“Is this everything you dreamed of?”
says one woman in the crowd to another.
Her friend’s response: “Everything andmore.”
Credit: Tammy Rae Carlad
Here you felt their gratitude.
“So thank you so much.”
A lot has changed since Bikini Kill was founded in Olympia, Wash. in 1990.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, when do I take a breath?!’
I never leave space in these songs!”
“It’s just like a drill.
Steve Eichner/WireImage
There’s a lot of sounds that are just in your face the whole fing time.
And I love that about it but I didn’t understand what the big deal about that band was.
It was just normal to me.
Lisa Darms
It was what I wanted to do.
Why were people freaking out about it?”
Doing so now has given her a different perspective on it all.
“We were a really weird band!
I think that tension is really interesting.
It’s hard not to watch.”
L7 were renowned for their feminism as well as their garish onstage antics.
They spearheaded the Rock For Choice benefits in 1991, which Bikini Kill eventually played.
“Bikini Kill were a bit younger than us and straight out of college,” says Sparks.
“They had a lot of chutzpah.
That was very infectious.”
It was still the underground, but they had easy access to books and ideas and dorm rooms.
“[Hanna] was using a band as her delivery mechanism for her politics,” notes Sparks.
“We wanted to be a really good band.”
It’s a fair critique.
Bikini Kill were never renowned for being agreatsounding band.
It was all about messaging.
“It was a different approach.
We were both pied pipers on different scenes.”
“It’s okay to be vulnerable and pissed off because you’re being emotional about the right thing.
Bikini Kill fandom also found its way to Victoria Ruiz of Rhode Island punk outfit Downtown Boys.
“It was hard to know the fundamentals about underground DIY punk.
That’s why I wanted to go to New York.”
There, she found herself in a record store where a Bikini Kill sticker was pasted onto a shelf.
“I was like, ‘Who’s that band?'”
She soon found an album and played it in-store.
“I couldn’t believe how much the lyrics resonated with me.
Here was a source for how to express myself in the world.”
“I heard the song ‘Deceptacon’ in a skate video online,” she says.
“Everything she does is an energy,” she says.
“It’s so unapologetically intense.
Kathleen Hanna is 100 percent one of the reasons why I do what I do.”
For her, watching back original Bikini Kill footage was of paramount influence.
“She’s just so in her mind back then,” she says, of Hanna.
“Doing her job, up there fighting for what she believes in.
“I grew up in a small town and trends help small-town girls,” Ward concedes.
Ruiz, now 32, is equally elated for the reappearance of such an uncompromised visionary.
“All of it’s still relevant,” she says.
The legacy of Bikini Kill isn’t some fond distant memory of my youth.
The influence of Bikini Kill still permeates the underground, but its mainstream appreciation is notable.
Sparks sees it every time she logs onto Netflix, especially in female-driven comedy shows.
She cites series such asRussian DollandUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidtas possessing the same sense of humor.
“They’re talking about real shit,” she says.
“Smart-talking women being funny, self-deprecating, sisterly, and feminist.
The Lena Dunhams of comedy were influenced by gals like us.
We helped spark it.”
“We have to deal with transphobia, the patriarchy, racism,” she says.
She points to women of color and the Xicana riot grrrl movement.
We’re not there yet.”
That’s why it’s important that Hanna’s incumbents continue to do the work on the ground.
“Kathleen Hanna is not a concept, she’s a person,” she says.
“That’s what makes it even more powerful.”
It’s not enough for Bikini Kill to live and breathe.
There have to be new upstarts to carry the torch.
