Graded on a Curve: Bikini Kill, The Singles

I’ve at all times been detest to jot down about Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl motion typically as a result of each time I examine both I run face first into discussions of third-wave feminism and discover myself confronted with phrases like “post-structuralism,” and simply ten minutes in the past I ran throughout a doctoral dissertation (I’m assuming) entitled “From Girl to Woman to Grrrl: (Sub)Cultural Intervention and Political Activism within the Time of Post Feminism.” And whereas I think about myself an ardent feminist (the world can be a greater place if ladies ran it) the horrible reality is I’m a frivolous individual and easily not that sensible. And Marx ruined me for manifestos. Foghat didn’t write manifestos.

So let’s simply say that bands like Bikini Kill have been offended and had rattling good trigger to be offended, and referred to as for a revolution lady type now as a result of one was desperately wanted, what with rape, bodily and sexual abuse, condescension, and all the ugly ideas and phrases and deeds of a patriarchal society that thought-about it their god-given proper to inform ladies what they might and couldn’t do with their our bodies and minds, all of which Bikini kill noticed not as abstractions however as day-to-day actuality.

To insurgent in opposition to a male-dominated society (hell, a world) the place violence actual and psychic are your each day fare, and to need to change that, and to inform younger ladies they too may change that, put Bikini Kill and their like on the facet of the angels. Recently it got here out through an off-the-cuff social media ballot that lady would sooner run right into a bear within the woods than a person. And not as a result of bears are higher trying.

While I’ve by no means been an enormous fan of offended music, particularly when it comes from white male indie sorts (Fugazi, anybody?), I’m an enormous fan of Bikini Kill as a result of they produced among the most ferocious, confrontational and succinctly sensible music of the post-punk period, and gave the impression to be having enjoyable whereas doing it. And their songs have been sophisticated, nuanced, and went nicely past the easy rah-rah didacticism of “I’m lady, hear me roar.” Not that they didn’t do their fare share of sloganeering. It’s merely that the messages of their songs—which have been geared toward each younger ladies and their oppressors—went far past simply grasped agitpop. They might be a delicate bunch.

Formed in Olympia, Washington in 1990, Bikini Kill included Katheen Hanna on vocals (and typically bass), Tobi Vail on drums and occasional lead vocals, Kathi Wilcox on bass (though she performed a little bit of every little thing), and Billy Karren on guitar, whose guyhood proved from the get-go that Bikini Kill weren’t, as loads of threatened punk boys (and rock writers) would have it, a band of rabid man-haters.

They would in the end relocate to Washington, DC for the easy motive that Olympia was not receptive to their message whereas our nation’s capital boasted a progressive punk scene that was extra simpatico to bands with a confrontational bent, whether or not they have been focusing on the right-wing state of the nation, attacking sexism, racism, or homophobia, or advocating for vegetarianism or anti-corporate music-making. DC was the capital of punk activism, and Bikini Kill felt proper at house.

Bikini Kill’s early recordings have been primitive and lo-fi to the acute, and relying in your love for the ecstatic, unpolished, the uncooked, amateurish, abrasive, and unapologetically offended music to be heard on 1994’s Kill Rock Stars compilation, the CD variations of the primary two records simply often is the Bikini Kill you want most. But as bands (sadly) are likely to do, Bikini Kill realized to play their devices (it takes true genius to not), and if it’s a more adept and polished (comparatively talking) Bikini Kill you need to hear, you possibly can’t go unsuitable with 1998’s The Singles.

The Singles opens with three of the band’s purest but most user-friendly blasts of punk rock fury, all three given form and sonic oomph by ur-riot grrrl and band producer Joan Jett. Talk about your preferrred collaborations—Jett is a feminist icon and proud bearer of a nasty popularity who’d established her punk bona fides by producing the Germs. Did a masterful job of it, too, and she or he does the identical with the songs “New Radio,” “Rebel Girl,” and “DemiRep,” which type one of many strongest one-two-three opening punches I’ve ever had on an album. In brief, they rating an prompt rock TKO.

“New Radio” is positively titanic due to Jett’s guitar and the pounding rhythm part, however what makes the music are Hanna’s vocals (and the assists she will get from Jett). It’s an actual scream-along, this one, with Hanna rapidly going ballistic on the strains, “It doesn’t matter who’s in management now/It doesn’t matter ’trigger that is NEW RADIO!” She sings the nice strains “Baby boy you possibly can’t kill what’s fucking actual/Turn that music down/Turn the static up” then screams the road, “Come right here child, let kiss you want a boy does!” earlier than going pure ecstasy, swapping “woahs” with Jett after which chopping utterly unfastened with a “yeah, yeah, yeah yeah” that outdoes The Beatles within the pleasure division. Before shutting issues down with the Beastie Boys-beating strains “Lets wipe our cum on my dad and mom’ mattress/C’mon!” For teen revolt it’s not dangerous.

“Rebel Girl” is sonic assault and battery with Jett’s guitar and Vail’s unrelenting drum thump bringing Bikini Kill to the metallic borderline and past. Hanna is all hero worship and who can blame her for wanting the “the queen of the neighborhood” to be her greatest buddy? And for eager to attempt on her garments? Hanna’s Rebel Girl is the personification of grrrl revolt: “When she walks, the revolution’s coming/In her hips, there’s revolution/When she talks, I hear the revolution/In her kiss, I style the revolution.”

Hanna and Jett playfully open “DemiRep”—which implies a lady of uncertain reputation, gasp—with a childhood recreation of “Miss Macky Mack” earlier than breaking right into a music that has extra DIY ragged punk pace, propulsion and spirit in its DNA than the anthemic duo “New Radio” and “Rebel Girl.” As normal it’s Hanna’s explosive vocals that make the music—she drags out the strains “And I’m not some lame… so-roriety queen/Takin’ you house to fulfill my… da-a-a-dy” to fantastic impact, ditto the best way she repeats that “I do know I do know I do know I do know” and the best way she delivers the strains “You take what you need/You get what you are taking/You take what you need/You get what you are taking/But I’ve obtained one thing, man/That you’re fuckin’ cash can’t purchase”—specifically, “You don’t know what it’s wish to be alive.” Hanna’s a reside wire, together with her nerves on the unsuitable facet of her pores and skin, and a lightning rod for each emotion beneath the solar, good and dangerous, and you may hear it in each syllable she spits into the world.

Vail sings the twenty-eight second epic “In Accordance with Natural Law” and she or he sings it in such a rush—spitting out an entire lot of phrases in that lower than half a minute, making an attempt to maintain up with the music’s insane tempo—you can’t perceive a phrase out of her mouth, But irrespective of, the lyrics appear to be some sort of Marxist self-critique however what do I do know, that shit’s above my pay grade. What issues is she’s having her say and god assist the idiot who will get in her method.

And Hanna does the identical on “Strawberry Julius.” She’s principally having conniptions making an attempt to suit the phrases in sideways, thataways and the wrong way up though phrases (“come on” and “what the fuck”) stick out, and what’s actually cool is the best way she goes from temporary moments of just about regular converse to machine gunning her phrases as a result of they’re sticking in her throat. She’s purging poison and slaying demons on the similar time. “Just don’t contact me along with your naked arms no matter you do” jumps out, as does “’Cause I obtained extra tongues/Than simply this one.” (Great line, that, even when I don’t know what she means.) Songs like this one defy simple interpretation as a result of Bikini Kill achieve this far more than simply stick daggers into the patriarchy—there are ranges and layers and ambiguities of their songs, and also you’re invited to dive in and begin considering.

“Anti-Pleasure Dissertation” opens on a Who-like word (in reference to one in all their songs, Thurston is probably not the one one who hearts the Who) with large energy chords and options Hanna sounding slicker and extra conventional feminine lead-singerish than normal as she sings about kissing and telling. But earlier than lengthy she quick forwards right into a pace rap with the strains “Did you rating that time? Are you so fucking cool, fucking cool/Now did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya, did ya?” Did ya what? “Go inform your fucking associates/What I noticed and the way I felt/How punk fucking rock my pussy smelled/Why don’t you inform them?” Now if that ain’t probably the most punk-fucking-rock line ever I don’t know what’s. Like teen spirit possibly? Incredible music.

On “Rah! Rah! Replica” Hanna’s vocals get buried within the sonic punk din however irrespective of, simply lose your self within the music’s V2 thrust and dangle on to the nice backing vocals that make me consider the punk rock cheerleaders in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. Consult the lyric sheet if you would like, I did and Hanna’s phrases didn’t precisely change my life, however my loss—they might have modified different peoples’ lives, and that’s what issues. “I Like Fucking” might be a Joan Jett laborious rocker, you’ve obtained these Godzilla-big energy chords and the cymbals take an actual thrashing whereas Hanna’s working all of it out, the entire ache versus pleasure factor that surrounds intercourse in a world the place, for too many males, intercourse equals hate, and in contrast to (I feel) in “Anti-Pleasure Dissertation” on “I Like Fucking” Hanna’s final take is intercourse constructive:

“Just ’trigger my world, candy sister
Is so fucking goddamn filled with rape
Does that imply my physique should at all times be a supply of ache?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no no no.”

And she ends issues with the phrases “I imagine within the radical potentialities of enjoyment, babe/I do, I do, I do.” And I believe that my considering there’s nothing radical in regards to the potentialities of enjoyment simply proves I’m a person, or a person who’s been on the receiving finish of intercourse as a supply of unimaginable bodily and psychic trauma.

On the least fascinating observe on the album, the very heavy “I Hate Danger,” Vail sings about hanging out with individuals who aren’t your mates and who don’t appear to offer a shit that you simply’re there so that you simply clam up (Vail, in a deadpan tone that doesn’t precisely suck you in: “I ended speaking an hour in the past”). Things don’t actually enliven till the top, when Vail lastly explodes:

“Okay, your entire factor places me in damaging area for method too fucking lengthy
The solely factor I managed to say throughout that point was, “I hate hazard”
What I actually ought to have mentioned was
“You’re so not harmful. You’re so not what you say you’re in any respect.”

In the mid-nineties Bikini Kill and their kindred feminine spirits in bands like Bratmobile and Huggy Bear have been waging a revolution, and on the micro-level not less than the revolution was profitable—they conveyed a message of feminine empowerment that impressed legions of the women they have been preventing for to type their very own bands and share their ache, their horror tales, their anger and their disgust at a music scene (and extra importantly, the world at massive) the place males felt free to do regardless of the fuck they needed with ladies’s minds and our bodies. “I need to scream as a result of I’m simply as a lot of a human being as any man however I don’t at all times get handled like one,” learn an early Bikini Kill zine. That was placing it mildly.

But, and I’ll say it once more as a result of I feel it’s so vital, what I hear after I hearken to Bikini Kill is a way of the unconventional potentialities of pleasure regardless of all of it, as a result of there was a pleasure within the waging of that conflict and a pleasure in simply being alive and making music with and for girls (and males) who have been clued into the truth that no, every little thing was not all proper. Fun WAS on the riot grrrl agenda, and for me which means a lot, as a result of there have been and at all times will likely be these on the indie scene (Ian MacKaye mentioned as a lot) who don’t see enjoyable as one thing value preventing for. Which I feel is horrible, as a result of the place’s the enjoyable in no enjoyable? It’s like D.H. Lawrence mentioned, if you happen to’re going to have a revolution remember to have enjoyable doing it, as a result of in any other case you’re simply going to finish up a joyless puritan.

And I do know Bikini Kill have been having enjoyable as a result of their patron saint Joan Jett SAYS SO on the finish of “DemiRep.” No pleasure, no enjoyable, no deal, that’s what I hear after I hearken to Bikini Kill. Who, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add, are again collectively and possibly even coming to your city this 12 months. Go, and if you happen to’re sufficiently old to have daughters take your daughters and if you happen to’re sufficiently old to have sons take your sons and your granny to whilst you’re at it. She’ll love them. They’ll flip her into an much more badass lady than she is now. They’re a fucking riot.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
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