Boss Hog – Spex: Girls Der Gegenwart (PRESS, GERMANY)

Photos: Jens Schmidt, Achim Kröpsch, and Pat Blashill.

After Girlism: What do Monie Love A1 L7, STP, Boss Hogg, and Babes In Toyland have in common? They are all female musicians in the more or less independent music industry who take matters into their own hands. They are almost all American. They all saw the Girlism magazine and reacted to it. They all distance themselves from the idea of ​​Girlism. They were all asked similar questions, and they reacted—as expected—in completely different ways. And why were Betty Boo and Neneh Cherry left out? (The “Record Mirror” was groaning under the question “Bimbo or Pop Warrior?” at the time). “Where Are You Baby?” was already in the charts during its pre-production and thus belongs to a different girl league (Kylie, Sinitta, Whitney…), and

None of them are hesitant. What do they want? RESPECT

1. Babes in Toyland

Power rock. They were the surprise of the Sonic Youth tour in Europe. Instead of waiting for the headliner, there was enthusiasm. The three girls, petite, in their mid- to late twenties, got together three years ago in Minneapolis and, apart from a single and various compilation bits and pieces, released an LP, “Spanking Machine.” Lori Barbero, the oldest, henna-haired, loudest woman and drummer of the band, says: “So why do we need to rant about women’s issues when our record is called that! It’s clearly solved, isn’t it!?”

Most of the writing is done by Kat Bjelland, a blonde creature who looks like an uncanny doll that’s on the

SOME GIRLS

2. STP

It all starts with ONE RIFF: STP

Mother-Pop doesn’t count either. So we’ll leave everything else on that topic to the Son of Bet-ty-Boo, Hans N. Each of these girls/girl bands released an album this late summer/autumn, and I saw them all live. What they have in common is this: as artists, they define their work as completely independent of gender and girl-specifics, while when clarifying their production conditions and addressing general themes and content, they quite naturally sometimes speak from a woman’s perspective. Monie In The Middle! Smell The Magic! Hey Bastard! Swamp Pussy! Boss Hogg!

On stage, singing and playing guitar, they transform into a terrifying monster. Twilight-zone-like. That so much power comes out of it…and the songs are accordingly titled “Vomit Heart” or “He’s My Thing” or “Dust Cake Boy” and “Fork Down Throat.” The mildest under these circumstances is the black-haired Michelle Leon, on bass. They all agree with the statement that Karen Schoemer, the critic for the N.Y. Times, wrote about the Babes: “…best when screaming about ex-boyfriends.” In practice, it also becomes clear that they all really work hard, play WELL. No amateurism, completely imbued with the will to play hard rock. There’s a little Hüsker Dü in them, a little Sub pop-rock, a little No Wave/N.Y. – this is their third tour together. That’s where they meet the black-haired drummer Dee, that’s where they learn to play!

Kat is a self-confessed country bumpkin: >>I actually only started getting interested in rock music quite late, around 19 or 20. I grew up with the radio and Tom Petty as a good average of what was available to listen to. But then I immediately joined a band…« Kat is the only one who had band experience before the Babes. The other two were “just” fans. Lori, however, was a die-hard fan. She originally lived in New Jersey and can tell you how, as a 13 or 14-year-old, she would go to NYC on weekends to see punk and later no wave music in the music clubs

>>No, we don’t want to be a decidedly GIRL band… it just turned out that way… of course, it’s much more pleasant to be on tour with women,” they say, “if only because of shared interests, like SHOPPING!<< And on this endless battlefield, they're mainly after shoes and interesting tights! And besides, you're less exasperated when you're working with women when you have to rehearse songs. Well, the blessing of not being co-educated! And you can always nibble on the guys later. They prefer to get their dessert at concerts by Napalm Death, Carcass… etc. According to the babes, that’s where you can pick up the best, most tender, most interesting white guys, apart from that, they’re practicing. The babes are hard workers, even if they don’t look it. And even if the songs don’t exactly promise musical variety. But they are short, intense, and of a similar/different style: somewhere between punk and Minutemen. Appearance: Different types: The red-haired, dreadlocked power woman, the black-haired, delicate, classic bass woman, and the blonde, schoolgirl-clean, white-shirted, blue-eyed surprise musician who lets out her roar with calculated confidence. “It’s meant seriously. But also kind of funny!” The Fastest? The four hard-boiled L.A. girls are the nimble trash-punk queens who sweep through clubs with their music, cleaning up even if you didn’t ask for it! And each with differently colored hair that flies in time to the beat. Stage-dive-proof. The blonde guitarist Suzi Gardner, Plaka, the red-haired bassist Jennifer Finch, and the mottled singer Donita Sparks, who just had her tooth fixed, could all be models for punk icon painting, or for funny photos of girls dressed in bright colors and fun dirt. L7 makes music without wasting time. At first, you think they can’t do it, or that their music is too old; And the fact that Donita sometimes sounds like a resurrected John Lydon on speed is a bit disconcerting, but then they repeatedly revive the cozy old punk atmosphere and throw it around the room, embracing that style and tossing it aside. And after three songs, the entire audience has gotten it and remembers pogo dancing and its variations. L7 also distance themselves from “female rock,” even jokingly, from a category like “fadcore,” under which they were lumped together with Babes, Dickless, and the others in the English press. “That was really awful. It’s exactly what you have to fight against. Sexism. That they can’t think of anything better than to treat you in such a gender-based way. You have to be accepted as a musician, first and foremost.” They say this unanimously. End of story. “Maximum Rock’n’Roll,” they understood that; they wrote about her without immediately and obsessively addressing the topic of women. I, on the other hand, after they’ve confiscated my copy of the magazine *Gir-lism* multiple times (each of them needs at least two copies!), get interrogated about what exactly is meant by the term “slut rock.” Gulp. I try my best, and they grin. And when I ask why they make slightly bitchy jokes about Kim Gordon on stage… “Uh-oh, it was just a joke! Besides, being a ‘stoner’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing!” >>We were all boys back then, but three and a half years ago we decided to cut off our dicks—and have some fun.<< L7 is: A rare form of acid, a brand of "lubrication/sex gel," and it's an old bebop slang term for "square." Then there's the "Lesbian Seven" and, well, the universal thing about gender. The Sex Pistols used the expression in “I Wanna Be Me,” and Rick James in an album title. Real references! All their earlier bands, however, deny it! No sooner has “Women in Rock Music”/”Girlism” been thoroughly discussed with this band than they let themselves be redeemed by shopping and Picking up guys is the only sensible thing to think about on a tour like this, or anywhere else for that matter. And where to find the nearest mailbox. Donita shows me the latest additions to her postcard collection. Mmmh. The tour is going to be as juicy as the new mini-LP. They could easily play Jane’s Addiction. Favorite sound: “Ssshhhshhshs!” whenever they see a picture of a handsome guy. Nevertheless, they’re very familiar with the all-female rock scene, from mainstream metal queens like Vixen down to the Lunachicks, the N.Y. friends with whom L7 are planning to do a split single soon. They’re a very observant bunch who see themselves as an underground rock band. With a raw, fat, good laugh. Broad-shouldered women from L.A., some with roots in Chicago Motto: We can’t get laid! >Although we’re always on the lookout! We’ll take anything: sex, food, shopping, sleeping, and smelling. We want all kinds of souvenirs and BIG HOT DOGGGS! VERY BIG HOT DOGGS. We can’t rule out aggression. We’re a power quartet! Hitting heavy. Blow On Some Steam. It’s aggressive, but you can lambada to it… we are NOT Henry Rollins.<<< Favorite bands: Early Gogos, Bangles, girl garage grunge with attitude! Jennifer played in a band with Kat from The Babes. >>It really took a while for us to gel as a band; people made us more of an all-girl band than we made ourselves out to be.<<< Her lyrics are about women and prisons, drugs, cars. And cool underground girls, inspired by, among others, Becky from the Lunachicks! Recommendation: The Del Rubio Triplets. They’re 55 years old combined, play acoustic guitar and wear go-go boots, live in a trailer, and are also real identical triplets. They play the craziest cover versions, e.g., of “Light My Fire.” They have great legs. We recommend them! Finally… to knock out 3. Monie Love Die the gender thing! Woman with a different name. Monie Love, rapper from Battersea, now based in Queens, N.Y. Really Simone Johnson. Monie in the middle. Disoriented. I’m disoriented with her. Musty. Chic. The new jacket. It works. No talking. Ordered professionalism Tired. Sulky. Monie’s in a bad mood. The release date of her album “Down To Earth” (SPEX 8/90) has been postponed again. And legions of journalists have already asked her for an interview. I joined the queue and waited: that was a mistake. Rarely has there been such a failed attempt at communication between women. At times, simply total refusal! Oh dear. Failure. Shit. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I’m not a sister and not “for real.” Approaching the person Monie Love can’t happen through an interview (at least not with me). Monie Love only ever approaches others completely through her work. That’s how she got this far and to the “right” people in a relatively short time. Somehow, the dream of being the first world-famous super-rapper and musician must be behind it. The whole thing can only be viewed and examined as a work of art, from the outside, as an object She acts tough and has no sense of humor, which I actually find very endearing. Humor is usually used to level out any differences in show business, indeed in culture in general. Of course, I can’t expect her to take someone seriously who comes from white indie rock. And she only comments on quotes like Kim Gordon’s assertion (declared as a question) that all women are actually anarchists with an unintelligible grumble and a “I don’t know what you want.” No further connections. No makeup, no dyeing, no disguises, no “fun” – no rock ‘n’ roll. This is hip hop, and the show she puts on is herself. Only after the interview did she thaw out a little for two seconds. She talked about the video and how she really likes Salt-N-Pepa. Her connection to stars (Jungle Brothers, Fine Young Cannibals) on the one hand and women on the other is nonstop. Her performance with Almond Joy, her N.Y. friend and “partner in crime” (rumor has it they made surprise appearances at parties, where the two of them, dressed as gangsters in black leather, would rap), was one of the best of the entire N.M. Seminar this summer. Completely raw, accompanied only by a bass and drums. She says of herself that she was first and foremost influenced by Roxanne Shante; a significant step in her career was the duet with Queen Latifah with the programmatic title “Ladies First.” Now she wants to get Madonna to rap, her big dream. But it fits. She admires Madonna because she is so independent, because of her ambition, and >>>>because she keeps stirring up new controversies, it just never stops.<<< Monie Love wants to experiment and not take orders from anyone. This includes listening to all sorts of things, “from jazz to flamenco to Prince, indie rock and Jamaican music”: “I like Sinead O’Connor.” She has her hands in many baskets,” as she says, and the women’s issue is just one of them, and only in relation to the problems of Black women: “It all comes down to how you present yourself: if you present yourself as a sex object, like Oakland 357, then you’ll be treated as such, whereas Latifah: no one would ever think of seeing her as a sex object. I have nothing to do with that either: I’m not going to expose parts of my body to the public.” Despite her strange, matter-of-fact, and somewhat surly mood, her drive to keep going, to reach the top, is also evident in this conversation; in this respect, she’s clearly Madonna-compatible! Then the whole hip-hop family thing (she belongs to the family of Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, and DeLaSoul, the Native Tongues) takes a backseat to everything else. And just as Madonna jogs, Monie retreats behind her books. Even though her openly acknowledged interest in Islamic studies seems to be starting to get on her nerves: “I seem to be walking around with a crescent moon on my forehead, because everyone keeps asking me about it…” I want to take more time. But she’s a complete bastion of resistance. She blocks things out while simultaneously embracing rap’s commercialization. And one sentence, casually uttered, did impress me: “I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, certainly not ‘for the rest of my natural life.'” But, what are you actually thinking about? >>On how to properly tackle the day: First, make yourself a good breakfast, and then comes work! That’s what I concentrate on, and then I work; because when I want to know something, I WANT to know it. That’s how it was with my interest in Islam, and that’s how it is with music.<< And what are you reading now? >>Nothing special, I watch TV! Cartoons and stuff.<< Where she gets her best ideas for new “experiments,” like the use of 4. STP “real” instruments. 4 Connections women! One of the most important N.Y. underground rock bands of recent years was Pussy Galore. A band with man-cher connection to the cause of women (title). With two very different women (Julie and Kristina) in the band, who in turn were led by a sensitive but tough guy – John Spenser. Now PG has disbanded. Julie Cafritz, the small, dynamic guitarist, founded a power quartet with Sally from the Honeymoon Killers (drummer) and the two “new” members, Melissa (guitar) and Jackie (guitar), with whom they create equally fast and targeted noise, both solo (rather scruffy in small clubs and in blue jeans) and on a larger scale as a support act (for example, for Sonic Youth on the U.S. tour) in silver shoes and selected 70s trash styling. “Hey Bastard… love me for what I am”. STP like the yellow SPEX cover. They don’t feel addressed, “fight the girlism… the being lumped in with the others!”, but they are the most curious girls imaginable. Julie is a kind of female Thurston. She’s everywhere, playing here and there (kick e.g., on the evening of an STP gig (later with the Velvet Monkeys), agitates and explicitly hates practicing guitar. Unlike her other two guitarists, Jackie Nimitz (guitar and lead vocals) and especially Melissa Huffsmith, who really wants to be able to play guitar well. Julie: >>But I think Thurston, for example, has a much more precise understanding of music, whereas we…

Jackie: >>We approach music quite unconsciously. We want it that way. We let a lot of things happen. We would never do a long soundcheck.<< Julie: “I want to rock! Straightforward. Our three guitars played together in such a way that it sounded like one big… You know, it all stems from that ONE riff you like… of course, we also try to vary it a bit… but the goal remains to hammer that ONE riff into people’s heads.” Perhaps that’s where the name STP comes from. The simple brand, straightforward thing: a type of motor oil. Julie: >It was also the name for a strong type of LSD that was popular in the 60s, but we just like the logo.<<< Jackie: “What I really admire, among other things, about S.Y., is the ability to take something very subtle, the subject, and present it in a totally unsubtle way!”<<<>

Melissa: “A good example of an absolutely successful one-riff song is ‘Shove’ by L7.”

STP, like all girls, aren’t just stuck on ONE RIFF

Julie: As far as the girl thing goes, I have to say that we’re not the kind of girl band that plays up their girlhood, emphasizes it like Dickless or Babes In Toyland, nor do we want to make it especially clear that we CAN do it TOO, that we’re tougher and better than the guys, like L7 or the Lunachicks do.

Sally: “We don’t define ourselves by that at all.”

Julie: “It’s definitely easier and more comfortable working with women. I know what I’m talking about because I worked with guys for years. It was always quite a bit of work. It was never a given that I was DOING something. I always had to PRESENT it while the guys jammed without constantly having to justify myself.”

Melissa: “Women in rock music are allowed with oil.

They should simply never be treated as a ‘novelty’ again. You have to work with that in mind.

Jackie: >>Instead of playing tambourine or having an obligatory bass, or instead of acting like rebellious girls, we just play! Us! Our music!<<< It's telling that STP doesn't have a female bassist in the band, like so many other all-male bands, but three guitars! All four of them are very equal. No role-playing. Julie: >>We understand that the girlism thing is used to both ghettoize the genre and make it more widely known. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to only ever get split-single offers with girl bands. It’s perfectly fine that and how people are attracted to girls. For example, Bob Bert, from Bewitched, is simply ALWAYS fascinated when there’s one girl on stage, and with four of them, he really goes wild!

But of course, it’s also about reaching a wider audience, but actually, I hate girl bands. And I especially dislike girls’ voices. Whether high-pitched, screechy, or Janis Joplin. Real female voices, like pop star voices like Madonna or, earlier, Debbie Harry, are great, of course, but in the indie scene, it’s actually pretty awful.

Therefore, a girl band, including our own, STP, has to overcome this vocal handicap! That means it’s a real problem. And I also don’t like ‘instrumentals’…<<< making a special musical effort! It So, STP is a strange balancing act between a desire for professionalism and flirting with one’s own flaws, between not wanting to engage in the agony of daily practice! Sally: >>Actually, I trained as an opera singer. I don’t even want to play drums ‘too well’. It’s a matter of how to keep something creatively going.<<< Melissa: >>I want to become an asshole virtuoso on the guitar!<<< Julie: >>And I won’t learn anything new in the next few years, but rather expand my horizons!<<< >With oil… because their job is to observe and describe the band’s chemistry. Ultimately, it’s about how to overcome both the cliché of the “artificial”

and that of the “original” against which it was once developed, in underground power rock. To still let some kind of “IT” out unbroken! Perhaps a female skill.

5. Boss Hog

Men are conservative, women can be reactionary! And it’s in the tension between the two that it becomes truly wonderful! Boss Hog is the band of Kristina, the tall, slim, pretty, model-like, dark-haired woman in a designer dress, who also speaks fluent Spanish and roars so brutally that you almost have to sit down. The element of surprise—this tension between her appearance and her tougher-than-every-other demeanor—is what makes Boss Hog (named after a television character) so charming, cleanliness and the hippest cultural products (in CD or book form, including the 5-LP cassette with the collected spoken works of Jack Kerouac) surround them in their lavish abode, lavish by New York underground standards. It’s a meticulously planned world. Bourgeois hardcore. John, in particular, is super-fussy about the recordings for the new album. It bothers him a bit that Boss Hog isn’t really his thing, you can sense it, and so, to compensate, he and Kristina have recently joined the Gibson Brothers.

Boss Hog thrives, among other things, on the tension between the two main protagonists, Kristina and John, which, according to Kristina, is also the intention. The band as a relationship tank with a built-in aggression launcher: Boss Hog

a nasty type, something like the bad-tempered comedian W.C. Fields). Well, the contradictions. Boss Hog is an unusual and fragile Jekyll-Hyde construct. This music doesn’t want to come from the streets, nor does it want to sound like it. And it doesn’t. The two main characters are always surrounded by this air of “quality” (which, when it’s discernible in objects, always immediately arouses greed in Clara), the clean or, let’s be frank, snobbish element in the underground. The ones who have a connection to the other world. Kristina and her boyfriend John Spenser, former head of Pussy Galore, where she was only a minor character, both work for the daily newspaper “U.S. Today,” and it’s said that John owns apartment buildings in New York. Accuracy, hurl. Two guys from the irrevocably defunct Pussy Galore have taken on John and Kristina, the feudal married couple, for Boss Hog. They both look incredibly good, alone and together. Which was also the only reason for Kristina to let herself be photographed as a cool, naked rock pin-up for the first Boss Hog album. They are perfectionistic, fanatical bourgeois aesthetes in a trash world and therefore love cats. And they are extremely ambitious, perhaps the Lux/Ivy construct of the 90s.

The new album is supposed to be released in winter. That Boss Hog and STP don’t have a particularly close, friendly relationship goes without saying.”