Bikini Kill taught me pretty quickly that not every room was supposed to be about guys like me.
That was probably good for me.
I first heard them not long after I got to Seattle in ’92.
Somebody at the store had the Bikini Kill EP — the one Joan Jett produced — and put it on.
“Double Dare Ya.”
Kathleen Hanna comes screaming out of the speakers:
Hey girlfriend.
That was enough.
I wanted to know who the hell these people were.
Bikini Kill were from Olympia, not Seattle, and that distinction matters.
Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox and Billy Karren.
They came out of a whole different little world down there — Evergreen, K Records, homemade zines, punk shows, people making their own records and figuring out ways to do things without waiting for somebody to give them permission.
And then Riot Grrrl happened.
Or started happening.
Or whatever the hell you're supposed to call it.
I've read enough arguments about who invented what to stay out of that one.
Bikini Kill were right in the middle of it.
Kathleen and Tobi had already been making the Bikini Kill zine, and the band treated shows, records and writing like parts of the same thing.
Sexism in punk.
Violence against women.
Girls starting bands.
Girls making zines.
Girls taking up space.
Pretty basic ideas when you write them down.
Apparently they weren't basic enough.
I saw Bikini Kill after I moved out here, and the thing I remember most wasn't actually a song.
It was Kathleen telling the girls to come up front.
The first time you hear that as a guy, there's this stupid little instinct to think:
Hey, what about me?
Then you look around and realize practically every show you've ever been to has already answered that question.
You'll survive three feet farther back, Nate.
I did.
And the shows were fucking great.
Messy, confrontational, funny, sometimes uncomfortable.
People argued.
People yelled back.
Sometimes the argument seemed almost as important as whatever song they were playing.
That's something that gets lost when people turn Riot Grrrl into a fashion spread or a couple of slogans.
It wasn't tidy.
Bikini Kill definitely weren't tidy.
Then “Rebel Girl” showed up.
That's still one of the great punk songs as far as I'm concerned.
And yes, Joan Jett is on one of the versions.
Because apparently the universe occasionally gets something exactly right.
Pussy Whipped came out in ’93.
“Alien She.” “Magnet.” “Sugar.” “Star Bellied Boy.” “For Tammy Rae.”
And “Rebel Girl” again.
They recorded the thing at Avast! here in Seattle, which is another reminder that Olympia and Seattle weren't separate planets. People moved up and down I-5 constantly.
Tacoma. Olympia. Seattle.
There it is again.
A ridiculous amount of this website fits inside a couple hours of highway.
There's also the Nirvana story.
You know the one.
Kathleen was hanging out with Kurt one night in ’91. Earlier she'd been at a grocery store with Tobi and they'd seen this deodorant called Teen Spirit.
Later, drunk at Kurt's place, Kathleen wrote:
Kurt smells like Teen Spirit
on his wall.
In marker.
Not spray paint.
Kurt didn't know Teen Spirit was deodorant.
He just liked the phrase.
Eventually he called Kathleen and asked if he could use it.
She said sure.
And somewhere in there one of the biggest rock songs in the world got its name from a deodorant joke.
Perfect.
But honestly, I hate when that becomes the only Bikini Kill story people know.
Kathleen Hanna didn't spend the early ’90s making records, zines and starting arguments just so she could eventually become a piece of Nirvana trivia.
Bikini Kill made their own history.
The split with Huggy Bear came out in ’93.
Then there were the singles.
New Radio.
Anti-Pleasure Dissertation.
I Like Fucking.
And Reject All American in ’96.
By then they sounded different.
Still Bikini Kill, but tighter in some places, stranger in others. They'd spent years touring and getting screamed at by people who loved them and people who absolutely fucking hated them.
That has to do something to a band.
They finally broke up in ’97.
No dramatic mythology required.
They'd done seven years.
Kathleen eventually started Le Tigre, which sounds completely different — keyboards, electronics, dance music, punk — and somehow makes perfect sense anyway.
I've got their records too.
Of course I do.
Tobi and Kathi kept making music as well.
Nobody vanished.
Nobody needs a tragic ending here.
I still put Pussy Whipped on pretty regularly.
But these days I think I understand Bikini Kill a little differently than I did when I was twenty-something and first heard them.
Back then I mostly heard a great punk band with a woman screaming at me.
Now I hear the whole network around it too.
The zines.
The all-ages shows.
Olympia.
Kill Rock Stars.
Girls starting bands because somebody onstage told them they should.
People making their own little pieces of culture and passing them hand to hand.
That's part of the Northwest story too.
A big part.
Now move back and let the girls up front.
