Riot Grrrl - the follow-up

OK. So this is the second part of the interview Julia Downes carried out with me for her PhD thesis on DIY Queer Feminist (Sub)cultural Resistance in the UK. That's everything. I'm done.

Considering the conventions, structures and pressures of British rock music journalism in the early 1990s and what you knew about riot grrrl at that point, how did you and Sally figure out a way to make riot grrrl comprehensible for Melody Maker readers?


You talk about how you wrote riot grrrl articles with Sally ("you're with us or against us") and how you put the first riot grrrl cover together. I was wondering if you could talk more about the other kinds of music press conventions this coverage also relied on - like making lists of essential riot grrrl bands, fanzines, quotes, influences etc. It just seems that, even though you had a really good grasp of riot grrrl as a structureless, flexible and undefiniable movement, you still had to make riot grrrl comprehensible to your readers through using lists - which ultimately simplified and fixed riot grrrl as an identifiable property.
Back then, as hard as it may be to believe now, the rise of the Top 20 wasn’t endemic, lists weren’t everywhere. They were still overused however. But of course you’re right. We were using certain conventions with which to communicate with our readers: we were concerned with trying to make it as easy as possible for our readers, specifically female (we hoped) to be able to access the information we were providing. This was in the pre-Internet days (by a few years) so it was a concern for us to provide reference points, contacts.


We were aware that we were introducing concepts outside the frame of reference of most of our readership (even allowing for their heightened knowledge of music) and we didn’t want to fuck around and withhold information just to make ourselves seem cooler then them (a common trick among the media) - we wanted everything we knew about, pretty much, to be available to our readers. We presented that information in the form of lists simply cos of space restrictions (and yes, because it also pandered to the expectations of our colleagues). It’s possible that by doing so we ultimately simplified Riot Grrrl – but ultimately that’s true of any form of documentation, however open-ended and however wide.


The book you helped compile for Black Dog last year will be used as a benchmark for Riot Grrrl far more than our couple of original, incendiary articles ever were. It too will be used to impose structure on a structureless movement. I’m sure that wasn’t your intention any more than it was ours. Our intention was to share information. We didn’t want to be seen to be leaders, not at all: we were trying, seriously, to be selfless in our passing along of knowledge. I would have loved to put in those original articles everything else I believed Riot Grrrl stood for – most of it not musical – and we did touch upon that, but ultimately we were writing within the structure of a music paper. All we wanted to do was inspire – females specifically.


It’s worth remembering that we were very aware of the restrictions placed upon us by the medium which is why, at the end of the major Huggy Bear feature we ran in MM, we stated that the interview the reader had just finished reading was only part one of the article – part two was a fanzine they could obtain free by writing in to Sally or myself. And we dutifully, or rather Sally dutifully cos I always was fucking lazy, photocopied about 80 pages or some ridiculous amount 100 times, and sent them out to everyone who requested a copy.

There's also aspects of tourism and rules in that first article too e.g. where Sally gives tips about visiting the embassy "Here are some tips if you ever decide to visit the embassy: (i) Don't take ham sandwiches - they're vegetarians; (ii) Alcohol is a big no no; (iii) As are illegal drugs - "murderous commerce chaired by the government", says the Nation of Ulysses; (iv) As is sleeping, in case capitalism comes up and poisons you in the night".
I’m not trying to opt out here, but I’m sure you appreciate it when I say I cannot speak for Sally. Didn’t Sally write ALL that first article? I can’t remember. I think I was only in the background giving advice (I had the musical knowledge required), but obviously I wasn’t going to tell her what to write. Sally had agendas of her own she wanted to follow – as do all individuals. That paragraph you quote above (and I really need to see the context) looks like her attempt at humour to me. Just because you support a movement doesn’t mean you have to be down with every aspect of it.

Sally was not familiar at all with the musical heritage of Riot Grrrl (that was where I came in) – she comes from a very different background that I don’t want to presume I know that much about. Any description of a foreign country is always going to contain traces of tourism, almost by definition. I wouldn’t have written it like that, but I wasn’t the writer. Ultimately what mattered was the impact achieved, not the means used... although the means used do fucking matter obviously.

Also there's a lot of effort in describing how angry riot grrrls are: "young angry girls", "talk about what's making them angry", "all-girl assaults" and Kathleen Hanna as "the angriest girl of them all" and simplistic demands such as "girls must rule all towns" and "all girls must be in bands" etc. I don't know Everett but it just seems to undermine the diversities of riot grrrl experiences that I've been hearing and writing about and there's a historical tendency to position feminist critique as irrational anger whose demands can therefore be easily dismissed by the majority.
Dude, seriously. Riot Grrrl DID NOT EXIST IN THE UK before our articles (at least not outside of my house, pretty much – and wait a minute, I love both Amelia as a person and musician, but where she gets this idea that Heavenly were a proto-Riot Grrrl band I have no idea, cos they sure weren’t at the time). So I’m not sure how Sally could have been undermining experiences that hadn’t actually happened. (Of course there were plenty of females around who could have been termed Riot Grrrl before the tag took hold, but is it right to call them that before the movement actually existed?) Sally was bitterly aware at the way any strong-thinking females are inevitably dismissed as ‘crazy’. She had been dismissed that way, time and time again, herself – particularly by our male colleagues at the music press. We wrote a series of articles debunking the archetypes back then – you have read them, right?

Again, the paragraph above might have been an attempt to present the argument in a language music press readers could relate to, for “young” and “angry” substitute “new”. I think Sally was trying to channel anger into a tool for expression and revolution, I don’t think for one moment she was trying to undermine Riot Grrrls by giving the media an easy tool with which to categorise and thus dismiss them. This language is Sally’s not mine – and again, she was the outsider trying to describe what she experienced in as fair and explanatory manner as possible. Again, I don’t feel too easy talking about someone else’s views. Ultimately, I suspect any revolutionary movement is built upon a welter of contradiction, misinformation and passion.

So yeah, what do you think?  Why did these lists happen in the coverage even when you knew that riot grrrl wasn't so easily definiable? What's with the tips? Why do you think anger had to be at the forefront? What effects do you think highlighting anger in this way did to the perception of riot grrrl by the Melody Maker readership at that time?
Well... again, I can’t speak for Sally, but I’ve always been very aware of both the advantages and limitations of my chosen art form. Honestly? I never expected people to dwell on these articles, let alone ask me about them 15 or more years on: they need to be read in the context of the time, as a launch-pad for something far more interesting.

Overwhelmingly, we could see that something was – and still is – rotten to the very core of the music industry (inbuilt sexism). And we wanted to tackle that. And we saw Riot Grrrl as a tool with which to tackle it, so we used it – the idea was that Riot Grrrl would then use us, and move on. We always knew we would be turned upon and set upon by all sides, taking such a chance. It was something that I’m sure neither of us regrets. You’re focusing on the lists. It’s a fair point, but you could equally focus on a thousand other aspects of our coverage (and I think people did back then). We focused on the anger, yes - but as I say, I think you need to read that focus in the context of where we were writing, when we were writing. Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear, the main musical focuses at that point, were unequivocally angry.

Did that mean did we helped create a fatally flawed movement? Um. That question can only be answered in the affirmative if you believe Riot Grrrl to be fixed to one point in time, to be static – and I know you don’t.

Riot Grrrl is a myriad of contradictions. And that’s to the good. I hate folk who aren’t.

You can find the original series of Riot Grrrl interviews here.