Jezebel: sleater-kinney

Blast From The Past: Riot Grrrls

Tracie — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Riot Grrrl Retrospective is an "online exhibition" of 11 short clips - which include archival footage and interviews - that explore how the political/musical movement started, and why it faded away.

This clip is Part 1 of the series, and focuses mainly on Bikini Kill. The rest of the clips are available on YouTube, but for some reason, aren't embeddable, so we're linking out to them.

Part 2: Brat Mobile and Girl Germs

Part 3: Beat Happening

Part 4: Allison Wolfe

Part 5: Nomy Lamm

Part 6: Corin Tucker, Emily's Sassy Lime

Part 7: More Bikini Kill, Rachel Karns, Sharon Cheslow

Part 8: When they all started freaking out about the media attention

Part 9: How their message was lost in the mainstream media (with the exception of Sassy) and how there was too much focus on the baby barrettes

Part 10: What Riot Grrrl Means

Part 11: The message is still the same, but now there are few women delivering it

Riot Grrrl Retrospective [EMPSFM]

Feminist Bookstores

Maria — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:40:00 EST

ThunderAnt is a comedy duo that is a double dose of awesome: it consists of Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater Kinney, and Fred Armisen from SNL. The two get together, don wigs and make hilarious videos about one man shows, chefs and awkward dates. One of their more popular videos centered around two women who work in a feminist bookstore. Following desperate pleas for more of these two characters, ThunderAnt has released a second video from the sage-scented counters of Women and Women First. In this video, the ladies select CDs to sell in the store. Watch the video by clicking on the image above left. [Videogum]

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein of the late,...

Jessica — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:15:00 EST

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein of the late, great Sleater-Kinney tried out Wii music for Slate and found it kind of…wussy. But not in a bad way! Brownstein says, "For one thing, your Mii (the avatar you create to represent yourself in the game) has mallets instead of hands, a pair of harmless, fingerless spheres...Not surprisingly for a game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto—the creator of Super Mario Bros.—the figures are diminutive and huggable and about as threatening as a cotton ball." Aw. Cotton balls don't sound very rockin' to us, but we're pretty sure Mario and Luigi can get down pretty hard. [Slate]

Who Is The Liz Phair Of The New Generation?

Jessica — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Moe is not the only Phair-lover on staff; I, too, listened to Exile In Guyville at least once a week for the entirety of my college career, not to mention the time spent on whitechocolatespaceegg and Whip Smart. I was shaped by Phair, but not just by her alone — I also spent many, many ponderous hours with Sleater-Kinney and Kim Deal and Belly and lots of other disaffected, apathetic, introspective white ladies. Carrie Brownstein, former Sleater-Kinney guitarist was on NPR yesterday, talking about the "sound of a generation" — i.e., how music can define a specific era. Much of the talk focused on the difference between Generation X's musical preferences and Generation Y's. Although I am technically part of Generation Y, as its often defined as those born between 1982 and 2002, my musical tastes are very staunchly X, and hearing Brownstein talk made me wonder: what happened to all those sad young indie rock girls?

I realize that the music industry has changed so drastically since 1993, when Exile in Guyville came out, that indie rock has ceased to mean anything whatsoever, but I wonder what the girls like me and Moe are listening to today; not the girls who worship Rihanna and that fucking Katy Perry we get 10,000 press releases about (apparently Perry's single "I Kissed A Girl," is number 2 on iTunes. Sample lyric: "I kissed a girl just to try it, hope my boyfriend don't mind it."). I mean the girls who read Sylvia Plath and write bad poetry and secretly hate everyone and themselves. Who are they listening to?

I asked some friends who write about music, and they seem to think the days of apathy are over. "Indie rock" girls are either like M.I.A and Santogold, awesome, multicultural and political but also optimistic; or they're folk-y twee beauties like Regina Spektor and Joanna Newsom. I want to draw ties between music and the Clintons and Obama (the Clintons = apathetic 90s = Liz Phair; Obama = activist-y, optimistic aughts = M.I.A.) but blogging doesn't give me the time to flesh that out so I don't sound idiotic.

But you know, the music industry is a huge and sprawling thing these days since no one pays for music anymore anyway. There has to be some room for lonely ladies who will tell you that we're all going to die. Can anyone tell me where they are?

Sound Of A Generation [NPR]
Earlier: Did Liz Phair Predict Your Life Or Did She Actually Dictate It?

Someone Needs To Throw Another Tampon Into The Crowd

Jessica — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:00:00 EST

Every few years someone pens a piece about how women in rock are finally mainstream, pointing to the "emergence" of female singer-songwriters as proof. This weekend, The Telegraph, in an article about the "New Girl Power" in rock, declared that the mainstream music industry "has rarely invested in girls with guitars: it has always preferred them dressed-up and dancing." I'd argue that the rock world has invested in girls with guitars since rock began: At the beginning there were Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, and more recently Sheryl Crow, Annie Lennox, Bjork, Chrissie Hynde, Bonnie Raitt — the list goes on. There have also been loads of successful acts with pretty ladies at the helm, including No Doubt, Garbage, and Blondie. The place where women are still scarce is as part of bands. Besides the Donnas and the GoGos, I can't think of one all-female band that reached the upper levels of the Billboard charts (I'm sure there are others).

What's even scarcer are male-fronted bands with women who play bass or guitar. If there is a woman in a band, she's generally the gorgeous face out front a la Jenny Lewis in Rilo Kiley. Bassists Tina Weymouth in the Talking Heads and D'arcy Wretzky from the Smashing Pumpkins are notable exceptions to the rule.

Joan Jett, one of only two women in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists and former member of the all-girl band the Runaways, thinks that male critics are threatened by female rockers, which could explain the dearth of head bangers in bras. "My personal opinion is that rock'n' roll is very sexual, and when you're playing it, you're owning your sexuality," she tells the Guardian. "And I guess that's very threatening to a lot of people - that's the only thing I can figure why we ran into so much resistance."

My secret hope is that the Rock 'n Roll Camp for Girls will usher in a riot grrrl redux, and we'll return to the halcyon days of the early 90s when people cared about Sleater Kinney and the Breeders and Bikini Kill. Looking at a recent cover of Blender which features a half naked Pussycat Doll, I don't have much hope. Maybe someone needs to a tampon at the American audience to get shit riled up again.

The New Girl Power [Telegraph]
Queen Of Noise [Guardian]