Hit Girls - Jen B. Larson

 

Subtitled "Women of Punk in the USA 1975-1983", this gives a pretty accurate description of the concept of the book. Funnily, Larson is a youngster who wasn't born until well after this time period and who knew little about punk or women in punk until researching the past. It will be interesting to get this kind of second (third? fourth? fifth?) hand perspective.

While not wanting to promote more well-known musicians, Larson opens with Niagra and Destroy All Monsters - hardly obscure! - but immediately follows with The Welders, A St. Louis band from the mid-70's that I had never heard of. Then we get Bomp's Nikki and the Corvettes (had to laugh at the young author asking why it wasn't cool to be covering the MC5 and Stooges in the 70's!) followed by Flirt, another Detroit band I'd never heard of, whose singer had previous sang backup for Bob Seger on "Katmandu"! So, lots of variety, mixing basically complete unknowns with underground icons.

Lots of mid-west bands are featured - not surprising considering how many groups there were all over the country at the time - including bands like Chicago's Bitch, who I used to see in small clubs in Indiana, along with groups like the Waitresses, who actually got airplay and a fair amount of attention. As a funny aside, Larson quotes Cincinnati's The Dents singing "Do the Boob", but doesn't mention that it's a Real Kids song! (She also mentions someone doing "Cock in My Pocket" and while I didn't research it, I can only assume that is the Iggy song.) The LA bands - and west coast in general - are also relatively well-known by comparison and for the east coast she includes the likes of Lydia Lunch and even the Plasmatics! So, while there are LOTS of truly obscure combos, there's also lots that even the average fan of underground rock'n'roll are going to be familiar with - maybe that's on purpose for marketing despite saying that she was going to leave out the more well known? Ironically, I dug the section on the West Coast bands because I knew or had at least seen most of the bands listed, but Melanie thought that Larson didn't do a deep enough dive and dig up more obscure bands!

Interestingly, there are very different views on how women were or were not accepted and how the non-traditional-sex roles were either embraced or vilified. I suppose some of it depends on the time (years or even months could make a difference) and some on the place, but even in San Francisco, different bands had very different experiences. I do appreciate that almost to a person, everyone lamented the coming of hard core and the uniformation of punk rock and how free it was (overall) when it started and how it could be almost anything. Of course, I agree with that, as well, and hated the later punk bands, while I still listen to 70's punk religiously.

In any case, no matter how immersed you are in underground rock'n'roll, Larson will certainly inform you of some groups that you've never heard of. Not perfect, but certainly informative!