Bikini Kill was not the first female-led punk rock band. By the time they were forming in the early 1990s, the USA had seen the Pleasure Seekers and the Runaways come and go. In England throughout the ‘70s, the Raincoats, the Slits and X-Ray Spex had all helped build a foundation on which future hard rock/punk rock girl bands could stand.
But Bikini Kill is arguably the most impactful of them all. They didn’t simply produce kick-ass rock and roll. They were one of the foundational components of a revolution. They didn’t simply set out to be a band. Bikini Kill had a mission. The coolest of names. The coolest of performers. They were the front-facing poster children of the riot grrrl movement.
More than 35 years after Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail began that mission from their college town of Olympia, Washington, they may have matured some. They may have slowed a bit. Hanna is not as likely to flip her skirt up as she flails about the stage.
But make no mistake. Bikini Kill remains a force of nature, committed as ever to promoting women and girls, and their live shows still pack a punch equal and better than most of the boy bands you are apt to come across.
Bikini Kill enjoys a homecoming with 2,000 friends at Washington, DC’s Fillmore
For Hanna in particular, Saturday night’s show in front of a packed house at Silver Spring, MD’s Fillmore, provided an emotional homecoming of sorts.
“Anyone here from Laurel?” she asked when the quartet took the stage. “Some of the worst years of my life were spent in Laurel, and I’m still nostalgic for it.”
Laurel is a Maryland suburb sitting about halfway between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, and it is where Hanna spent many of her formative teenage years. She reminisced about those days throughout the show, repeatedly asking the crowd which of her old haunts were still around.
Fortunately, she found that Silver Spring still has the Parkway Deli, where the band fueled up before Saturday’s show.
As for the show, it was exactly what 2,000 rabid fans were hoping to hear. Blasting through 23 songs in 70 minutes, the night included almost every one of their best-loved songs, along with plenty of deeper cuts.
Bikini Kill began in Olympia when Hanna, who was playing in her second band – Viva Knievel – and Tobi Vail, drummer/vocalist with the Go Team – decided they were meant to perform together. They shared deep roots in feminist activism and the underground zine scene that was giving girls a voice in hard rock and roll. They added bass player Kathi Wilcox and brought along Go Team guitarist Billy Karren to form the classic quartet.
The band’s name was bequeathed by fellow Olympia musician Lois Maffeo. When forming her own new band, Maffeo told Vail she was choosing between Bikini Kill and Cradle Robbers as the name. She went with the latter, and Tobi snatched up the first – with Maffeo’s blessing.
Lest you think that Bikini Kill simply borrowed their ideas from others, keep in mind that it was Hanna who scribbled a phrase on the bedroom wall of Vail’s late-‘80s boyfriend. The boyfriend would later turn that phrase – “Kurt smells like teen spirit” – into the seminal rock and roll song of the 1990s.
As for their own band, Hanna brought BK east, back to punk-friendly Washington, DC, for some important development sessions in 1991. They perfected their aggressive, revolutionary sound and began releasing their music.
In its original incarnation, BK lasted through most of the decade. Hanna, who was often involved in side projects, would form several other bands after their breakup, and three of the original four members would reunite about ten years ago. Sara Landreau, who plays guitar in Hanna and Wilcox’s band, the Julie Ruin, has replaced Karren to complete the foursome.
On Saturday, they blasted out of the gate with “New Radio,” one of their singles released on The Singles album collection. In the way of introduction, Hanna opens “New Radio” with …
“I’m the little girl at the picnic
Who won’t stop pulling her dress up.”
Other highlights from the night included a blistering take on “Sugar,” perhaps their most graphic depiction of sexual power games from their best-known album P***y Whipped. The anthemic early track “Double Dare Ya” also pulls no punches.
“We’re Bikini Kill, and we want Revolution Girl-style now!” Hanna shouts as she launches into a challenge to anyone feeling underrepresented. A few songs later, they closed their main set with the iconic paean to girl power, “Rebel Girl.”
On several occasions, Hanna, Vail, and Wilcox traded places. Vail, a very talented writer who created a lot of the early zine articles that gave riot girrrls their substance and structure, came out from behind the drums to sing, as Wilcox took her place behind the drum kit and Hanna picked up the bass.
Vail could shift from the borderline psychedelia of “For Only” to the classic punk screaming manifesto of “Distinct Complicity” without missing a beat.
Then there were the only-in-DC moments that Hanna could provide. She admitted that singing “Capri Pants” was awkward because she wrote it for someone she used to have a crush on, and that object of her desire was in the audience.
And before beginning the self-analysis contained in “Alien She,” she reminisced about the late great White Fling Mall in nearby Rockville, which was the height of cool suburban fashion when Hanna was a teen. She used to dream of working at the cosmetics counter in the mall, and “Alien She” explores that apparent dichotomy in her psyche.
Every town gets to hear “Alien She” on the current tour. But only a hometown crowd gets the back story about White Flint.
New Jersey’s Kilynn Lunsford, who builds songs out of her unique vocal manipulations with the support of a bone-rattling bass and ever-present kick drum, got the evening off to a fine start. With the exception of “Reality Testing,” which has the feel of a classically in-your-face punk song, Lunsford doesn’t really operate in the same field as Bikini Kill. But that is the entire point of the riot grrrl movement.
Just as the Slits and X-Ray Spex opened some doors for Bikini Kill to make it wider, BK has done the same thing for artists like Lunsford and a new generation of punk bands like the Linda Lindas, whom Hanna befriended and mentored early on.
In January, Irish band SPRINTS released a titanic cover of “Deceptacon,” a song originally recorded by Le Tigre – the band Hanna formed between Bikini Kill and the Julie Ruin. That song was a reconsideration of the riot grrrl ethos a decade after its launch.
Riot grrrl culture, and its original heroes Bikini Kill, continue challenging, inspiring, and rocking a world in the throes of upheaval. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night just outside the nation’s capital.
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