riot grrrl

1,000 Years

mandy — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Corin Tucker has been actively involved in music since the early 1990s when, as a teenager, she launched the riot grrrl band Heavens to Betsy. Around the same time, Carrie Brownstein was heading up queercore outfit Excuse 17. Eventually the two joined forces to form Sleater-Kinney in 1994.

Drummer Janet Weiss (Quasi) jumped on board with the 1997 album Dig Me Out. During their career, Sleater-Kinney released seven albums to ever-increasing critical acclaim—they were named “America’s best rock band in 2001 by “Time” Magazine—before it all came to a screeching halt with their declaration of an “indefinite hiatus” in 2006. I was one of the many fortunate souls to attend one of their last two concerts at McMenamin’s Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR that August; it was easily the best show of my life.

Since then, we die-hard Sleater-Kinney fans have gobbled up whatever scraps these three have tossed our way. Weiss continues to work with Quasi, and has also been behind the drum kit of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks. Brownstein has been all over the place. She wrote the NPR music blog Monitor Mix and joined up with Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) to form the comedy duo Thunder.Ant; the two will star in the IFC original series Portlandia, starting this month. She and Weiss have also hooked up with Mary Timony (Helium) and Rebecca Cole (The Minders) to form the band Wild Flag.

And Corin Tucker? In the midst of Sleater-Kinney, she married filmmaker Lance Bangs and had her first child. Post-band-breakup, she had a second child, then started working on new songs. This led to the formation of The Corin Tucker Band and the release of 1,000 Years on Kill Rock Stars, one of her alma mater labels. Tucker claims that 1,000 Years is a “middle-aged mom record.” In my opinion, it both isn’t and is.

It’s not an overt “mother album,” replete with songs about the transformative power of motherhood. There are hints at that, with lyrics on the title track like “who is that zombie/that is wearing Mama’s clothes?” Still, this is musical territory that has already been well-covered by other artists (including Sleater-Kinney, with album tracks and B-sides from 2002’s One Beat). Conversely, this is a “mom record,” insofar as it reflects the stereotypically more mellow—or at least more exhausted—stance of the middle-aged working mother.

Tucker is notorious for her astounding voice, known in operatic terms as a “spinto soprano” or a “dramatic soprano.” It was put to ferocious use in Sleater-Kinney, a band whose music addressed such topics as domestic violence, music industry sexism, and American politics. That vocal power rears its head only once on 1,000 Years, smack-dab in the middle of the album with the single “Doubt.” When Tucker belts out the line “Break up with the boogie/break up with the beat/but I just can't forget what it means to me/I tried, I tried/but I couldn't leave,” we hear that passionate devotion to her craft, and for a split second, share in what feels like her triumphant return.

Prior to and after that moment, however, a kinder gentler Tucker prevails. Overall, her voice could be characterized as a sweetly tamed keening. These songs exemplify lush, folksy, indie rock, full of handclaps and woodblocks, sleigh bells and string sections, with just a hint of psychedelia in the guitars. Personal favorites include “Half A World Away,” with a rhythm that sounds like Cut-era Slits, mid-career Raincoats, or The English Beat; and “Pulling Pieces,” perhaps the most telling track on the album aside from “Doubt.” There’s a bittersweetness to “Pulling Pieces,” especially with lyrics like “Tell me why did you close the door?/I can’t get in to where I’m supposed to go/I’m just a shadow of what I used to be.” I really wish I didn’t agree.

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, January 10th 2011

1,000 Years

alicia — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By The Corin Tucker Band

Kill Rock Stars

It is kind of strange listening to Corin Tucker with a bass player, and without the backing of Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss in riot grrrl band Sleater-Kinney. Admittedly, at first I found myself missing Brownstein’s guitar chops, and the rhythmic awesomeness of Weiss. This isn’t to say that Tucker is a guitar slouch, by any means, just that Brownstein is one of the best living guitarists out there, and Weiss delivers an amazing syncopated punch that other drummers just can’t match.

And so perhaps it is a bit unfair to compare 1,000 Years with the previous work of Corin Tucker with Sleater-Kinney. The truth is, though, that S-K defined my adolescence. For me, at least, Tucker will always be linked to my seventeen-year old self. As an example, is there any Sopranos fan out there who was able to watch Where the Wild Things Are without conjuring images of Tony driving down the New Jersey Turnpike? But, the fact is that Tucker is plenty talented without the backing of her former mates. Frankly, with the strength of her new tracks and musical cohorts, I (almost) don’t even miss Brownstien and Weiss.

There have already been many reviews of this album, talking about the relative restraint of Tucker’s voice as compared with her time in S-K. It’s true the operatic bellow is turned down. But damn if she still doesn’t have a fantastic set of pipes and a range that is a bit easier to appreciate without the characteristic aggressive ululations of her S-K days. I should mention that while she is a bit more restrained in places, (such as on “Dragon and “Miles Away” where there are way more violins and acoustic guitars than ever appeared on any S-K album) she nonetheless has moments of uptempo howl on tracks like “Doubt” and “Pulling Pieces” where she sounds quite a bit like circa-1997 Corin Tucker.

I suppose what defines her new band is the focus, which is squarely on Tucker. S-K had Tucker, of course, but there was also the oomph of Weiss’ drumming prowess, along with the meticulous guitar mastery and vocals of Brownstein to make each album feel like a grand exercise in teamwork. 1,000 Years feels more like The Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape.

There is absolutely no question that this album is Corin Tucker’s, just like there was no doubt that Dave Grohl was the one responsible on his album. Tucker’s band does an amazing job of emphasizing Tucker’s vocal talents. “It’s Always Summer” and “Handed Love,” for instance, contain fairly little in terms of instrumentation, which isn’t terribly necessary anyway with the power of Tucker’s voice.

I am a huge Sleater-Kinney fan, but I have already grown to accept that they are no longer together. I would be upset if Corin Tucker was trying to recreate S-K in her new band. But thankfully, that is clearly not the case on 1,000 Years, but I actually wish she pushed herself a little bit more outside of the S-K comfort zone and into some more daring territory. Sure, she’s far more restrained here than on The Woods, but the giant shadow of her former band still looms.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, January 9th 2011

Riot Grrrl: Traces of a Movement (11/06/2010)

mandy — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

MoMA PS1

Queens, New York

Printed Matter’s annual New York Art Book Fair is one of my favorite events of the year. Featuring many vendors that utilize do-it-yourself modes of production and aesthetics, it is an event that appeals to my artistic practices, and often my political ones as well. A conference accompanies the book fair itself, and among this year’s sessions was the panel "Riot Grrrl: Traces of a Movement."

The panel featured Sara Marcus, author of the latest and seemingly most complete riot grrrl history, Girls To the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution; Lisa Darms, Senior Archivist of the Fales Library and founder of their Riot Grrrl Collection; Molly Neuman, drummer of riot grrrl band Bratmobile, music-biz-aficionado, and founder of Simple Social Kitchen; and Jenna Freedman, Coordinator of Reference Services at Barnard Library and founder of the Barnard Zine Collection. Assistant Curator for MoMA’s Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, Gretchen Wagner, moderated the panel.

Concurrent with the trend of nineties nostalgia, 2010 has been a year of bringing riot grrrl back, so the conference’s nod to the subject seemed appropriate. To my excitement, "Riot Grrrl: Traces of a Movement" addressed the pertinent issue of historicizing and archiving the movement, rather than simply retelling the riot grrrl story or discussing its ephemera.

Neuman provided a fresh perspective, and the audience came to understand riot grrrl as being on a continuum of punk, music, politics, and community that culminated in zines, bands, and political organizing. Reflecting on how the founding participants of riot grrrl decided to write their own zines and play in their own bands, Neuman remarked, “I don’t know why we thought we could do it.” This sentiment is perhaps the most salient and exciting for me, and her words pleasantly reminded me of feminist artist Mary Kelly’s “Seemed Right”: “seemed right… just made sense… like a lightning bolt!”

Darms provided a much-needed history for riot grrrl’s aesthetic, and compared it to that of late queer artist and activist David Wojnarowicz, as well as other relics like fliers from Richard Hell shows and issues of Punk magazine. Darms named the establishment of the Riot Grrrl collection “just one of the ways to preserve and disseminate riot grrrl history and help place it in the continuum of history and not just popular culture.” As a women’s historian and amateur archivist (whose research focus is on punk cultural production and identity), this historical emphasis speaks to me as music and musical sub/cultures seem to finally be getting their due.

Having started the research for Girls To the Front in 2005, Marcus didn't have the “luxury” of accessing riot grrrl collections for the duration of her project, and she expressed concern about the harm that publicizing these collections could do; namely, robbing the zines of their context. Darms echoed this, emphasizing that digitizing zine collections could further this phenomenon by making it possible to extricate parts of a zine from the whole.

Ending on a high note, Freedman displayed slides of original riot grrrl zines in juxtaposition with contemporary zines that have been influenced by that aesthetic. Importantly, Barnard's collection has a focus on zines by women of color. As riot grrrl (and punk more generally) has often been critiqued for its White exclusivity, this emphasis on women of color zinesters is crucial. Showing that the DIY feminist continuum doesn’t end with riot grrrl gives an impetus to discover what’s happening in grassroots feminisms today.

After a lively question and answer session, I left with a better understanding of riot grrrl and the imperative of documenting grassroots feminist work. I walked out reminded that queer and feminist cultural production is completely essential to our history as feminists, and we must continue to be ardent documentarians who advocate for and attest to this fact.

Photo by Dragana Drobnjak

Written by: Kate Wadkins, November 21st 2010

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

By Sara Marcus

Harper Perennial

First, an admission: like several feminist friends in my age group, riot grrrl didn’t make a profound impact of me until college. I was ten in 1993, the year Sara Marcus claims as pivotal for the movement in her book Girls to the Front. I was moving away from Mariah Carey and getting into the Pet Shop Boys. Riot grrrl was first on my radar through mainstream distortion in the pages of Spin and in the Spice Girls’ defanged “girl power” message. Marcus’s book is a great reintroduction and a valuable entry point for folks who have only a cursory knowledge of riot grrrl.

I especially appreciate that, despite the book’s monolithic title, Marcus incorporates the shared experiences of many girl participants. Riot grrrl tends to be defined by its adult-aged bands, with Bikini Kill and Bratmobile representing the movement. But many teenage girls were inspired by these bands. Some formed ‘zines and bands of their own, like Girl Friend founder Christina Woolner and Heavens to Betsy’s Tracy Sawyer and Corin Tucker. Not all of their contributions were preserved or recorded, so the book’s intervention is all the more important.

Some of these girls also came from working class or single-parent households or did not attend college. Furthermore, while much is made of the movement’s Pacific Northwest origins and identification with liberal arts colleges like Evergreen, Marcus is quick to refute essentializing class assumptions. Riot grrrl’s class heterogeneity becomes more pronounced when Bikini Kill and Bratmobile relocate in Washington D.C. and contend with the hardcore scene, which was primarily peopled by diplomats’ children.

Marcus challenges the notion that riot grrrl was sustained exclusively by white, middle-class, college-educated women. She also points out the movement’s aspirations toward queer inclusiveness were complicated by the efforts of predominantly straight or bi-curious cisgender females. Previous interpretations of riot grrrl represent it as a celebration of white girls challenging gender politics in a vacuum. Marcus points out how some girls created ‘zines, formed organizations, chaired panels, and created conferences challenging feminism’s inherent white privilege, racism, heteronormativity, and class politics, often causing contention and defensiveness from within.

Thus, I also liked reading that riot grrrl was an imperfect, discursive movement comprised of many conflicting opinions, belief systems, and identities. Despite third wave feminism’s investment in the fragmented female self, so often riot grrrl is depicted as a halcyon period for a then-nascent third wave. While it’s sad to read about in-fighting and rivalries, it’s refreshing to read differing opinions on philosophies and movement imperatives. As someone who’s participated in collective and politically-minded non-profit organizations, it seems a more honest representation.

Furthermore, the presence of male oppression from within informs riot grrrl in interesting ways. Riot grrrl formed in response to the right wing’s attack on feminism’s political gains as well as the cultural silencing of incest, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, poor body image, and low self-esteem. It also opposed punk and hardcore’s exclusionary, homophobic, and misogynistic tendencies, best symbolized by the mosh pit, and implemented “girls in front” or “girls only” policies at shows. So it was really interesting to read about how bands like Fugazi aligned with riot grrrl, but were less willing to cede control over their audience.

In 1992, Fugazi and Bikini Kill played a Supreme Court protest. Frontman Ian MacKaye bristled at the idea of sharing the bill out of concern that the event would be misunderstood as a concert. He was also unable to reign in the aggressive inclinations of his predominantly white male fan base, and blamed the women in the audience who defended their space in the pit.

Marcus does something valuable with Girls to the Front. In representing riot grrrl’s imperfections and contradictions, as well as its relevance, she argues at once for its historical significance while challenging how we understand it. Make sure to check it out. Maybe it’ll convince you form a band with your best girlfriend and kick off a new revolution.

Cross posted from Feminist Music Geek

Written by: Alyx Vesey, September 27th 2010

Radical Act

mandy — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Tex Clark

Million Movies a Minute

Tex Clark made the documentary Radical Act in 1995. It was originally intended as a snapshot of the rise of cisgender female involvement in indie rock following riot grrrl's and queercore's impact, particularly amongst lesbians and feminist women. After over a decade, Million Movies a Minute is officially releasing it this month.

Dedicated to slain Gits' front woman Mia Zapata and opening with Tribe 8's "Manipulate," which mocks at the Utopian aphorisms of 70s-era lesbian separatist women's music, Radical Act serves as a time capsule for the role women played in underground music during the mid-90s. Despite Million Movies founder Erin Donovan's claim that the documentary captures how much has changed within the fifteen-year interval, it's also a timely meditation on how female musicians' relationships to the recording industry are informed by feminist politics. In under forty-five minutes, Radical Act succinctly dialogues varying experiences and opinions of musicians like Gretchen Phillips, Vicky Starr, Kay Turner, Kim Colletta, Toshi Reagon (the lone woman of color featured), and Meg Hentges across topics like initial motivations, band formation, gender performance, sexual politics, sexist assumptions about female musicians, and the degrees to which women's art can make a cultural impact.

Upon first viewing, the documentary suffers a few obvious handicaps. For one, music consumption changed considerably in the wake of digital intervention and the collapse of the recording industry. Also, independent music already fraternized with major labels at this point, making above- and below-ground distinctions almost impossible to parse in the coming decade. In terms of exposition, Clark strings together a series of talking head segments that sacrifice explication. As a result, the documentary makes no effort to contextualize the subjects' contributions to their respective scenes or their larger cultural significance. While I imagine this was either the result of budgetary limitations or an attempt against meddling with subjects' words, it proves to be a barrier. Furthermore, apart from Bikini Kill co-founder Kathleen Hanna and Rock She Wrote co-editor Evelyn McDonnell, a number of profiled women only achieved minor commercial success or never rose above cultural obscurity, potentially alienating viewers who never listened to Sincola, Vitapup, Girls in the Nose, or God Is My Co-Pilot.

With a supposed '90s revival in full swing, my hope is that folks believe much of these artists' oeuvre merit discovery or historical revision. This is due, in part, because one interviewee is Sincola drummer Terri Lord, whose professional contributions to Austin's Girls Rock Camp—a branch of the nonprofit organization for which I volunteer—cannot be overstated. Past this, many of the points raised continue to hold relevance.

As riot grrrl's revolutionary aspirations still charge the air, a lot of big ideas are bandied about here. Reagon asserts that the music industry is a capitalist business, and thus dependent on the interrelated nature of racism and patriarchy, which Starr believes could allay a concerted effort from women to form record labels. Hanna discusses her attempts to blur pleasure and politics in an effort to make activism fun. Starr and Phillips debate the impact of queer visibility amongst pop stars like kd lang and Melissa Etheridge, but also advocate personal value in staying underground. I also appreciate the candid comments about what or who drew them to rock music, as well as their defiance toward expectations of what instruments they should play (I don't play bass!), their proficiency as musicians, and the performance styles they adopt.

Radical Act proves itself a purposeful documentary that successfully bridged a cross-section of female artists who speak of their times. I hope with time it unfolds as a dialogue current artists could join in on at any point. I can only imagine what Beth Ditto could contribute to this conversation.

Written by: Alyx Vesey, September 17th 2010

Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture and Social Crisis

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Ryan Moore

New York University Press

Punk, hardcore, and alternative rock music scenes have been for years the almost exclusive realm of teenagers and youth in their twenties. Not only have they been areas of creative expression, but such subcultures have given young people a place to challenge beauty standards, political boundaries, and cultural norms.

In Sells Like Teen Spirit, author Ryan Moore documents the music scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as their evolutions today. From metal to Riot Grrrl, Moore talks about the players and the stories that made youth music cultures what they were during these times. Moore also delves into the sociopolitical moment to relate how the dominant cultural debates directly and indirectly shaped youth music cultures. Generations-old struggles, such as sexism, also played prominently in many subcultures.

Most notable in this book, Moore explores an interesting subtext in youth music cultures that other writers in the midst of feminist research and study on race further explore. Namely, a wave of "post" approaches ("post-racial," "post-feminist") take a role in youth culture that, in spite of pretensions to the contrary, only replicates and supports traditional roles and power in white, patriarchal American society. For instance, the alternative fashion model Suicide Girls trend of a few years ago presents women from youth subcultures (e.g., punk and goth) as different, empowered female pin-ups. Such images intended to impart a view of women as self-assured, independent, sexually liberated creatures; however, the essential conversation of this image—women fitting into a male perception of beauty presented primarily as objects for male consumption—remains intact.

Men, in virtually all alternative youth music cultures, assume a position that fundamentally affirms the patriarchal position: strong, individualistic characters navigating a world in which white male hegemony is crumbling amid globalization. Moore points out the revival of swing, ska and rockabilly imagery harkens back to times in which men were the makers of their fortunes whereas today corporate power and economic uncertainty dimmed hopes and dreams of millions.

Yet many outgrowths of youth music subcultures offered refreshing challenges to the worlds in which young people grew up. Bands like Bikini Kill and the women’s zine scene are explored in Sells Like Teen Spirit, to give another perspective of young people committed to challenging power, as others before them, through their talents and passion.

Though not as expansive as similarly themed books like There’s A Riot Going On or Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, for those interested in intersections of youth culture, music, and politics, Sells Like Teen Spirit is a good text to understand or reminisce about music subcultures that were special, though could not overcome the conundrum that stymied subcultures before them: how to use the youth music subculture make substantive political, cultural, and social change.

Written by: Ernesto Aguilar, August 15th 2010

Le Tigre: On Tour

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Directed by Kerthy Fix

“What’s the status of Le Tigre?” an eager—albeit slightly angst-ridden—fan asks Kathleen Hanna during the Q&A session after the screening of Le Tigre: On Tour. I, too, had been wondering the same question—because this band, who has proven so formative to women young and old everywhere, seems to exist only in our collective lesbo-feminist consciousness at the moment. For myself, in particular, I was introduced to Le Tigre’s music a year before they performed their final show in NYC, on 18 September 2005, so I never had the opportunity to witness their awesomeness in concert. Their existence to me, in other words, was always to me like a memory, an extant pastness that is real but not actual in that particular moment. I think their existence, for me, is kind of like how people understand Jesus or Santa Claus: he’s touched their hearts, and therefore he’s real… at least they think he’s real, but they’ve never actually seen him.

Which is why this documentary is so utterly amazing: the film, comprised of compiled concert and backstage footage from their final tour for the album This Island in 2004, and including more recent interviews with the trio—Johanna Fateman and JD Samson, in addition to Kathleen Hanna—is essential to the band’s continued existence in our collective lesbo-feminist consciousness. Seeing footage of live performances made me dance in my seat, and it brought tears to my eyes, particularly during the scene in which Hanna turns to Samson and gives her an acknowledging look—the “this is it” moment—of it being the last performance (“Deceptacon”) of their final show.

Director Kerthy Fix did a brilliant job creating this documentary in a way that proves attractive to all audiences: her attention to the trio of characters, and their feminist, queer ethics that embody the desire that each person be her “own lost hero,” as Hanna professes, speaks to everyone who wants to cultivate themselves as strong, powerful, and unique individuals. The documentary-as-archive is so crucial not only to preserving the band’s music, but also Le Tigre as a seminal part of the riot grrl movement, which has been built by the enterprising musical endeavors of the band collectively and separately, as each has her own individual pursuits.

Here we can think, of course, of Kathleen Hanna’s previous band, Bikini Kill, as the foundational component of this movement. And, as we Bikini Kill fans know so well, there is a scarcity of Bikini Kill footage out there—they existed before the explosion of the Interwebs, of the social media sites and blogs—so having this documentary is a welcomed addition to the steadily growing archive of the feminist and riot grrl movements.

Kudos to Fix for providing feminists young and old with this filmic insight into the iconic band—from Hanna’s deadpan explication of dressing room snack items (i.e., a bowl of fruit fit for the pope) to Fateman’s detailed vitamin regimen and Samson’s coming to terms with her Casanova status—and their raw lyrics and hot dance moves (“West Side Story meets Jazzercise,” to be precise).

Le Tigre: On Tour does not yet have a distributor; indeed, it’s still in the processing stages, pre-color correx and sound fix. Hopefully, by the end of the year, this film will be picked up and shown in theatres across the world for all the Le Tigre fans who, like me, long to connect with the band that filled their hearts and heads with sweetness and light.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, June 17th 2010

Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetics

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Lara Glenum, Arielle Greenberg

Saturnalia Books

The problem with books with two introductions is that one can inevitably doom the other and, at worst, the entire book. This just might be the case with the contra(dictory)dance of introductions to the anthology Gurlesque, edited by poets Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg. According to Glenum, Gurlesue poetry “assaults the norms of acceptable female behavior by irreverently deploying gender stereotypes to subversive ends.” Both editors relate this poetry to cultural movements like riot grrrl, burlesque, kitsch, camp, and more.

For Greenberg, Gurlesque is “not a movement or a camp or a clique.” (Okay, so what is it then?) It is “just something [she] saw...born of black organza witch costumes and the silver worn-out sequins mashed between scratchy pink tutu netting and velvet unicorn paintings and arena rock ballads…” Her list continues and is reminiscent of the sub/counter culture detritus that has wound up at mall stores like Hot Topic. I really wanted to love the idea of Gurlesque and was looking forward to some in-depth and sophisticated rendering. Unfortunately, Greenberg sounds like a chatty scenester at a party, making the anthology seem little more than a self-serving, self-validating effort.

Luckily, Glenum’s introduction is more intellectually sound and includes some interesting theory; however, both seem resistant to lay any more than spotty groundwork about what Gurlesque is or isn’t, at the same time that they see the selected poems as being exemplary of this “idea”. From Greenberg: “Being in this anthology doesn’t mean anything about the poets in particular: we are just trotting these poems out on our sideshow stage because of what we see in them.” And from Glenum: “I am not insisting that this genealogy forms a common knowledge base for Gurlesque poets…I intend the above merely as a loose sketch of aesthetic tendencies and impulses, an artistic and theoretical heritage from which the Gurlesque draws its manifold, relentless energies.” Yet wouldn’t the artifact of the anthology prove more than a loose sketch?

So what about the actual poetry? What does Gurlesque poetry look and read like? I asked a poet friend who said “pile on the cum, pile on the vomit, heap on the porn.” Poet Ariana Reines doesn’t disappoint with lines like “First he spit on my asshole and then start in with a middle finger and then the cock slid in no sound come out only a maw gaping, grind hard into ground.” While this might seem like a performance of pornographic crassness, it could be seen (and I tease this from the Exoskeleton poetry blog) as skillfully employing the savvy irony of our cultural moment: self-consciously using played out shock-for-shock’s sake.

These aren’t easy poems to read. They aren’t your grandmother’s poems, and they aren’t Hallmark greeting card poems. They aren’t like most poems you would read in a book grabbed off the shelf in Barnes & Nobles, or even the library. If you make it through the bric-a-brac of the introductions, you get a good sense of some very new and innovative (if not all that good or likable) poetics.

Readers might be jarred by Chelsey Minnis’ excessive use of ellipses, to the point of frustration. The visual disorientation of the work gives the reader the sense that so much else is going on around and outside the poems, they become part of a much wider extended dialogue in which the reader is invited to imagine the activity in the pauses. Excerpts from Geraldine Kim’s “Povel” recalibrate our sense of poetry, prose, and the quotable. Lines like “I was barn./I was razed./I was mot this flame with no’s sum else blue’s blame noir yearning down the house” from Heidi Lynn Staple’s “Fonder a Care Kept” are going to test even the most adept readers of contemporary poetry.

There is a great deal of variety in this anthology, and as a woman of color, while I was happy to see Asian American women represented, I was strongly disappointed by the apparent lack of work by African American, Latina, or Native American women. While I suppose it is possible (though unlikely) that such women of color aren’t writing Gurlesque, it seems more plausible that when it depends on one’s field of vision that this is an effect of “just something I saw.”

Written by: L, June 2nd 2010

Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Alison Piepmeier

New York University Press

In Girl Zines, Alison Piepmeier elegantly chronicles the emergence in the early 1990s of zines: a complex, multifaceted phenomenon aligned with third wave feminism, and a powerful and unruly articulation of the same cultural moment that produced riot grrrls. It may also have been the last gasp of the manuscript culture—since, some would say, eclipsed by the blogosphere and electronic media—as a pervasive form of underground radical expression. This study skillfully employs post-structuralist feminist theory, along with the implicit collaboration of the author’s students—generations of whom have been rediscovering the excitement and raw force of these documents, adding their own interpretive spin, and reproducing the zine in their own cultural moments.

She traces the rough avant-garde artistry of Tobi Vail in her work on Jigsaw through well-established magazines like Bitch and the literally thousands of feminist blogs that have established themselves in cyberspace. She traces the origins of such zines as Sarah Dyer’s Action Girl Newsletter back through the mimeographed feminist manifestos of the mid-twentieth-century, and even back through women’s scrapbooks made in the nineteenth century and preserved as a deceptively rich collage of women’s interactions with their cultural milieu.

Girl Zines conveys the brazenness of the zines, their “rhetorical excess and flamboyance” still outrageous and shockingly liberating. A wonderful example, “The Splendiferous Oath of Riot Grrrls Outer Space,” illustrates the tone: “I riotously swear to rage in glorious anger against everything that even slightly pisses me off. I swear to be loud, vulgar, obnoxious, illogical, and emotional whenever I damn please. As an Outer Space Riot Grrrl I will dream of impossible utopias, make up wild political theories, laugh at people who oppose me, and as much as I can, be full of supreme confidence and hellacious egotism.” The loud ripping sounds you hear are conventional gender expectations and forms of institutional oppression being torn to shreds.

Significantly, Piepmeier emphasizes the importance of the materiality of these artistic/political forms. Their textuality—the rebelliously crude printing and the hand-drawn visuals—conveys meaning. They are ephemeral—they share that feature with almost all newspapers and magazines from the time of their invention—but they are nonetheless tangible artifacts capable of being preserved, handed down, revisited, and revitalized. This materiality differentiates them from the creative work being done in the blogosphere, and it is a feature that still appeals to students newly introduced to them as physical representations of a spirit linking generations of women.

One wonders what these radical artists would make of finding themselves within the fairly conventional confines of a scholarly/academic history. And yet, clearly, they have generously supplied both material and narrative to the author, as she inscribes a thoroughly researched, tightly written, and highly respectful account of this phenomenon that needs to be a living part of a developing feminist legacy.

Written by: Rick Taylor, February 28th 2010

Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution In Music

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Marisa Meltzer

Faber and Faber Inc.

Having been born in the late '80s, I always felt I missed out on everything cool in music. I wasn’t there to see the birth of punk. I wasn’t there for New Wave. I was too young for grunge, and I was too far away from Olympia, WA for riot grrrl. In the 1990s, I bought Sublime’s self -titled album along with Alice Cooper’s School's Out, and that was the extent of my musical awareness. So I always enjoyed reading about riot grrrl, putting on my Heavens to Betsy CD, and pretending I was more involved in it than I actually was.

Yes, I remember 1991. Sure, I was only five years old, but still, I was there. I expected Marisa Meltzer’s Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music to help me keep up my own personal time capsule, going on the title alone. While the first few chapters do go into depth about riot grrrl’s evolution, the rest of the book moves forward in time from where riot grrrl left off, and this is where Meltzer hypothesizes leaves off as well. Post-riot grrrl, Meltzer traces the evolution of a few obvious late-90s "angry" female artists, such as Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and Paula Cole, along with all the women from Lilith Fair, but then veers into a weird direction with The Spice Girls.

A lot of this book, in fact, goes into detail about The Spice Girls, and Meltzer keeps attempting to drive home her point that this girl group was actually pretty feminist. Now, this is something I actually was there for (although I try not to think about those dark times). Being a young girl coming of age when The Spice Girls were popular, I never got the impression that they were feminists. Maybe I’m just biased here, but the constant mention of this group kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That being said, Meltzer has some interesting points about them. (The Spice Girls, in effect, got the term girl power out there, and started some little girls thinking about their potential, but calling them feminist still seems like a stretch to me. It was a good, long, head-beating attempt by Meltzer, but by the end of this book, I was not convinced.)

Meltzer also touches upon a few modern day female pop stars, like the young women from High School Musical and Taylor Swift, as she attempts to draw a line from riot grrrl to girl power. This book may be aimed at younger girls in the hopes that it will get them thinking about their own generation of musical trends, and inspire them to look more critically at the media. Girl Power shows a lot of promise for spurring conversations between feminists of different generations, but for anyone born past 1990, Meltzer could leave you feeling bitter and jaded. Then again, maybe it’s just me.

Written by: Jen Klee, February 14th 2010

People People

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Pariah Piranha

Queercore Records

I want Pariah Piranha's People People to work—and it almost does. Listening to their album is sort of like eating my mom’s homemade cooking instead of something gourmet. You can tell something is missing, but you don't know exactly what it is. Oregano? No, that’s not it. Pepper? Lemon juice? Pariah Piranha sounds, at times, like Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Then there’s some Bikini Kill, some Gossipalso, and even a little hint of Sleater-Kinney. But they don’t quite put it together the way that I want them to.

Pariah Piranha sounds a little too much like they’re being held back by something. I think part of the problem is that they attempt too many guitar solo interludes, which sound like they want to be gritty, except that they are just a little too dependent on power chords. The frustrating thing is that you can have simplistic guitar riffs and make them sound wicked, and sexy, and dirty—all of those things that rock music does when it is fantastic. Take “Sweet ‘69” by Babes in Toyland, “Touch Me I’m Sick” by Mudhoney, or even (bare with me through the cliché) “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges. Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar bravado doesn’t exist on any of these songs, because these songs don’t need it.

Maybe all Pariah Piranha requires is a little more swagger. Add just a splash of Patti Smith and a major infusion of some serious ovaries and maybe they would have it right. Yes, I refuse to use balls here because I think most of the time it takes ovaries to be "ballsy." Besides, balls are icky (insert lesbian freelance writer making retching sounds here. HORF!).

Pariah Piranha almost get there with the song “Role Model,” but they still sound just a little like they are wearing a belt that is too tight. They need to be more like Shannon Wright. Not that I want them to be all angry and depressing like Wright—but I do want them to do what Wright does right. (Sorry for that. Pun gods are smiting me, I know.) I want them to put all of their insecurities, angst, love, lust, blood, and excrement—all of it—on a pike in the front yard and display it like a trophy.

That just means they need to find their own sound, and throw it around like a water balloon fight. It should be a little bit messy, but most importantly, it shouldn’t be afraid to soak through everything like that last green balloon bomb did through your underwear. So, Pariah Piranha, I implore you: be angry when you need to be, be sloppy when you need to be, and be quiet and powerful and restrained when you need to be. You’re almost there. Just let out a few notches on the ol’ belt. After all, even the normally quiet and acoustic Tegan and Sara let it all hang out, when they’re at their best.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, December 4th 2009

Musicfest Northwest (9/19/2009)

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Rotture

Portland, Oregon

If you ever hear anyone doubt that women can rock you should tell them to shut up and listen to Team Dresch. One of the most influential bands from the mid-90s riot grrrl and queercore movements, Team Dresch released their first album Personal Best in 1995, stopped playing in 1998, reunited in 2004, and have only played a handful of shows since. So I knew this show in their hometown of Portland, OR was going to be a good one!

Every year The Willamette Week, a local free weekly in Portland, hosts a music festival called Music Fest Northwest (MFNW), and the Team Dresch show was one of the many that happened over five days in various venues across the city. While the spreading out of shows across the town means that one has to really pick and choose what bands they want to see. Some venues are 21+ and some, once they reach capacity, will not let you in even if you have bought the $60 wristband, so it’s not worth leaving one venue you have already made it inside. Big festivals attract bigger names, and since it doesn’t just happen at one big expensive club, getting there early is the only way to ensure you get in.

While big acts are the draw for any music festival (this year featured Modest Mouse, Black Francis, Bad Brains, Girl Talk, and the Get Up Kids), MFNW draws from the rich Portland music scene, of course, with Team Dresch one of the many Portland-based acts. Although I missed the opening band, I arrived during the set of another local band called Lovers. I had not seen them live before and had only heard about them recently, as they just released their fourth album, I Am the West, in April. I was captivated by the melancholy electro-pop and emotive vocals, and it's unfortunate that I only got to hear a few songs. They are definitely a band I am going to check out again.

Next up was Erase Errata, a notorious experimental No Wave band from San Francsico. If Team Dresch weren’t playing and Erase Errata headlined, this show would have been large enough, so the addition of the elusive queercore superstars made the packed, relatively small venue teem with energy. (I also love attending rock shows where women outnumber boys five to one. It is such a great feeling!) Erase Errata riled up the crowd with their political, half-improvised, dance-tastic songs, and by the time Team Dresch hit the stage everyone was significantly buzzed. I was not in the mosh pit, which I kind of regret, but standing back and watching the amazing musicianship and show(wo)manship of Team Dresch was as electrifying and inspiring as when I first heard Personal Best all those years ago. (Had I seen them live then I would have been more likely to stage dive and slam my-sweaty-self against the stage!)

They rocked like the best rock stars; they played their instruments better than most boys I know; and they reminded me how important music, especially female-driven punk rock music, is to feminism. (Okay, I am biased, but there is really something about women expressing anger, playing loud music, and just generally kicking ass in areas they are brought up thinking they can’t that makes me really happy.) But the most inspiring thing of all is that this band that seemed to have reached its peak over ten years ago is still going strong today.

Written by: Jyoti Roy, September 28th 2009

Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?

admin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:15:00 +0000

Directed by Barbara Caspar

Fragile Films

Finally, a documentary on legendary writer Kathy Acker, whose influence on sex-positive, brazen, post-modern feminist literature and art is unsurpassed. Perhaps there would have been no Riot Grrrl movement if Acker had not spoken to a young Kathleen Hanna. Hanna recalls that “Acker asked me why writing was important to me, and I said, ‘Because I felt like I’d never been listened to and I had a lot to say,’ and she said, ‘Then why are you doing spoken word?? No one goes to spoken word shows! You should get in a band’.”

Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker? contains interviews with well known icons like Hanna and Semiotext(e) publisher Sylvere Lotringer, yet also features young female students who all give different interpretations on Acker’s work and influence on their writing. There are also, of course, family members, ex-lovers, friends, and peers who all give insight into the life, work, and early death of Kathy Acker, who died in 1997 from breast cancer.

Acker, covered in tattoos and piercings, with her shaved head and a gold tooth, was a punk rock literary genius. Her experimental, post-modern writing reflected the anger, struggle for power, vulnerability, and schizophrenia of being a strong, sexually deviant woman in a patriarchal society. She turned male literature on its head by re-writing several misogynist texts from the perspective of women. Her characters blur gender and are not constrained by space, time, or death. Acker saw language as a system similar to capitalism and patriarchy—therefore, one to be deconstructed. Her work was cut-up, non-linear, sexually explicit, offensive, and sometimes nonsensical. Banned in some countries and derided by some feminists, the true genius of Acker’s work emerges in the differing of opinion and interpretation of it.

Like all good biographical documentaries, we see glimpses of Acker’s early life through photographs and archival footage as well as interviews. We also get to see her naked and masturbating in an art film she made in college! But this documentary is experimental in its own right, reflecting the cut-up, post-modern nature of Acker’s writing, through techniques like animation and voice-overs, arty shots with text across them while interviewees talk behind it, pornographic clips, and ambient electronic and punk music. It all combines to create a non-linear telling of Acker’s life story and brilliant mind.

At eighty-four minutes, it is a long biographical documentary, sometimes meandering in repetition and its own artfulness. A straight-up story of Acker’s life could have been contained in less time. Yet anyone familiar with Acker’s work knows that would not have been an appropriate homage to a writer whose work is still a huge influence on experimental writing and feminist theory.

My only irritation with the film was the interviews with the young students, which, although interspersed within the entire documentary, open the film, creating a vague and confusing introduction to an extremely dynamic person’s life. The presence of the students also breaks the flow and feels disconnected from the rest of the documentary. Perhaps, as a nod to Acker, that was intentional. In any case, as with Acker’s work, you may get confused, annoyed, enthralled, offended, and turned on by this documentary. It is a great portrait of a life and mind that should never be forgotten.

Written by: Jyoti Roy, July 19th 2009

In Advance of the Broken Arm

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:23:00 +0000

By Marnie Stern

Kill Rock Stars

Who wouldn't be interested in listening to a female musician who is described as playing guitar better than “you, or me or probably ninety-nine percent of the people who have ever looked at a guitar?" From the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Marnie Stern was signed to Kill Rock Stars after sending in a demo tape. In Advance of the Broken Arm is Marnie Stern's debut album and includes songs she wrote in her bedroom over a two year period, with production and drum work by Zach Hill.

Marnie Stern certainly does shred. After receiving the album, I did what I usually do with new music. I listen to it sitting. I listen to it while I bustle around the city. I listen to it when I am feeling tired, and when I am full of energy. In Advance of the Broken Arm satisfied me in each of these listens. Her music is so rip roaringly catchy that you can't help but move your body to it in some way. There are layers of guitar work that compliment well her riot grrrl-like voice. My favorite aspect of the album is the lyrics; they are simple, but beautifully poetic.

On one of my favorite tracks, “Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling,” Marnie sings, “I am not looking to find a pot of gold” and “the picture in my head is my reward.” I would say the picture she creates in this album could be your reward if you take a listen.

Written by: Lesley Kartali, April 13th 2007

Grrrl

admin — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:55:00 +0000

By Jennifer Whiteford

Gorsky Press

“I can’t believe that I have to go back to high school. I saw a whole bunch of ‘cool kids’ at the movie theatre today. They looked at me like I was a freak and then acted like jerks by yelling and throwing food all the way through the whole movie. This is what they think rebellion is. They also think it’s rebellious to take tons of drugs, have unsafe sex, and go to secret parties in farmer’s fields. I don’t WANT to do any of that stuff so I end up seeming like a nerd instead of a rebel but I know that I really am a rebel!”

I want to cry; I just finished Jennifer Whiteford’s first book, Grrrl and I’m so happy and nostalgic I could puke. To set the mood right, I just threw on a Huggy Bear/Bikini Kill/Bratmobile riot grrrl playlist to write this review.

Grrrl is a coming-of-age story written in a journal entry format by Marlie, a suburban teenage girl who saves her work money to make treks into Toronto to buy records and thrift store dresses. _Grrrl _follows Marlie through her awkward freshman year where she tests out her new punk fashion aesthetic and meets new friends who share her musical tastes. We see Marlie make the transition from being a super excited audience member freaking out about seeing all-girl bands to becoming a teenage rockstar playing shows in her own band. We see her evolve from stressing about boys in early entries to later entries that talk about how excited she is about band practice or one of their shows.

Her slightly older uncle, Ben, and his former rocker girlfriend, Sheena, act as twenty-something punk rock mentors to Marlie helping her find out about new bands and get into shows. The turning point in the novel comes on a summer trip to Seattle with Ben and Sheena to attend a rock festival. At this festival Marlie and Sheena get invited to a riot grrrl convention where Marlie gets her first kiss and ponders over whether or not she is a lesbian if she has only kissed a girl, but still crushes on boys back home. She returns to her Toronto suburbs pledging to support other girls and be the girl she wants to be.

Grrrl is the perfect book for those of us who were also raised on the margins of riot grrrl culture. We didn’t live in Olympia or DC and have instant access to become active participants in the movement, but we consumed its’ music and ‘zines and ran with the DIY ethic to start our own projects. Through introspective journal entries, Marlie is the perfect character to identify with; we see her doubting herself and her relationships, but watch as she figures things out and carves out her own unique space.

I finished this book wishing my little nephews were teenage nieces so I could quickly drop this in the mail to them to help inspire a whole new era of teenage riot grrrl feminist rebellion. Then again, I think I’ll give this book to my nephew when he’s a teenager so he can be inspired by girls who don’t take shit and love to rock out.

Written by: Ailecia Ruscin, March 25th 2007