We live in an era when rock's past has been so exhaustively documented, it sometimes feels there's nothing left to discover. So there's something weirdly exciting about uncovering a buried piece of musical history, in this case an online archive of women's liberation music, an attempt to "research and document the feminist bands, musicians and related projects of the 1970s and 80s".

There is a well-worn narrative about women in rock, centring on Patti Smith and Blondie; the women's liberation archive offers a parallel, alternative history. For the most part, these acts existed utterly apart from the mainstream, distributing their own music and facing their own unique challenges. "Nothing ever rhymed with patriarchy," laments one songwriter.

On a purely musical level, some of these bands are fascinating, such as the Velvet Underground-inspired London's Women Liberation Rock Band, formed in 1972. Some of them, it has to be said, sound a little trying, among them Accordions Go Wild!, a band-name as prosaic as it is dispiriting.

And just occasionally, these artists seem thrillingly prescient. The scrappily typed, 1974 manifesto of the Northern Women's Liberation Rock Band sounds remarkably like punk two years before it happened: "Music is controlled by a gang of male, profit-hungry parasites … they take away the power of people to express themselves through music and turn music into a power over them … We don't want to manipulate the audience but to build the common ground between us."

Even if you hate the sound of all of them (your enjoyment may depend on your tolerance of the saxophone, ubiquitous in feminist rock), the site offers a fascinating glimpse of a lost Britain: one where Time Out carried agitprop listings ("Fri: Women's benefit disco for Trico strikers, report from delegation to Albania") and where the Greater London Council not only handed out grants to bands, but started its own record label. You might not want to go back there, but I'm glad someone has.