Riot Grrrl 3

This is the third part of the interview I did with Julia Downes for her PhD thesis on DIY Queer Feminist (Sub)cultural Resistance in the UK. It (partly) tackles the question of critical distance.

The answer I gave regarding my role at Melody Maker is specific to the three months surrounding the height of coverage given to Riot Grrrl in the music press. (I can remember one conversation with Simon Price vividly, where he was trying to engage me in informed discussion and I was basically saying, "Which side are you on?") Clearly, I couldn't have felt like that the entire time I worked at MM... although even now, I have considerable sympathy with the views stated below. Indeed, some might regard both Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B as natural end-results of holding those views.

3. How did you reconcile your role and responsibilities as a music journalist with your relationships with those involved with riot grrrl, e.g. members of Huggy Bear?
Ah fuck. Yeah. Well, first up – the only reason I avoided seeing Huggy Bear from the off was because I was a little worried that I’d really like them and that if I really liked them I’d have to write about them and if I wrote about them it was going to cause an awful lot of trouble. I was fucking itching to start a revolution from within. I used to walk into Melody Maker (a paper which, let’s not forget, I was both the primary writer and Assistant Editor of) at the height of Riot Grrrl and have five different journalists screaming at me simultaneously.
I can remember a train journey to Brighton with another music critic which was composed entirely of him shouting, “You’re just a fucking music journalist!” No I wasn’t. I was Everett True. I could change worlds. If I hadn’t believed back then I could change worlds I wouldn’t have been writing for Melody Maker. It would have been a gross abuse of my responsibilities and (minimal) power. I was actively engaged in trying to bring the UK music press down from within (there was one editorial I wrote on the letters’ page which personally attacked three different journalists from my own paper). I was trying my hardest to fuck shit up.
I saw my responsibilities as a music journalist in a very different light to those around me: 1) entertain above everything, 2) compromise is the Devil talking, 3) provide alternatives, provide alternatives!, 4) make folk jealous of me, 5) get rid of the stinking rotten patriarchal mess called rock music and replace it with something far more challenging and entertaining and right-thinking.
I actually was aware to the point of... Christ knows... about my relationships with musicians (not just Huggy Bear)... I would go out of my way to slag friends off in print, just to prove I wouldn’t let friendship get in the way of my opinion: and I never pretended not to know someone. It was common knowledge I lived with Huggy Bear: indeed, I suspect a lot of their ideals and terminology came out of conversations they had with both me and Sally Margaret Joy (who is still about the most paranoid but brilliant writer I’ve ever encountered). I never saw any sort of contradiction or wrongness in the fact I chose to hang out with musicians and record label bosses and not other music critics – surely that was the point, to immerse yourself in the lifestyle to such a degree that you come to represent the lifestyle?
But yeah, it rapidly got very weird. I made a major error of judgment by asking a journeyman US critic to interview Bikini Kill for the first British music press interview (instead of me) – he was so crass on both the ‘phone and in the resulting article, he pretty much put Kathleen off the mainstream music media for life. (So maybe he did serve a purpose after all!!) When Bikini Kill came over to tour, I pretended not to know them – despite having recorded a single with Tobi – and didn’t attend any shows I felt I would be even vaguely unwelcome at. Likewise, other Olympia musicians, some of whom only knew me from second-hand accounts and were naturally wary of this almost mythical UK music critic who was on first name terms with some very famous people, seemed to embody everything anybody thought of the UK music press, and yet still claimed to be down with the underground, the insurrectionists.
When Huggy Bear went off to tour the US, Jo was still living in my house – and was one of my best friends, difficulties and trauma caused by my enthusiastic championing and coverage of Riot Grrrl in Melody Maker notwithstanding. I never saw her again! (Well, once actually.) It all got remarkably bitter, remarkably fast.

You can find Part 1 of this series here.
You can find Part 2 of this series here.
You can find Part 4 of this series here.
You can find Part 5 of this series here.
You can find Part 6 of this series here.
You can find Part 7 of this series here.
You can find the follow-up interview in this series here.
You can find the entire series collected together here.