This month I watched underage drunk, Brace Belden, and his mutating face watching the Blank Dogs. I also got obsessed with the x_x 7”s, decided it was time to start a band, and had many conversations with different people about Women in Punk and Hardcore. In all caps. It’s a dissertation subject! Your PHD on gender studies and chix in the pit’ll write itself! Or maybe you can write about Riot Grrrl, no one has done that—hell that’s just what the cultural studies field needs. Another thesis about gender ‘n’ punk that focuses on the first, and only all girl youth subculture, aka riot grrrl! Why start a band, or make a zine, when you can write a paper about girls that did that stuff already in the olden days?
The modern age is a tribute to the database, an epic list of things that happened, things that will never happen again, and things you missed out on because of the shitty town you were born in, the shitty year you were born in, and so forth, and so forth. What will people write papers about in the future? That awesome message board discussion about the girls of the late ‘70s Pittsburgh no wave scene, or maybe an analysis of the stage banter of the 50th gen. pizza-thrash skateboard-hardcore revival?
Either way I can’t wait. What about the inevitable coffee table book of all the riot grrrl theses?
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Here are some bands I will be in very soon, plus several bands that I was in that were just late night long distance telephone conversations: The Teenage Tombs. The Terrible Turncoats. Douche and the Fucking Bags. Nervous Drivers. Fucking French Boyfriends. There are others. I made a list somewhere once. I am also working on a new issue of my fanzine, it’s about women in music, all of our feelings and thoughts compiled in one place.
“Why is the rent always due on the same day, why is the clock always set to the wrong time, and all those other things that conspire against a good time?”
“Girls are the new boys, tag it on cop cars.”
How many hardcore bands are there that are all female? How many all-girl bands consider themselves to be hardcore bands, that are not considered hardcore by “the kids?”
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How come in The Gender Revolts Simon Reynolds asserts that the Raincoats are the only true “women’s music” that came out of punk? Maybe he adds the Slits to that too. But really? What is women’s music? Stuff that’s ok for Michigan Women’s Fest? Stuff that teenage girls actually wanna listen to? Let’s get essentialist duuuuuuuuude. Feel those feminine rhythms? That’s those Women In Rock! The breakfast of champions. Championed by women rockers only. An exclusive number.
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Top Ten Women in Rock
1-What Patti Smith has for breakfast
2-How Diamanda Galas feels about Henry Rollins
3-Supermodels wearing Bikini Kill t-shirts on party blogs.
4-All the lady bands that started after they watched Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames.
5-What We Do is Secret. SECRET!
6-That Go-Gos double live bootleg 7”
7-That discography Sharon Cheslow did of every woman in a band between ‘77 and ‘82 that exists somewhere on the internet that I cannot find now.
www.mindspring.com/~acheslow/AuntMary/bang/wip.html
8-That time of the month.
9-Your little sister’s street punk band
10-”Girls should rule all towns” Bikini Kill, 1991.
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Also!
Is the D-beat a feminine rhythm?
Does anyone even care?
Is Women in Rock the most redundant
phrase? What is rock music at this point?
Sheryl Crow? Joan Jett? A karaoke version of “Kids in America?”
Is there ever going to be a reissue of The Wrecks demo? What about Nog Watt?
Are we gonna drown in irony and the fear of looking stupid or getting ridiculed? Is that why people keep their mouths shut?
Either way, answers on a postcard.
“I Kept it in my bag / Won’t let the authorities have it / Your hot rock / Radiation rock /Meteorite / Outta site!”
Huggy Bear.
Layla at maximumrocknroll dot com
