Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now

Edited by Nadine Momem, Black Dog Publishing

So what do you know about Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, other than that hipsters like to wear their patches? Was Beth Ditto (who wrote this book’s beautifully tear-inducing foreword) correct at a 2006 Starlight Ballroom performance when she told her audience that most of them were too young to know what riot grrrl is? In the early 1990s riot grrrl re-wrote feminism for a new generation, embracing lipstick, fishnets, and miniskirts, and shifting focus from workplace conduct and fair pay to music and art. The reason riot grrrl isn’t the household name that Ms. magazine is is because when it was at its superficial peak in Fall of 1992, the community declared a media blackout due to misrepresentation in mainstream publications like USA Today and Newsweek. While the movement continued to thrive on its own with grrrl bands successfully touring, grrrl events sprouting up all over the place, and hundreds of grrrl zines being passed along throughout the community, there was little mainstream coverage of the movement until the indie-gets-mainstream shift (when artists like Bright Eyes began selling out theaters and Dashboard Confessional was topping MTV’s charts) at the turn of the century. That, coupled with riot grrrl’s policy of being purely communal and not having any definitive leader or documents, have made it hard to trace the herstory of the movement and Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now is the first real literary attempt at that. A children’s school book published in 2001 as a part of The Need to Know Library series was the actual first effort.

Mirroring the communal nature of the movement, Riot Grrrl doesn’t have a single storyteller, but seven writers and several hundred quotes from previously published interviews, giving the book uncountable narrators. This provides sprawling coverage and stays true to the scene, but, combined with the fact that very little editing was done on the essays compiled in this book (even for spelling), redundancy and over-explaining get to be a problem.

The book’s most successful chapter is its first, in which Julia Downes explores the birth of riot grrrl in Olympia, Washington DC, and even Britain. The PhD student and Ladyfest organizer discusses the founding of K Records, the forming of bands like Heavens To Betsy and Huggy Bear, community meetings, zine culture, and early feminist/queer/riot grrrl events. Her descriptions have her sounding like an insider and the passion with which she writes makes Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile) and Kathleen Hannah (Bikini Kill) sound as important as Iggy Pop and Johnny Thunders and, in all honesty, they are.

Beyond Downes’s chapter, the book is generally lacking. Cazz Blaze, who repeated much of what Downes wrote of Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, writes a history of artists and movements that have inspired (but aren’t) riot grrrl, however the depth which she explores these bands is excessive. She also manages to get into alarming detail about lesser-known grrrl bands like Kenickie and Voodoo Queens, while breezing over icons of the genre like the Gossip and Sleater-Kinney (whose hiatus she cited by the wrong year). Red Chidgey wrote an extensive chapter on the history of zines, which again was a reiteration of previous chapters. It was also disappointing that it didn’t contain more writing from actual zines, which left the article dry and nap-inducing. The final chapter of prose (by Suzy Corrigan) sounds like a collegiate essay on Kathleen Hannah and Le Tigre’s (one of Hannah’s previous bands) song “Hot Topic.” Hannah and her song prove to be a weak thread as the chapter is broken into segments about events Corrigan has organized (which were discussed in previous chapters), riot grrrl’s DC roots (which were discussed in previous chapters), and rants against conservatives and pornography. The only new and interesting thing Corrigan has to discuss is the history of Guerrilla Girls, a very influential group of female artists from NYC.

The end of the book includes horribly random timelines constructed by Julia Downes that have entries as specific as “Molly Neuman returns to DC for Christmas and makes the first Girl Germs on a Xerox machine at her dad’s office,” and “Kaia Wilson and Melissa York leave Team Dresch,” yet fail to mention things as significant as Allison Wolfe’s current riot grrrl band, Partyline, and the fact that the Gossip appeared on the cover of NME.

What is, at many times, more interesting than the writing, is the artwork and images that fill Riot Grrrl. These visual manifestations of the movement are almost enough to tell its story on their own. There are flyers and posters for concerts, live photos, programs from riot grrrl festivals, and scans of grrrl zines and famous manifestos. When considering this wonderful collection of visuals, Riot Grrrl could be considered very successful as an art book, even if the accompanying words are lacking.

Despite its problems, Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now is a success in that no other piece of literature has been able to document such an important movement so fully (or even attempted to). Unfortunately, between the price ($29.95) and lackluster writing, most people outside of the scene probably won’t take the time to pick it up, but for those riot grrrls, former riot grrrls, and wannabe riot grrrls, reading this book will inspire many wonderful memories of rainy days spent listening to Pussy Whipped; talking to Allison Wolfe about the new Missy Elliot record; or seeing the Gossip play in front of 20 people and knowing one day, many years later, you’d get to brag about it. -Izzy Cihak

 

Question to Reader: While I could take the time to think of a question for all of you readers, in Beth Ditto’s brilliantly touching and powerful foreward to Riot Grrrl, she poses a question far better than I could come up with, so I’ll let her handle this one:

The best answer to the question “Stones or Beatles?” was muttered this winter by a genius named Guy Picciotto while laying down demos for a record he was producing. When the question was asked for about the thousandth time, as usual, always in studio conversation: “Stones or Beatles?”Guy said simply: “The Smiths”. (sic) Ever since then when asked Ramones or Sex Pistols” (sic) I will always say: “The Slits” or better yet turn around and ask: “Heavens to Betsy or Bratmobile”

In my eyes, Bratmobile is the obvious answer, but I might have a bit of a bias, considering that growing up outside of DC I used to run into Allison Wolfe on a Weekly basis at venues like The Black Cat and the 9:30 Club and she is still somewhat of an acquaintance. Anyway, let us know what you think.