Sharon Cheslow (born October 5, 1961 in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician, composer, and artist. In 1981, she formed Chalk Circle, Washington, D.C.'s first all-female punk band.[1] She has since become an accomplished artist who works between different mediums, mostly sound-based.[2]
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Born in Los Angeles, Sharon Cheslow grew up in the Jewish area near Wilshire and Fairfax. She listened to rock and roll and was influenced by her parents' love of music, especially protest music.[3] Her mother graduated from UCLA and was pro-civil rights.[3] Her family moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs in 1967 after Cheslow's father got a job with the U.S. Department of Transportation. They first moved to Silver Spring, MD and then to Bethesda, MD where she experienced anti-semitism.[3]
Before getting into post-punk and hardcore punk, she was influenced by the Beatles, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, The Slits, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and jazz.[2][3] Her first band Chalk Circle, as guitarist, grew out of her friendships with Anne Bonafede, Henry Garfield (later Henry Rollins), and members of the Teen Idles and Untouchables around late 1979/early 1980.[4] They shared a love of Bad Brains and California punk. When the D.C. hardcore scene became more macho Chalk Circle didn't fit in so well,[5][6][7] but they got support from art punk bands such as Half Japanese and Velvet Monkeys.[3] Cheslow attended University of Maryland and first learned about feminist theory through film studies classes with Robert Kolker.[3] These experiences led Cheslow to examine and write about the role of women in music.
Cheslow’s first fanzine was If This Goes On, co-published with Colin Sears from 1982-83.[8][9] With Cynthia Connolly and Leslie Clague, she compiled the photographic punk oral history book Banned In DC in 1988. It was one of the first books to document a regional American hardcore scene. Her first issue of Interrobang?! was published in 1989 with a Nation of Ulysses interview.
Cheslow was also in Bloody Mannequin Orchestra in the early 1980s and their recordings came out on WGNS. BMO combined hardcore punk with noise rock, no wave, and improvisation. She was also in a one-off project with Fugazi's Joe Lally.
Cheslow moved to San Francisco in 1990, continued to collaborate with musicians in D.C., and was an influence on Bikini Kill and Bratmobile.[2] In the 1990s she was in indie rock bands Suture (with Dug E. Bird of Beefeater and Kathleen Hanna), Red Eye (with Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses), and The Electrolettes (with Julianna Bright, later of The Quails). Her recordings came out on Dischord Records, Kill Rock Stars, and her label Decomposition. She played guitar and bass and was a singer and songwriter for all three bands, although Hanna was the main vocalist and lyricist for Suture.
In the mid-'90s, Cheslow published her comprehensive list of women in late '70s punk in Interrobang?! and it became available as an online list.[2][5][10] Interrobang?! #2, published in 1994 featured an interview with Cork Marcheschi of Fifty Foot Hose. In 2000 Cheslow edited an anthology on music and transcendence as Interrobang? #4 which featured writings by Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, Nicole Panter, Public Works, Niko Wenner (of Oxbow), and Allison Wolfe.
She is a contributor to Thurston Moore's book Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture.
Cheslow edited and published the book Interrobang?! Anthology on Music and Family in 2008, with contributions by Cynthia Connolly, Pauline Oliveros, Ian MacKaye, Alan Licht, Jean Smith, Anna Oxygen, Bill Berkson, Kevin Mattson, and others.
While studying intermedia arts at Mills College in the music department, she began performing and exhibiting experimental music, sound art, and installations. Her sound collages and explorations are documented on the CD, Lullabye from the Sky, released in 2002 on Decomposition under the name Sharon Cheslow and Coterie Exchange. It featured collaborations with Tim Green, Julianna Bright and members of Deerhoof among others. The project was the audio component from sound installations she had been performing.[2] In 2003 Fan Music: Winds of Change was featured at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. Her videos to the tracks Dream/Construct and September Son are on two Kill Rock Stars video compilations. In 2004 she toured and collaborated with Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, and Chuck Bettis.
Cheslow moved back to Los Angeles in 2005. Since then she has collaborated with Weasel Walter, Christina Carter (Charalambides), and Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers). In L.A. her collaborators have included David Scott Stone, Anna Oxygen, and Steve Kim (Silver Daggers).[11] She performs with guitar, electronics, organ, digital audio, objects, and vocals.
In 2006 and 2007 she presented the Coterie Exchange sound event Sonic Triptych in Oakland, LA, and NY. The NY version was a collaboration with filmmaker/video artist James Schneider (who directed Blue is Beautiful). Sonic Triptych first premiered in San Francisco in 2002 with nine women, including Blevin Blectum and members of Erase Errata.