The Feminine Complex were an all-female American garage rock

Garage rock

Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name...

 band in the 1960s. The band formed while the girls were attending Maplewood High School in Nashville, Tennessee. They released only one album, Livin' Love, in 1969. The album has been reissued twice and has since developed a minor cult following

Cult following

A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

.

The group's career

The Feminine Complex consisted of Mindy Dalton on guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 and vocals, Judi Griffith on tambourine

Tambourine

The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....

 and vocals, Lana Napier on drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, Pame Stephens on keyboards

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

 and Jean Williams on bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

. Napier and Williams decided to form an all-female band in the fall of 1966, eventually asking Dalton and Griffith to join. All four were members of the Maplewood High School girl's basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 team, giving themselves the name of The Pivots, which was also their team's name. By the summer of 1967 they added Stephens, a friend of Williams', and changed their name to The Feminine Complex. According to Napier,

"Everybody was just throwing out stuff...And somebody threw out a name, and I don't remember which one of the girls, I think it was Mindy, said, 'No, we need something feminine'--and I just added 'Complex' to it. We weren't simple!"

They played small local gigs in Nashville

Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

 and surrounding areas from 1967-68. Dee Kilpatrick of Athena Records signed the group in 1968, and they recorded their debut, Livin' Love. They broke up when school began, in fall of that year. Livin' Love was released in 1969.

Livin' Love

Two singles released from the album, "I've Been Workin' on You" and "Hide & Seek", were Top 40 hits in Nashville; a third, "I Won't Run", charted in Birmingham

Birmingham, Alabama

Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...

. Jonathan Marx, who researched and wrote about the band for the 1996 CD

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 reissue

Reissue

A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....

 of the album on Teenbeat Records

TeenBeat Records

Teen Beat is an independent record label, originally based in Arlington, VA, now based in Cambridge, MA. It was founded by Mark Robinson in 1984 at Wakefield High School along with Phil Krauth , Andrew Beaujon , Tim Moran , and Ian Zack .The label was originally set up like a lending library...

, recounts:

"Lee Hazen, the engineer who recorded the band...played me the album--which, he was quick to tell me, was recorded with session musicians. And it sounded like it too: A couple of songs brimmed with feedback and psyched-out guitar solo

Guitar solo

In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...

s, while others were punched up with a Memphis-style horn section. Then Lee remembered, 'Yeah, I recorded some demos

Demo (music)

A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 with just the band too,' and a short rummage through his vast library of reel-to-reel tapes turned up the original recordings."

These demos were included on the 1996 Teenbeat reissue, and a subsequent 2004 reissue by Rev-Ola Records

Rev-Ola Records

Rev-Ola Records is a UK record label formed in 1988 that specializes in reissues, as well as select new releases. The label is headed by Joe Foster, a former child actor and musician/producer...

. A separate CD of demos

Demo (music)

A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 and live recordings, To Be in Love, was released by Teenbeat in 1997.
Jason Ankeny of Allmusic claims there are rumors the band didn't actually exist, so both albums were a product of "latter-day pranksters."

Singles

• "I've Been Working on You" / "Six O'clock in the Morning" (Athena 5003) 1968
• "I Won't Run" / "Forgetting" (Athena 5006) 1969
• "Are You Lonesome Like Me" / "Run That Through Your Mind" (Athena 5008) 1969
• "Hide & Seek" / "Six O'clock in the Morning (Demo)" (Wurlitzer Jukebox WJ14) 1996