FEATURE:
Rebel Grrrl
The Iconic Feminist Punk Idol Kathleen Hanna
__________
LEADING a group who have…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kathleen Hanna (front) on stage with Bikini Kill (Tobi Vail (drums) and Kathi Wilcox (bass) in 2019/PHOTO CREDIT: Debi Del Grande
had a huge influence and no doubt inspire modern artists like Charli XCX and The Linda Lindas, I did want to talk about Bikini Kill and the extraordinary Kathleen Hanna. Apologies if this seems a little random in terms of the information and structure. Rather than simply talk about some new news that is exciting and worth exploring, I wanted to expand a little. The news is, as Pitchfork explain, related to Kathleen Hanna releasing her new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk:
“Kathleen Hanna has announced a U.S. book tour in support of her new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk. The book is out May 14 via Ecco, and the tour begins in Brooklyn on the same day as the memoir’s release. The Seattle date on May 22 will be streamed live, and a portion of all ticket sales will be donated to the nonprofit Peace Sisters. Find the book tour dates below.
Just yesterday, Bikini Kill announced a benefit show for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. It takes place at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington, on January 27.
05-14 Brooklyn, NY - Greenlight Bookstore @ Kings Theatre
05-15 Washington, D.C. - Loyalty Bookstore @ Lincoln Theatre
05-16 Cincinnati, OH - Joseph-Beth Booksellers @ Mason High School
05-18 Chicago, IL - Women & Children First @ Hermann Hall
05-20 Los Angeles, CA - Book Soup @ First Congregational Church
05-21 San Francisco, CA - City Arts & Lectures @ The Sydney Goldstein Theater
05-22 Seattle, WA - Seattle Arts & Lectures @ Town Hall Seattle
05-23 Portland, OR - Powell’s Books @ Revolution Hall
05-28 Boston, MA - Brookline Booksmith @ The Wilbur Theatre
05-29 Philadelphia, PA - Uncle Bobbie’s @ WHYY Studio”.
For anyone who does not know about Kathleen Hanna and what she and Bikini Kill created and gave to the world, AllMusic provide some detail and depth. You can feel and see the legacy of what the band left and how, reformed and in this new phase, they will shape music and female artists coming through. I shall come to that reformation in a little bit:
“The point band of the early-'90s riot grrrl movement, Olympia, Washington's Bikini Kill exploded onto the male-dominated indie rock scene by fusing the visceral power of punk with the impassioned ideals of feminism. Calling for "Revolution Girl Style Now," the group's fiercely polemical and anthemic music helped give rise to a newly empowered generation of women in rock, presaging the dominance female artists would enjoy throughout the decade.
Bikini Kill formed in the late '80s at Olympia's liberal Evergreen College, where students Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox first teamed to publish a feminist fanzine, also dubbed Bikini Kill. Seeking to bring the publication's agenda to life, they decided to form a band, enlisting guitarist Billy Boredom (born William Karren) to round out the lineup. Led by singer/songwriter Hanna, a former stripper, the group laced its incendiary live performances with aggressive political stances that challenged the accepted hierarchy of the underground music community; slam dancers were forced to mosh at the fringes of the stage so that women could remain at the front of the crowd, for example, and female audience members were often invited to take control of the microphone to openly discuss issues of sexual abuse and misconduct.
In 1991, Bikini Kill issued their first recording, Revolution Girl Style Now, an independently distributed demo cassette. For their first official release, the quartet signed with the aggressively independent Olympia-based label Kill Rock Stars; the Bikini Kill EP, produced by Fugazi's Ian Mackaye, consisted largely of reworked versions of material from the first cassette. In 1992, the band issued Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, a split 12" released with the British group Huggy Bear's Our Troubled Youth on its flip side; a subsequent U.K. tour with Huggy Bear in early 1993 raised the visibility of the riot grrrl groundswell to unprecedented heights, and the movement became the focus of many media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. When Bikini Kill returned to the U.S., they joined forces with Joan Jett, whom the band held up as an early paragon of riot grrrl aesthetics. Jett produced the group's next single, the bracing "New Radio"/"Rebel Girl," and Hanna returned the favor by co-writing the song "Spinster" for the Jett album Pure and Simple.
In 1994, Bikini Kill released Pussy Whipped; their most potent effort to date, it featured the songwriting emergence of both Vail and Wilcox, a trend continued on 1996's Reject All American. The group quietly disbanded in early 1998, and Vail, Wilcox, and Boredom went on to form the group the Frumpies, while Hanna released a solo project, Julie Ruin, before assembling the band Le Tigre in 1999. Hanna left Le Tigre in 2005, later revealing that she'd been struggling with Lyme disease. In 2010, Hanna had recovered sufficiently to launch a new band, featuring Kathi Wilcox, which they dubbed the Julie Ruin. The Punk Singer, a documentary on Hanna and her career from Bikini Kill to the Julie Ruin, opened in 2013, and in 2014 Hanna founded a new record label, Bikini Kill Records, devoted to reissuing the band's back catalog and associated projects”.
Bikini Kill were pioneers and an essential part of the Riot Grrrl movement. At a time when male bands were still being seen as essential Punk and Rock voices, Bikini Kill were essential alternative and progressive voices. They helped pave the way and affect change. Kathleen Hanna, as lead of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, was one of the most important and powerful voices of the 1990s. Her impact is still hugely strong today. Before moving on, I want to source Molly Cooper’s 2021 words for Mindless Mag:
“Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think ‘oh bondage up yours!’” X-Ray Spex, 1977
The “best” punk bands: the Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols. All regarded as the greatest punk bands. All men. That’s what a group of college students in the US (United States) state of Washington thought in the 1990s. A group of people who came together against one thing: bigotry, and so began the revolutionary movement known as: Riot Grrrl.
"There was a lot of anger and self-mutilation. In a symbolic sense, women were cutting and destroying the established image of femininity, aggressively tearing it down." - Liz Naylor, manager of Huggy Bear.
Born out of necessity, the movement wasn’t “created”. It was forced under the boot of an oppressive
society. It was about empowering women, bringing notice to rape culture, and screaming loudly about homophobia. It brought people together who had been torn down by patriarchy.
Music was the root. It started with music, and that was its voice. Through the words of Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy, troops were rallied. That created a culture. A culture around music and DIY, around zines and activism. It was a revolution. The movement was more than its roots. It was society.
It was different. It was anger against what was dictated as normal, at what was “mainstream”. Riot Grrrl was not a conversation on legal obstacles or voting rights, it was pure rage.
Grrls got s*** done.
They used everything they had. They used music and published their own manifestos and they weaponised their clothing.
How to dress to overthrow the patriarchy
“Stop always worrying about what you look like and what clothes you wear, 'cause in the end it's not important. What's important is friendship and being creative” Kathleen Hanna, frontwoman for Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.
With a subculture, comes a look. A fashion to go with values, but with the Riot Grrrl movement it was the very act of pushing against societal norms of femininity and consumerism that instead created a weapon: fashion itself.
There was no “Riot Grrrl” look.
The very idea of a specific “look”, went against the what the movement stood for. Grrrl’s didn’t have a style, they just expressed themselves, and how they were feeling.
But that didn’t mean fashion was completely void. Riot Grrrl’s used everything in their power, in their arsenal and that included fashion. More specifically how clothing made them feel.
In zines (small handmade publications handed out at shows which spread the movement) Grrrl’s wrote from their own experiences.
They wrote about the sexualisation of their bodies, and how the mainstream fashion industry relied on women being jealous of each other to sell their brands. There was an emphasis on self-expression, but also a move from reliance upon corporate industries and big brands in clothing.
Fashion to Riot Grrrl’s wasn’t just clothing, it was an attitude. It was the way clothes made you feel, and repercussions of male-dominated, female-focused industries. It was the use of clothing as policing of feminine bodies.
They wanted to dress how they wanted, it was as simple as that. Without the male gaze, without people telling them as feminists you “cannot dress sexy”.
It was gender expression. It was butch lesbians dressing without the risk of being attacked or called slurs. It was trans and non-binary people having a safe space at shows, to present their gender in any way they wished.
Riot Grrrl fashion is alive and well today
The Riot Grrrl movement has had a resurgence of sorts, mainly due to online platforms like TikTok. The rising alternative subcultures of E-Girls and E-Boys have taken obvious inspiration from punk subcultures, like Riot Grrrl. The mixture of harsh blush and soft baby-dolls, with chunky black boots reminiscent of the mixture of femininity and resistance of Riot Grrrl’s.
But it’s more than just clothing. As the original movement was, it’s a move from the male gaze. For people to control how they're perceived and to own their own sexualisation. The idea of girls and nonbinary people dressing how they choose to, it’s a political statement.
It’s a push for self-expression, and people making their own footprint in the world regardless of their oppression. It’s the girl on TikTok who made her prom dress from duct-tape. It’s punk and Riot Grrrl living on through them”.
Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk is a book that everyone needs to pick up. Recollections and memories from one of the leaders and most influential voices from the Riot Grrrl movement. The Los Angeles Times spoke to Kathleen Hanna about the return of Le Tigre. On the road with Bikini Kill at the time of the interview, it was a time of looking back and forward for the icon. I can only imagine how amazing it is bringing this fantastic and powerful music to a new generation:
“Never one known for her eagerness to submit to interviews, Kathleen Hanna was happy, she admitted on a recent afternoon, to be talking to anybody at all.
The veteran punk singer and activist had just completed a 10-day stint isolating in a Maryland hotel room after contracting COVID while on the road with Bikini Kill, the foundational riot grrrl band that galvanized a generation with its radical-feminist anthems — and famously shunned most media beyond underground fanzines — then broke up in 1997 before reuniting three years ago.
Now, with Hanna, 53, due to fly to Poland the next day for another string of Bikini Kill dates, the singer was on Zoom from her home in Pasadena to discuss a second comeback: that of Le Tigre, the sly electro-punk trio she formed in New York in 1998 with Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning (who was later replaced by JD Samson).
PHOTO CREDIT: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times
“I’ve been so f—ing bored,” Hanna said with a laugh of her time in quarantine. “So, yeah — lovely to chat with you.”
This month Le Tigre will play its first show in over a decade as part of This Ain’t No Picnic, a two-day music festival set for Aug. 27 and 28 at Brookside at the Rose Bowl that will also feature LCD Soundsystem, the Strokes, Phoebe Bridgers and Beach House, among other acts.
A kind of bridge between New York’s electroclash and garage-revival scenes, Le Tigre layered fuzzy guitars and shouty vocals over chunky drum-machine beats in songs about queer visibility and institutional misogyny. The band, which released three LPs, wasn’t as impactful as Bikini Kill, whose classic “Rebel Girl” has been covered by both the Linda Lindas and Miley Cyrus. But it proved enduringly influential among DIY synth heads, and its pop smarts even led to a major-label deal for the group’s 2004 album, “This Island.”
Hanna, who’s married to Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz of the Beastie Boys and who recovered a few years ago from Lyme disease, talked about the band’s reunion, its legacy and touring in the age of COVID.
Why get Le Tigre back together?
Basically because I started playing with Bikini Kill again and was finally having fun singing. My health is so much better and my technical skills are way better. When I was playing with the Julie Ruin, which was the last project I did before getting back together with Bikini Kill, I was still really sick and kept having to cancel stuff. I was battling my illness to get onstage, and it just was not fun. It was a little bit of faking it. I remember playing a really bad show in Paris with Le Tigre. So now I’m like, I need to play Paris again and have it be a good show. It’s literally something that will keep me awake.
You’ve played — what? — thousands of shows in your life. But this one crummy gig sticks in your mind?
I’ve gone through a lot of permutations as a performer. When I first got into being onstage, a lot of it was: I didn’t get love as a child, and I was looking for love in all the wrong places. I wanted anonymous strangers to applaud me. That was the difference between Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. In Le Tigre it was about me outperforming myself rather than pleasing the audience. I wasn’t looking for them to validate me. I knew what I was doing was good. So when I say I need to go back to Paris and fix it, it’s not because I give a s— that Paris hates me. It’s that I know I didn’t do my best.
Say more about rediscovering the joy of singing.
With Bikini Kill at first I was like, There’s no way I can still sing like that — I’m too old. But then I got into the flow. We played the Greek Theatre [in April] and I felt like I was flying. All of the stuff that’s been pent up in me, it was like I was shaking all the demons out of my body. I feel like I just did a year of therapy from 10 shows.
IN THIS PHOTO: Le Tigre (L-R: JD Samson, Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman)/PHOTO CREDIT: Dusty Lombard/IFC Films
What have you learned about your old songs by going back to them?
They’re catchy! Why does everybody always say we’re activists, not musicians? These are real songs. I get them in my head when I’m not on tour — and not in a bad Spin Doctors way. What’s been coming up with me performing live again is how often our musicality gets diminished. Is that a sexist thing, or does it happen to all bands? I don’t see people talking about Tame Impala the same way they talk about my projects.
I mention Tame Impala because I was just in the car and I was trying to listen to the Beyoncé record and Spotify kept switching to this playlist of MGMT and Tame Impala — all the indie hits of the 2000s. And it was all men. The only women on the playlist were, like, the two women in Arcade Fire. So I started having a contest to see how long I could listen before I heard a woman’s voice. Then I was like, Wait, this is keeping me from listening to Beyoncé.
Talk about Le Tigre’s decision to leave Mr. Lady, a tiny indie, and sign to Universal. These days nobody has any anxiety about that kind of move, but people worried about it back then.
Mr. Lady was wonderful, they just weren’t equipped to deal with a band of our size. So eventually you get to the point where you’re paying for all your own recording because the label just doesn’t have the money to do it. My whole career I would earn money from one band, put anything I could aside, and then I’d spend it all on the next band. And then I’d end up broke. I married somebody with money, so it’s totally different now. But in Le Tigre, after I spent all my money on the first record, I was like, I can’t keep doing this — I can’t raise $8,000 to make another album, which is how much it cost, and then cross my fingers that I’m gonna get it back.
What do you think of “This Island” now?
A lot of people disliked it, but when I listen to it I’m really happy with it. I mean, not all of it. But there are great songs on there: “On the Verge,” “TKO.” We always considered ourselves a conceptual art band. And so part of the art of that record was: What happens when three f—ed-up feminists get on a major label?
So what happened?
I remember one meeting where we were like, “Are you guys gonna put any marketing money behind what we’re doing? Is that what happens?” We were newbies in terms of all that. And they were just like, “Well, we’ve decided to put our marketing money behind JoJo’s new record.” Not JoJo Siwa — JoJo who had that song where she was all, “Get out!” I was like, “Ooookaaaay.” But, I mean, we already knew. We were all in our 30s. The fact that a major label was even interested in three women who weren’t 18 was kind of amazing.
Do you think Le Tigre’s sense of humor will come across to a Gen Z audience?
Yeah, but I think even more than that, sincerity is back. That was one really big earmark of us: We could be funny and sarcastic, but we were also just trying to make something positive in a really negative landscape. Part of the reason we weren’t considered a New York band is maybe that we didn’t have the veneer of coolness. There’s all these books and films and whatever coming out about the New York sound, and we’re never mentioned. We’re always the mashed potatoes, and they’re the steak.
You’re talking about the early-2000s moment with the Strokes and LCD Soundsystem and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Which is weird, because James Murphy [of LCD Soundsystem], one of the first big things he ever did was a remix of [Le Tigre’s] “Deceptacon.” We were all hanging out. James stayed at our apartment and we spent time at his studio. We were breathing the same musical air. No one ever calls them Le Tigre for men, but we’re wannabe LCD Soundsystem feminists? That’s the placement it feels like we get.
Those other acts projected a very different image than Le Tigre.
We were f—ing dorks. We wore kooky costumes. We did dumb-ass dances. And we spoke directly in the mic to people. We weren’t trying to be a band of rock stars where people felt like we were a thousand miles away and they could never be us. We wanted people to see themselves in us. And I feel like people are receptive to that now because everything’s gotten so shiny and fake. People are going back to craft, people are going back to vinyl. We had a song where we labeled ourselves the New Sincerity, and now there’s articles coming out about the New Sincerity.
When Bikini Kill reunited, it was impossible not to think about how relevant the band’s songs about sexual assault still felt. Is the same true for you of Le Tigre’s songs?
Definitely, which is horrifying.
Have you felt inspired to write new songs about what’s going on right now? “Don’t Say Gay,” the overturning of Roe v. Wade and so on.
I’m in another band that hasn’t recorded or played live yet, and I’m writing for them. But so much of my life now is taken up singing about political stuff. In Le Tigre and Bikini Kill we’re singing about the after-effects of rape and domestic violence. We’re singing about queer visibility and how sometimes the visibility feels invisible-izing, if that makes sense. Like, what happens when the visibility lets people think, Oh, it’s all solved? I know as a feminist, the more pictures of me there are and the more interviews I do that just get cut up to get clicks — it actually feels like I get smaller. That’s why I hate doing press”.
It is important that there is a new era for Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. At a time where women are still underrepresented and there is this toxicity that still exists through the industry, the continued words and music from Kathleen Hanna is essential. One of the most important artists of her generation. There will be new interviews closer to the release date of her memoir. Before I wrap up, I want to quote from this interview from Monster Children. They spoke with a figurehead of the Riot Grrrl movement. Someone who owns Tees4Togo, a T-shirt company that works alongside Peace Sisters, a non-profit that sends girls to school in Togo, West Africa:
“After the long hiatus of Bikini Kill, what brought the band back together?
We got asked to play a song to open for The Raincoats, in New York, to celebrate a book that was written about them by Jenn Pelly. I was on the fence about it because I live in California. Kathi [Wilcox] called me and was like, 'Tobi [Vail] is going to be here and we're going to do something,’ I was like, ‘I don’t want to go all the way out there.’ I hung up the phone and was like oh my god, I am so stupid; this is an opportunity to hang out with two of the people I love most on the planet. When a band breaks up, there are always hard feelings and weirdness, but here is an opportunity for us to hang out and celebrate The Raincoats, a band that we all really love. I called back and was like sure, let’s do it.
The funny thing was I ended up being the one who really wanted to play together more because it was so much fun and awesome for us to be together. Not only just as musicians, but as friends and people who went through this really strange experience, which was Bikini Kill in the 90s. There were only three other people that went through that and to be together with two of them was pretty remarkable and something I wanted to repeat.
The tour originally started in 2019 but was postponed due to covid. Was doing Australia and New Zealand stops something that was planned then?
That was a newer thing. Once the US shows were successful and fun, we realized, we wanted to keep going, and we were like, we want to go back to Australia. As a band, we have always had a fun time when we went to Australia, and it was always a really important bonding time for us. Getting to travel and see old friends in Melbourne. It kind of relieves the stress because we don’t have the same scene dynamics and stuff over there as we do at home.
You guys were brought out to Australia by Steve ‘Pav’ Pavlovic in the 90s, (whose collection makes up the Unpopular exhibition). Do you have any memories of working with him?
Steve let us stay at his apartment, and he said to us, ‘You can stay here but don’t go through my stuff, and don’t wear my bathing suit.’ We were just like, what kind of gross person is going to wear your bathing suit, like, who do you think we are? Then the second he closed the door, we took out his bathing suit, and we all put it on. We took polaroids of each other in his bathing suit, and we left them all over his apartment [laughs]. I think they are in the exhibition, and I want to go there, take a sharpie, and if they’re on a wall, write the context next to them. Because I think it looks like we were taking these cute, sexy polaroids in his bathing suit. But we weren’t. It was just a total joke that we left for him, and he just happened to keep the photos, so they ended up in the show.
Is the mandress going to make a comeback on the current tour?
I wish, but I sold the mandress at a garage sale when I moved from Olympia. I don’t know who has it. But I have seen it on the internet. Someone had one and was wearing it. I would love to buy one. It would be funny to surprise my band by wearing it [laughs]
What’s your take on Twin Peaks now?
I still haven’t watched it, so I really have no business criticizing it [laughs]. It’s the arrogance of youth. The only reason I didn’t like Twin Peaks was because these people in our apartment building had a Twin Peaks party every night, and they didn’t invite us because we were the weird feminists who they thought would criticize everything. So, I made a song that criticized it, just so I could fit in with the stereotype that I was the mean feminist. So, be careful what you wish for, neighbors. Then we went up on the roof and unplugged their cables so they couldn’t watch it [laughs]. We were such jerks. I love that about us”.
For those here in the U.K., order Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk here. It is a book that I think is going to be among the must-haves of 2024. It will be fascinating to read revelations and realities from an icon. The supreme Kathleen Hanna has undeniably made such a big impact on the music world. An influence that is strong today and will continue to connect with women in music for years to come:
“An electric, searing memoir by the original riot grrrl and legendary frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.
'Hey girlfriend I got a proposition, goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want.'
Kathleen Hanna’s rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond. Her band, Bikini Kill, embodies this iconic time, and today their gutsy, radical lyrics of anthems like ‘Rebel Girl’ and ‘Double Dare Ya’ are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?
In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood home, to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes blindingly clear, being in a ‘girl band’, especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or a safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightening rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.
But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her – including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Billy Karren; her friendship with Kurt Cobain; and her introduction to Joan Jett – and they were a testament to how the true punk world nurtured and cared for its own.
Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her later bands, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement and its decline, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity.
In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the darkest, hardest times along with the most joyful – and how it all fuelled her revolutionary art, from the 1980s to today”.
Ahead of the release of that must-read memoir, I wanted to highlight a hugely important artist who was part of the Riot Grrrl movement and was a key figure when it came to kicking against the sexism and misogyny that existed throughout Punk and beyond. As lead of Le Tigre and Bikini Kill, Hanna has been responsible for some of the most anthemic and potent songs of the time. She remains such a key cultural figure…
TO this day.