Kathy: What was it like for you?
Cris: It was crazy. I wasn’t adoring them either. I liked them very much. I certainly liked Meg because she liked my music. That’s all I needed to know.
I was being a hippie in Northern California, living with a whole bunch of people in one house, boys and girls. It was free love.
We encountered each other intellectually and emotionally because of the music. Politically it took us awhile to reconcile, but we did.
I was a really good example of how you could dismiss people quite handily because of how they looked or how they sounded.
The birth of Olivia Records
I did an interview, on what was the very first women’s radio show, called “Sophie’s Parlor.” It was radical. They talked about women’s issues and women’s concerts and art and politics. They were like a hub that was just beginning to spin.
We sat around a table and they were asking me questions about sexism in the music industry. I was pretty lucky, I certainly witnessed it, but hadn’t had any really bad experiences. I said, but I certainly understand it.
Some of them were in the Furies. I suggested that they start a women’s recording company. I could see the light bulb go off. It was just an idea I had. I just saw it.
I said, why don’t you go do this, and they did. The next day they started Olivia Records, like that. Had they known how hard it was going to be… they knew nothing. Which was perfect. Sometimes that’s the perfect thing for pioneering adventures. It was the same with The Changer and the Changed. I knew nothing.
