Bikini Kill – Bikini Kill

Every now and then, I “work” in my friend’s record store. And by “work,” I mean that I am barely capable of guiding people to what they’re looking for and taking their money when they find it. If someone wants to know about a record released in the last 30 years, or, please no, something released this year – I’m not the guy. I never was, not since the ’70s. But the advantage of working there is I’ll see something in the bins and say, “You know, I’ve never really heard this,” and get to put it on, and sometimes it’ll blow my mind.

That was the case with Bikini Kill. Yes, I heard all about the Riot Grrrl movement back in the day – but by the time this was happening, I was in my 30s, establishing my career, about to be a parent, and – if this had even gotten commercial radio play locally, which it didn’t – not listening to radio. So while I appreciated the concept of this new punk, I never actually heard it.

Then, last fall, this re-release came out, and I punched it up on the system and … oh my. What had I been missing? Brazen. Angry. Exciting. Absolutely female. What a record! I heard the lines in “Carnival” and was grateful no one in the store was really paying that much attention, and also knew the record was coming home with me. The rest of the record was just as awesome.

How had I lived without it for so long? No matter. Mine now.

My thing with punk is that it has to be punk with a sense of humor, punk with some melody, punk with something other than white boy aggression which is so fucking stale to me, and so damned uninteresting. So: Ramones, yes; X, yes; Dead Kennedys, hell yes. And now, Bikini Kill – hell yes.