Genre: Punk. I think we can all agree on that part. Also Riot Grrl, in the sense that Jesus was Christian. According to the media this is the music that started the genre, even though Bratmobile coined the term. They were very influential, both musically and as ladies who started a zine that acted as one of the organizing cores of the movement.
Where would I have heard of it: They had a ton of mostly clueless media attention in the early 90s. Almost no radio play, of course. I'm sure "Rebel Girl" has been in a few soundtracks or whatever.
Anything of note: Oh god where to start. I am listening to this album as a 30 year old dude in the post-oughts, not as a young 20s girl in the early 90s. I couldn't be less the audience for this if you listen to the band. And yet, I grew up as an aspiring punk in that era and, ok lets start from a different point here.
According to the band, the point was to create a female dialogue in punk rock, a safe place for women within a punk context. The point was by women, for women. But of course this was not within a vacuum. The dudes could hear what was going on. Or, more importantly, the rest of society could. And because they were musicians recording music I can hear part of the dialogue now, 20 years later. But so much of this is context specific. Much of the meat of Riot Grrl was in those fan zines, and it was reacting to a very specific set of social, sub-cultural, national and even local political contexts. The term Riot Grrl was itself a response to the Mount Pleasant Race Riots, much as early punk music was a reaction to late 70s London and the Notting Hill Carnival Riot of 1978.
Unlike punk, whose largest influences were political and economic, the biggest influence on Riot Grrl (other than punk subculture I suppose) was third wave feminism. To sum up a very complex concept, Third Wave feminism started when second wave feminism realized it had ignored everyone who wasn't a white middle class woman, and integrating those concerns would require theorists to interact and discuss with those of different backgrounds. In this context Riot Grrl ended up being a valuable part of the Third wave discussion, as it brought women who were not part of the ivory tower of feminism into the discussion, while lending it a lot of street toughness and energy. It did not bring that many black people in, and it may have scared off a lot of moderate women.
With or without Riot Grrl the result was chaos. Feminism splintered into a thousand sub-strains. With the benefit of hindsight I think it is fairly obvious that fitting the needs and desires of every woman into one blanket term was a somewhat doomed endeavor if you are hoping to come up with a coherent policy conception, and indeed the current policy net being pushed by traditional feminist groups includes things like opposing prostitution and also decriminalizing prostitution. Understanding how groups that seem to be on the same side can be violently advocating opposed policies requires research most people, men and women, are not willing to invest, leading most to just walk away from the topic all together, or cling to third hand concepts that let them believe whatever they want to believe. This gets back to what I was saying about the rest of society being able to hear what was going on. If feminism is an ism, and exists to push women's issues for a result, the other is going to have to be dealt with as something other than the oppressor.
Anyway, rock had long since begun its slide into becoming a boys club. I mean Elvis was not fronting a mixed gender band but he was popular with the ladies. By the 90s there were a lot of musical alternatives, and rock was already becoming somewhat parochial. Punk was stridently parochial, eschewing both Avant Guard affectation as well as anything that might attract a mainstream audience. Within its sub-cultural arena there were obviously women, and there had always been women, but as punk fractured into competing, sometimes violent strains the purists walked a tightrope between traditional leftist but also populist politics. Part of the appeal of the non-specific anarchism of punk is that it has no single doctrine, beyond a generalized DIY energy and a Take What You Want ethos. This let in a lot of pigs. It also let a lot of genuinely nice people who were stepping up because no one else was. And with the benefit of Third Wave Feminism we know that often in these situations, where the person who steps forward to take the mic gets the mic, men tend to get it because women have been conditioned not to. Once that is the context all you need are the pigs in the back to shout down any women to do step up.
So Riot Grrl needed to happen. And it was good for punk, because it provided a whole lot of energy and excitement and brought forward some names that went on to really help carry punk forward through the 90s. Hell they helped start Grunge for crissakes. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was named by a member of Bikini Kill. Look it up bro.
But you will note that none of this has anything to do with musical acumen or desires. Punk stuff so rarely does. It is worth asking at a certain point if there is any reason to listen to this stuff outside of that context. Is Riot Grrl the zeitgeist equivalent of a journal entry? Is listening to it now just like visiting a museum of artifacts, divorced from their use and context other than a few notes on a card? Did it have any sonic additions of its own?
Is it any good: Yes it is good. It is good like all the other good punk bands of the era, in just the same ways. Which is frustrating. I mean it is good. Is it better than Minor Threat or Black Flag? I dunno. Probably not. They have a lot of good tunes though, good energy which is punk's big thing. Without making a musical point beyond what was already there, by just being another hardcore punk band except with chicks, isn't that kind of like Riot Grrl just being the token chick on the cartoon show? The Princess Peach of punk rock?
I think there are two parts to this. First, there are some annoying things, but the music holds up and I wouldn't even be able to make these complaints coherently if they hadn't pushed the political intelligence of punk forward by a decade.
Second, this came out 20 years ago and in a time of rapid change it may as well have been a century. I think that, as a society, many of us have reached a point summarized by Lewis Black in this clip. We just want breakfast. I am not saying Feminism is over or has no more work to do. We just have lives to live and can't keep abreast of every issue ever. I am not saying we shouldn't think for ourselves but we have a division of labor in our society. Activists should get their shit together and come back to us with what they want. Otherwise we are going to do the political equivalent of what America has done with its nutritional advice: throw its hands up in the air and go to McDonalds.
Divorced of the political context? They are a great punk band, if very of their time. The recording is extremely lo-fi, from a time where that meant you couldn't understand the lyrics. The music is rhythmically interesting and very energetic. Not a ton of hooks but enough to keep it interesting. On the other hand, since the point of the music is in the lyrics it kind of undermines the whole thing if you don't have the lyric sheets immediately on hand. Overall they have the sarcastic, angry punk vocals down, and the lyrics that can be understood are pretty funny, if a sometimes bit preachy in their delivery. Still, this is good punk music.
As for the philosophical stuff, I dunno. Rock is dead lets all go listen to EDM and pretend music has value.
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