From "Not for Rent", 1995, (Evil twin publications)
Grrrt: How long have you been involved in the 1-in-12 club?
Sarah: Well, we moved here 3 years ago because of the 1-in-12.
Alec: We’d sort of been involved for a long time before that because we used to travel from wherever we were to come down to events and just to meet up with a lot of people. That’s the most important thing about it to me.
Stacy: So when you moved here did you feel like this was the most interesting scene in Britain?
Sarah: Yeah.
Alec: Bradford is a small town but a lot of the people we knew from all over Britain were living here. We were living in a hell hole and thought, we’re wasting our lives here. Let’s go somewhere where there’s a lot of creative things going on. Involve yourself in the process.
Stacy: Has it been what you expected?
Sarah: I think it has. I’ve been involved in similar things before and there’s been loads of problems. But then I don’t think I’ve been involved quite as much at the 1-in-12 because I’ve got a bit older: I’ve kept what I’ve wanted to do, like promoting and doing my band, and just concentrated on that bit. It was doing my head in trying to do everything at once. Everybody was trying to do everything at once. We just burnt up and fell out. That was in Telford. We had a venue there.
Alec: When you’ve succeeded, a lot of the tension’s gone. I’ve been involved in a place in Sunderland called the Bunker which was set up as an anarchy/punk type alternative space where a lot of different things went on, but it was so cliquey, so exclusive. There was only one way to do things there, you did them that way. It just became so tied up with the personalities of the people involved that it was really difficult to put any creativity into it without conforming to this clique. I think one of the real strengths of the 1-in-12 is that anybody, literally anybody can go in, become a member, and involve themselves in whatever they feel comfortable doing and they generally get support. There’s all sorts of stuff going on that I would never really expect to happen, that I can’t imagine happening at a lot of other places in Britain, because there is such an oppressive atmosphere in a lot of spaces.
Grrrt: How does it stay that way?
Sarah: A lot of it’s because people come and live here specifically because of the club, and you get people from different countries coming over for six months or a year, or a few years. So you get a turn around of people. In a smaller town it’s like, you get people burning out and that’s it: there’s nobody to take their place.
Alec: Because it came out of well thought out ideas that combined people’s personalities with a lot of political activity, and it’s always tried to be more than just about music. And because there seem to be quite a lot of people actively involved at any one time, rather than a few people really focused on a few things. That’s allowed a lot of things to develop and has created an atmosphere... It’s one of the only places I’ve ever seen with a real ‘scene’, because people have a lot of mutual respect and give a lot of mutual support regardless of what they’re into - whether it’s music or politics or whatever. It gives you encouragement to go out on a limb, push things a bit.
Stacy: You two how travelled all over Europe and America. Have you seen any place else where you felt like there was a similar scene?
Alec: Well it’s difficult to say, cause if you’re in a band and you travel through a town and you see it for that night, you can think "Wow! This is amazing!" or ‘This is horrendous!" y’know. Presumably people who pass through the club can think that, too. I think the 1-in-12 has got a lot more in common with what goes on in mainland Europe than what there is in Britain.
Sarah: It’s funny when we were at ABC No Rio (in New York City) we went to a meeting. The issues they were discussing were the same things that get discussed at the club, sort of day-to-day run of the mill things like who was the last person to put the mikes away, who should have done the PA. and stuff. That was quite good because it puts those things in perspective. It’s easy to think it’s loads better everywhere else, but once you stay there for a few days you realize that there’s the same issues there, too.
Alec: There’s this suppressive atmosphere in Britain generally: once you pass 21 you should give up and go get married, have a career and a house. The first time I went over to mainland Europe on tour, I was amazed by the amount of people who’d been involved in things for years and years and years, and were still actively involved and included in what was going on. I think a similar thing happens at the club. There’s a lot of old codgers like us and other people around who’ve been through it a bit, and are still actively involved. Everyone seems to regard what they’re doing as part of their life not as some tiny little separate section of it. It’s part of the whole thing. I’ve come across that attitude in a lot of the squats in different parts of Europe. People are just getting on with their lives and doing what they can. They don’t regard it as some status thing what they’re doing.
Stacy: I think that’s a lot of the difference of having a squatting scene. When you’re squatting some place it can be your whole lifestyle also. Here people who might be more active have to worry about paying rent and they’re isolated from the gigs they may go to on Friday or Saturday night, which are just this tiny little element in their lives.
Alec: Totally. There’s not that compromise there. Those places are autonomously run so there may be some commercial things you have to think about in order to survive, but generally what goes on there is down to the people involved. It’s not like you have to pay the landlord so you have to put some cheesy band on with stupid attitudes in order to survive.
Grrrt: How does the club run?
Sarah: Well, there’s a committee meeting every week which is open to all the members about the general run of events. Smaller collectives meet to organise specific activities like the café, gigs, raves, or the allotment. Also other groups use the building as a venue for meetings or events like the hunt sabs, Earth First, Anti-Criminal Justice Bill coalition, and the Young Gay and Lesbian group.
Stacy: How many members arc there?
Alec: Thousands. The membership is really cheap. It’s a legal loophole; that’s how we survive and get around the licensing code. Membership isn’t necessarily based around the physical area of Bradford. Throughout Britain. and in Europe and America, there are people who are members. The clubs got a reputation for being a hardcore-punk venue but if you actually look at the membership and the people who’re involved it only partly justifies that. There’s a lot of different people involved in a lot of different things. There’s people involved in political work, bands, women’s groups, gay and lesbian events, the Peasants Collective... I think that’s one of the strengths of the way the club is organised. People who’ve got a focus on one particular thing can get together and work collectively. So everybody’s not involved in every tiny little aspect of it, but there’s lots of communication. Everyone has to stay in touch with what each other are doing through regular Sunday meetings, and newsletters, and information floating around. It maintains its identity and the things that happen remain true to the spirit of the club. And we can operate quite a diverse collection of things.
Stacy: What exactly goes on in the club?
Alec: Hmmm. Well, the Peasants Collective is something that was set up quite recently which is a bunch of people who’ve gotten a garden plot going to start growing some organic veg for the café. That’s quite a logical extension of the café. The café has always been quite a significant part of the club, doing veggie and vegan food. That’s another area where people tend to burn out quite a lot. It tends to start out with a lot of people running it and works down to a smaller and smaller number who are there all the time, don’t get any money for it and get frustrated.
The raves have gone really well. There’s been a changing group of people involved in putting them on in different rooms. Stuff that relates to the D.I.Y.-radical side of how raves are run in Britain, more underground. There’s been conflict and all the rest of it and problems but there always is when you try doing something new. I think on the whole it’s been a really creative kick for the club. It’s a whole different aspect of underground culture.
Sarah: There’s been a lot of things happening for the Anti-Criminal Justice campaign at the club as well. One action that they did last year was they bought lots of tins of beans for 7 pence and stuck on stickers protesting against the bill on the beans and they just went down town and left cans of beans everywhere. It was really bizarre so it got people’s attention... they found all these cans of baked beans everywhere and people would look and read this message on them about the Criminal Justice Bill.
Alec: There is quite a diverse amount of stuff that goes on and most of it is overtly political. I guess, regardless of whether the music that’s played there is itself directly political, the fact that it happens in the club, in the way that it does, in this day and age in Britain, is quite a political thing anyway. It seems to me that the club operates in a network as part of a lot of other things that are going on throughout Britain and Europe. There are aspects of it that are community based in Bradford but I don’t think that’s an area that’s been explored to it’s fullest potential. I think it’s quite difficult because it’s a political place, because it seems to a lot of outsiders like a gay and lesbian club ~ because it puts on gay and lesbian events. There’s a policy of no homophobia and that creates a certain energy around the locale of Bradford and Leeds. A lot of people think "eugh, I don’t want to go in there". That’s fine as far as I’m personally concerned. They’re assholes so keep ‘em out.
Stacy: But the club is also specifically non-sexist and non-racist. it’s strange that people just pick up on the no-homophobia and think it’s a gay club.
Alec: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah: It’s typical.
Grrrt: Do you get a diverse group of people from Bradford coming in?
Alec: It is a pretty diverse bunch of people who come in for specific events. There’s the occasional folky thing. that goes on and there’s a definite crowd that’ll come for that, there’s the raves and they’ve got their own different crowds that come in, and the gay and lesbian events and women’s events get a specific group.
Sarah: I think in Britain things are really segregated. It’s partly the fault of the music press but everybody seems to like being separated: you’re a ‘punk’ or an ‘indie-kid’ or whatever.
Everybody likes these little boxes and they’re really rigid about them. It seems different in Europe but over here people really live by it. So, you won’t go to a club if you think it’s a punk club, if you don’t think you’re a punk. I think a lot of it is because of the categories that music’s put into over here.
Alec: People are lazy, as well. They’re quite happy to just conform to whatever choices they’re given. A, B, or C. They’ll just take one of those; It’s an easy way out. They don’t have to think about it. I don’t know, though. That’s one side of things. But when we first started putting on weirdo quirky gigs I didn’t really expect anybody to turn up, and I’ve always been Impressed by the amount of people who come along. You get the impression that people are really narrow minded but when you put on stuff like GAG, DAWSON, that kind of stuff, people do turn out and get right into it so that’s always been a strengthening thing for me, cause it justifies your efforts.
Sarah: People turn up for specific events; like for "Docs and Frocks" (the female bands Sarah put on reguiarly) we got a different crowd of people coming in. There weren’t too many ‘punks’ who wanted to come see girl bands. And most of those people who did come didn’t seem to come back and go to the café and all.
Alec: That’s the sort of dilemma as well; you get a balance trying to be appealing to different people, trying to attract different people to get Involved in the process, and to keep the club running. But at the same time you’ve got to stay true to what the club actually is and not compromise yourself out of existence. The club is intimidating, maybe, to some people. Not to me because I’ve always been involved in that sort of thing, so it doesn’t bother me. But Bradford’s got a big student population, and only a minute percentage of them ever come down.
Grrrt: I can see how it might be intimidating because of how it looks on the outside.
Commercial spaces are always converted in neon and aggressively advertised. So if you’re used to that the 1-in-12 could look uninviting. How is the club funded? Do you pay rent?
Alec: We own it. It’s got a mortgage through the brewery.
Sarah: It got into debt and the brewery that supplies our beer bailed it out. So they wrote off some of the debts and if the club goes under they get first refusal on the lease or get to buy the building or something.
Stacy: When did the club buy the building?
Alec: 6 or 7 years ago.
Sarah: Before that they just put gigs on around different pubs in Leeds and Bradford.
Alec: Its always been a difficult thing; autonomous places in Britain. There’s been squatted ones but they get evicted relatively quickly. There’s been a lot in London. They come and go all the time. The minute that the police see that a lot of people are going to these places that’s it. They’ll go and wipe them out. So, that’s a totally valid thing (to do) but I think it’s very difficult to run a place that depends on having some sort of continuity from a squatted venue in Britain, especially now. A lot of collectives in Britain, like Lion Street, the Bunker, the Station in Newcastle, emerged in the early 8o’s but the 1-in-12 Club’s the only one that’s left - apart from Warzone in Belfast. Everywhere else has just gone under because they depended on some sort of local government grant to keep them going or whatever, and all the funding’s been wiped out. I think a lot of the times when they’ve died out it’s been internal problems.
Sarah: Yeah, with Lion Street it was like local politics: it was tied up with government funding. It just got really complicated. And the police were opposed to the licensing. That’s what keeps the I-in-12 Club going: a lot of it is subsidised by selling beer, If we couldn’t have a bar it’d be really tough. At Lion Street the police kept opposing the license. The council and the magistrates were okay about it but the police didn’t want to be bothered, to have to keep an eye on another part of town. They just wanted to police a certain area every weekend. Even though there was no trouble at our venue, and there were stabbings at the big commercial clubs, they just couldn’t be bothered to give us a license.
Alec: Buying the building with the 1-in-12 collective has given us a degree of autonomy: we have more freedom to make decisions about what we do and how we do it. In any other situation you’re so vulnerable to different pressures that can close you down. I mean; it’s not been a complete success, cause. like we were saying before, earlier last year there were a lot of problems with getting really badly in debt, not being able to generate enough money to cover all the things we have to pay for. But we survived - mainly through the help of people all over Europe. A lot of people in Glasgow put time and effort into raising money just to get us enough out of debt so that the money that was being generated could be put into keeping things running as opposed to being put straight into paying the debt.
Stacy: How did the collective actually get the money to buy the building in the first place?
Sarah: Well It was a grant so it was probably Urban Aid funding or something similar, I’m not 100% certain on the details.
Alec: There was also some money. 1-in-12 emerged out of the Unemployed Claimants Union which combined political activity and putting on gigs at different venues. The money generated from those gigs was the beginning. A lot of it comes from people donating all their time and energy and pouring that in. So we don’t actually have to put so much money into it.
Stacy: How does it work with the system of having members? Why are there members?
Alec: In Britain if you’ve got a bar you can get different sorts of licenses; you have to have licenses to run a bar. If you’re set up as a member’s club it means you basically get a license easier because in theory, you’re controlling who can come in and who can’t come in. Whereas if you’re set up like a pub, anybody can walk in and out, so the cops are a lot stricter on that. It’s easier for a lot of things from a music point of view as well cause you’re controlling members coming in and out, and you’ve got it on paper, so it’s a lot easier to get insurance. You can get a late license easier that way, too, so you can stay open later. It’s just a loophole, I mean, membership is only £1.50 which is nothing and you get in cheaper to events. It’s quite good for the club as well cause then you’ve got a list of all the people who’ve been interested enough to join, so you can communicate with them. Member’s get sent newsletters about events that are going on and different groups that are organising and meeting at the club and what have you, so it’s good from a networking point of view.
Grrrt: Who does the 1-in-12 records?
Alec: Gary. Gary was involved right from the beginning. Even though he’s not your archetypal punk-rocker he’s totally into the music that’s going on there. He’s been into documenting some of the diversity of the bands playing there. It’s also a way of generating a bit of money for the club and getting a bit of publicity, cause the records have always included a lot of literature on the ideas behind what goes on.
Grrrt: How many are there now? 13 or so?
Alec: Yeah. You’ve got to have played within the last couple of years to be on it, and not every band who’s played the club does it. The last one was really good.
Sarah: There’s a publications collective as well. They’ve put out loads of good stuff. They’ve published books and pamphlets. The last one was on computer disk.
Alec: They’re eventually going to get connected to Internet so all the literature will be put on that.
Sarah: The last one was about The Economic League which is this organization that blacklists everybody that’s been involved in unions or political activity.
Alec: Bradford used to be run by a right-wing council and there were loads of shady deals going on so this is like an exposé of that. It’s really good.
Stacy: And there’s the 1-in-12 cookbook!
Alec: Yes. The history of the mysterious chocolate pudding.
Stacy: But you forgot to put in how much flour you put in. I tried to make it...
Alec: Yes.
Stacy: So that’s like the big secret, isn’t it?
Alec: You can’t tell everyone everything! You have to come back to the club and eat chocolate pudding to see if you’re getting it right.
Stacy: That’ s sneaky!
Alec: I think it’s hard to tell exactly what the influence of the club is. It was only last year when there was a pretty serious threat of it getting shut down that a lot of people began to realise what an influence it has. Not always because it’s high-profile stuff that goes on, but just because it provides a space where people can go without getting harassed by assholes. Just providing a space that’s safe, where there’s no direct pressure on you to think one way or another, So you can mix with people and actually talk about things. Out of that there’s been loads of really amazing things and a lot of mutual support for people as people; people involved in bands, doing political stuff, all sorts of things. That for me is the real strength of what goes on - providing that potential. Just to allow that spark to happen between people.
Sarah: I’ve never had that any place else I’ve lived. It’s a really easy place to be because everybody’s really supportive. It’s not competitive at all. Everybody’s totally into each other’s bands and stuff.
Alec: Nobody’ll get down on you for doing weird or different stuff. A lot of the time you’ve got to sound like this, or sound like that, in order for anyone to take you seriously.
Stacy: But the club does have a specifically political identity. Doesn't that mean that some people are excluded if they don’t fit into that?
Alec: I guess that’s bound to happen.
Sarah: If someone’s overtly racist they’ll get kicked out, but if someone’s maybe not thought about it much and has repressed tendencies, we’ll tolerate that. I think people have gotten more tolerant anyway. Seems like in the early 80’s there were definite party lines - you had to behave certain ways - but I think it’s broadened out now.
Alec: I know people involved in the club who’ve got total hard-line communist ideas or there’s people who’re total class-war and nothing else, and fluffy liberal types.
Sarah: And there’s types who are just into music.
Grrrt: In a bigger city there'd be more division between those groups but here it's the only place you can do stuff so you have to get along and respect each other, and people realise that. No one can afford to lose it. That's the thing about a smaller town.
Alec: I think there is generally a problem with people regarding themselves as being politicised in Britain. My experience of people in Holland and Germany is that people have a lot of definite ideas and have thought things through, thought about a lot of different things, and they’ve got definite political stances. Whereas, in general, people in Britain are a lot less into those things. They don’t want to see themselves as political. I don’t think that’s true of people involved in this underground, especially people involved in the club. A lot of people do see themselves as being directly political. So, I don’t know. Maybe people view themselves a little bit differently.
A few years ago there were a few neo-Nazi’s trying to organise around this area - not directly in Bradford - but around. A lot of people in the club were involved in stopping that. When people in the club came into contact with more organized leftist groups like Militant and Socialist Workers you could see the massive difference between the total party-liners conforming to the "one right way" and the attitudes of the people from the club who have, in my experience, been a lot more pragmatic. A lot of their attitudes are built up through life experiences and all the rest of it. I think it’s been important that a lot of the people involved in the club come from a working class background, they’ve got a lot of practical skills and ideas. That’s what’s kept the club operating with it’s feet on the ground. Obviously there’s a lot of ideology and political ideas involved but that stems from a practical operating in the real world view, so I think it d be difficult for the club to become like a political sect.
Stacy: How did Riot Grrl* Leeds/Bradford start? Did that start with people who were already involved in the club?
Sarah: Well, there was a woman in Leeds who put an advert up in a record shop advertising for women to form a Riot Grrrl group. There were a few people at the club who’d also been interested in Riot Grrrl, being in bands and stuff. There weren’t really any all-women bands about. We met in Leeds once or twice but it was just useless, we couldn’t find a reasonable space. It was either meeting in a pub with all these drunk blokes around: they’d see our table of women talking and we’d have to put up with their bullshit all night. Or we tried meeting at the University but you had to pay to hire the rooms and it was a bit formal. So in the end I just suggested everyone come to the club because we could have the café for nothing, and get nice food there, too! Good chocolate pudding! So we started meeting there just because it was convenient.
Stacy: What kinds of people were involved?
Sarah: It was quite a wide range of people there. People who’d been involved in things for years and were pissed off with the way that the years go by and there still didn’t seem to be more women in bands or other women’s things. And there were really young girls getting in touch about it who were still living with their parents and interested to do stuff. We made the meetings quite practical. We’d make fast zines together - do it in a night. People would bring ideas in and do collages. We did three fast ‘zines and we did a big fat one. We organised a day of events with workshops, and women who played instruments taught people things. It was to help people who were younger and wanted to do stuff but didn’t have the confidence.
Stacy: Had must of the people heard about Riot Grrrl already through the music press?
Sarah: It was a mixture. I’d read about it in Maximum Rock and Roll and other places. Other people had read about it too. So, some of us had slightly different ideas about it. I think it was quite a different mixture of people in the Leeds and Bradford group than in other places. It started about the same time as Riot Grrrl started being given coverage in the press. Most of us were already involved in doing ‘zines or other things but were all isolated and just doing things on our own.
Stacy: How many people were involved in the group?
Sarah: There was a core of about 10 to 15. We had a lot of people writing to us: we had a hundred or more letters from people who read about it and wanted more information, It was a bit difficult; we didn’t have a "Riot Grrrl pack" we could send them.
Alec: What you did with that zine was excellent. (Radbag, a zine made up of listings of Riot Grrrl groups, bands, ‘zines and friendly clubs, promoters, D.l.Y. distro’s and record labels, etc.) It just helped set up more of a network so people could communicate with each other instead of just having one central address.
Stacy: Had any Riot-Grrrl bands played the club then?
Sarah: Yeah. ‘cause I organised bands once a month and I tried to get bands that were either all female or who were half and half. Lt worked well. We got HUGGY BEAR, BIKINI KILL, DELICATE VOMIT, MAMBO TAXI, THE GR’UPS, TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME, FRANTIC SPIDERS, half of TRIBE 8 (‘cause the other half couldn’t get into the country), and SISTER GEORGE, they’re a British queercore band. This was around 1992, 1993. Not all of those bands identified with, or wanted to be labelled as Riot Grrrl bands, but 1 just felt it was important to see women taking over the stage for once and hopefully encouraging each other do stuff.
Stacy: Did your band come out of people you met throuqh the Riot Grrrl group?
Sarah: I was advertising anyway for people to be in a band, and that’s how I saw this notice about Riot Grrrl. That’s how I met Lianne. Then it just all came together. It was good. I’d been advertising for about 6 months and had no luck finding anybody. But the Riot Grrrl group did seem to generate quite a lot of interest and a lot of people. It made networking a lot easier.
Stacy: Why did you want to be an all-female band?
Sarah: I suppose it’s about autonomy really, mores than anything else. There aren’t many all-women bands about, so it’s trying to redress the balance. I mean, why should that be? There’s nothing male about a band. Why should men make a fuss about all-women bands?
Stacy: But they always do!
Sarah: They do, yeah. Especially when they know it’s deliberate.
Stacy: Because they always claim that the all-male syndrome is not deliberate.
Sarah: Total accident! It just happens! Natural selection! It’s really important that we’re an all-women band. I was willing to compromise at one point because it took us so long to find a bass player. We also got to this stage where we were a bit better. When you start a band it’s a really good laugh even if you can’t play. But after you’ve been practising and practising for three or four years then you don’t want to slow down again to accommodate someone who can’t play. It’s harder to find women rock musicians, unfortunately! But there are a lot of women who can play more traditional instruments, who’ve learned piano, violin, cello, clarinet, saxophone or whatever at school. A lot of their skills aren’t valued in the usual (punk) rock lineup.
Stacy; What was the reaction of the boy-band people from the club to all this?
Alec: it was quite funny because Sarah put on all those gigs and all the liberal punks who go on about how it "just happens" that there’s no women in the band and all the rest of it - so few of them actually went to these gigs. There wasn’t really a hostile reaction from anybody, though.
Sarah: They were just a bit worried.
Alec: Yeah, it’s that whole paranoia thing. That whole male thing; being afraid that all your power is going to be taken away and you’re going to be worthless. - (lots of giggling)
Sarah: We were tipped off about one or two people who would oppose an all-women’s day, which is what we were planning, so we sort of compromised and said we’d just have the workshops in the day be all-women and the gig in the evening could be mixed audience. That was partly for financial reasons as well because it was a benefit.
Stacy: Did you actually have a discussion with this person who would oppose it?
Sarah: No. We just heard that he’d opposed an all-women event that’d happened before.
Alec: I was there at the discussion. It wasn’t fun.
Sarah: He’s more involved with this games room that’s part of the club. He’s into sports; pool, darts. So it wasn’t people involved in other bands, it was people who use the club for other reasons. They said it was sexist to have an all-women event.
Alec: I think, as usual, a lot of men just miss out, miss the point completely.
Sarah: They just think it’s about gender, they don’t think about the power side of it.
Alec: They miss the point that it’s beneficial for these things to go on, that it’s a good thing. Even from the completely selfish point of view that it’s amazing that these things go on because they create energy and atmosphere and so much comes out of it that’s beneficial to men, too.
Stacy: Do you think more women have been inspired by you or Riot Grrrl and are starting up now?
Sarah: I hope so. It’s hard to tell. There’s still not that many women instrumentalists in bands.
Alec: We met a band last week. That was amazing to see them there.
Sarah: Oh, they’re called the JELLY BABIES. It was just this Youth Arts Festival we went to for my work. They had a bands night. Last year it was all boys, really bad heavy metal. This year it was pretty much the same; there were three bands but the last band had three girls in it and they played BIKINI KILL and HOLE covers. They were really young as well.
Stacy: Do you think there were a lot of men around who got something out of Riot Grrrl?
Sarah: Definitely! One of the bands who played at the 1-in-12 recently, the THISTLE FAIRIES, they were just stars! It was really good seeing them on stage, their way of behaving. The men in the band wear dresses and swim suits and things, do a bit of dancing, they’re just totally different. I think they were inspired by Riot Grrrl, because it meant they could be more playful and less serious. Riot Grrrl is portrayed as being really serious by the music press, like it’s about loads of girls sitting around in a room being miserable but the things that I’ve seen, most of the bands are loads more colourful and silly. A lot of them are dressed up on stage and have mad handbags and frocks. You can say that’s really superficial but in another way it creates a better atmosphere. It’s a lot less threatening for people in the audience who can sometimes feel excluded by the deadly serious conventions of male musicianship and politics.
Alec: That’s the thing, all the Riot Grrrl events were amazing, some of the best atmosphere’s I’ve ever experienced at the club. Really good. There was just this sense of possibilities being open, and fun! There’s this idea in punk that the revolution is this horrible, dark, slogging away against it all. But the other side of that is that it’s this amazing spark of energy. Possibilities and fun. But at the same time it was really political.
Stacy: Has Riot Grrrl died out now?
Sarah: I think the network’s broken down a bit. It was pretty well massacred by the music press. It got so stereotyped and there was so much backlash against it. They like to hype up certain bands and certain movements and just when it gets really popular they’ll start slagging it off. Then it was all the usual anti-feminist stuff, "all Riot Grrrls hate men" and all that.
Grrrt: I think the backlash against it was so extreme because Riot Grrrl had the potential to really change things. First it was just the music presses "next big thing" but it became a movement with real, threatening power. They couldn't control it so they tried to kill it. How did that affect the group in Bradford that was already meeting?
Sarah: What happened with the group was that people lust got into doing their own things. We met and supported each other for about a year, 18 months, and then some people burnt out, like I burnt out doing the gigs once a month because it was just too much work: I wanted to do other things. Also WITCHKNOT was getting busy, and I couldn’t do both things. Other people said once they got their projects off the ground it was just more work. Some people moved away as well, to college or whatever. I think a lot of groups like that have a natural lifespan anyway. We thought of changing the name. Quite a few places have kept their groups going and just don’t call them Riot Grrrl anymore, which I think is quite a good strategy for preventing things getting labelled as a movement and controlled or stereotyped. I think there’s an anarcha-feminist group now that meets in Leeds. I‘ll get in touch with them and see what they’re doing.
Alec: A lot of the press was concentrated on the London scene, and London’s such a weird place for people being ‘cool’. Now that’s died down and the opportunity is there to just carry on. A lot of opportunities have been opened up and you can’t take that away. The ideas are there and affected a lot of people’s lives. It was really important to people.
Sarah: I’ve been to gigs where I’m one of two or three women in the whole building and no one seems to criticise that. It feels so weird but most of the time it’s accepted as natural. Riot Grrrl was good for women because, like you were saying, it made more possibilities. There was still this stereotype; that if you wanted to be in a band you had to be as hard and as loud and butch and aggressive as the lads. Then, if you’re one of the lads, you’re in there. But it was really good to say "I’m not going to do that! The lads are going to have to learn to be more like us!" meet us halfway.
Stacy: This is something I've been thinking about, that bands that have been influenced by Riot Grrrl are often less hard and fast as boy-hardcore. They're usually quirkier and poppier. That seems to appeal to more women, as are bands that are called "emo", which is like, softer, friendlier hardcore. I've always really liked hardcore but I don't enjoy the shows much anymore because I find the macho posturing really disgusting, and there's hardly any women at them. But it's strange oif you really like the music and you somehow have to change your taste to get used to or into girl friendly punk. This is what the guys who are into hardcore don't want to do. Hardcore fans are into it because it's political and heavy and no-compromise punk, but its also pure male energy, which is alienating to most women. So, if the punk scene wants to be progressively political is it time to consciously choose to change our taste in music? It seems a strange thing to do. When you look at it that way, though, you realise that most women experience hardcore as sexist: even if the music isn't offensive, the atmosphere and context usually is. So I guess men who care should be thinking about that when they "accidently" don't have women in their bands or at their shows. Still, it's hard to imagine men aren't aware of this. I think most of them must like the boys-club of the scene, even if they call themselves anti-sexist.
Alec: It’s weird because this is tied up with the reasons that Mandy stopped doing HEALTH HAZARD. She’s really into that music, really fast, hard, noisy nonsense. But she has certain perceptions of herself and there’s certain contradictory expectations of her in that environment. If you see a band that plays extreme music, you expect the people to be super confident, really hard. And that was a dilemma for her because that isn’t the way she sees herself. That’s tied up with her identity as a woman. We’d play gigs and there’d be like three women there, and it has an effect on you.
Sarah: I like listening to a lot of fast music; I like going to see hardcore bands; I like heavy metal as well. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable playing it, that’s different. Especially drumming - I’d just feel like a total idiot if I’d rip my top off and start doing cheesy drum rolls and hitting the cymbals.
Grrrt: Double bass drums!
(lots of giggling imagining Sarah in NAPALM DEATH)
Sarah: I’d feel so stupid trying to copy that!
Alec: I think stuff like GOD IS MY CO-PILOT is pretty hard music as well; it’s just different.
Sarah: It’s got power in a different way, There’s lots of different forms of power. We’ve got strings and if you hear them, especially if the cello’s charging away, that can be really powerful. There’s emotional power, too, not just physical strength expressed by speed and volume.
Alec: 1 still think you can use fast-ness in music great, but you have to be very conscious of what’s going on because there’s the social side of it, too. For me, I get a lot more out of bands that are pushing the boundaries back a bit and who are involved in ideas.
Grrrt: What’s Flat Earth?
Alec: It’s me and Sned and occasional others. We release records, usually friends and people who we think have a valid point of view and something to express. Things that we think important, otherwise wouldn’t be spending the time. I say it’s just us but we wouldn’t be able to do it without the thousands -of other people involved in the D.I.Y. network throughout the world. (They put out records by SEDITION, DISAFFECT, GENERIC, HEALTH HAZARD, DOOM, RECUSANT, DROP DEAD, HIATUS, etc.) Because we’re associated with those bands it’s been great working with HEADACHE recently and WITCHKNOT because they’re out of that bracket. For us, WITCHKNOT is one of the most punk things we’ve ever released, but a lot of people probably don’t see it that way. It’s vital to what we do to bring it to people, it’s part of that attitude. The spirit and the ideas behind the music is what we’re about, it’s not about sounding a certain way. It’s very hard for us to dictate ‘yeah, we want to do this and this’ because it comes down to what’s happening when we’ve got resources to do stuff.
Stacy: So... any last statements? I’d hate it if someone asked me that!
Alec: ‘Cause you lie awake all night going Yes! I should have said...’
* Sarah: I tend to favour the triple rrr spelling, just because it changes the meaning of the word and just maybe people’s perceptions of what a ‘girl is or could be. We had a lot of criticism about calling ourselves girls’ from people who argued that girl is often used as a put down by men and we should be proud to be women/wimmin. which they felt was a stronger term, Also there was a theory against women calling themselves girls and dressing in frocks and ribbons in case it pandered to male schoolgirl fantasies (gulpl). Who would have thought that getting together with a few friends and trying to form a band could cause such problems with language, what you can wear, etc! I think that ‘grrrl’ solves these problems though because the meaning is different, although on occasions when I feel particularly old and cynical I’m definitely a grrrandma!
Sarah and Alec’s disclaimer; We’d like to end by saying that whilst we are involved to varying degrees in all the things we talk about here, please be aware that hundreds of others are, too. Whatever we’ve been able to do with bands, gigs, venues, the record label. etc. has relied upon support and co-operation from a lot of other people who don’t always get recognition for what they do— particularly if it’s a task which doesn’t have much status like cooking food for the bands, flyposting for events, addressing envelopes for a mailout or cleaning up the venue the day after a gig. We’ve just given our personal feelings about the projects described, other people will have different experiences or perceptions of them. Although none of this stuff is perfect and it’s sometimes really frustrating, boring and hard work, there’s also that spark of change within it which is why we support it and wish everybody involved in the 1-in-12 and all similar ventures, good luck and lots of fun for the future (in the struggle against the evil system of death which threatens to squash us like squashy things upon the doorstep of oblivion!)