempting to point to the current status of the SLAM! as indicative of a level of disorganization and internecine factiousness on the American left: Progressives whose control issues and inability to agree on a grand plan leads them to shoot themselves in the collective foot. With an enormous amount of luck and perseverance, the SLAM! will happen as Nuchow and Spery dreamed it. If so, more power to them, and certainly to Nuchow for having the courage to battle the tobacco industry. But as it stands, the SLAM! committee — for all its good intentions — is the U.S. Air Force to Philip Morris' King Kong. He will swat away their puny airplanes with a flick of his wrist, and continue to stomp all over New York City as he pleases. But you can't say they didn't try.
Marni Davis is a graduate student at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her work has appeared in The New York Press, Bust, and Tripod's Tools for Life magazine.
© 1997 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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