“when you have to choose between history and legend, print the legend”
– john ford. maybe.
this is the legend, not the facts, of a band called ‘bratmobile’. the facts didn’t inspire thousands of girls to pick up guitars and pens, to craft a secret revolution in coffee shops and school hallways, to put a dent in the stale crust of nineties punk rock hegemony. the legend did. this is the legend, not the facts, of a band called ‘bratmobile’.
like all good legends, it starts with a lie
allison wolfe, like all teenagers throughout history, wanted to fit in. and so, like all teenagers throughout history, she told a lie.
the scene is this: it’s 1990, and wolfe has moved to olympia, washington (pop. 40,000) to go to school. at least, that’s the official reason. like all teenagers, she’s far more interested in hanging out with the punks in what passes for downtown. drink too much coffee, see too many bands that play far too loud. the standard stuff.
except, the punk scene in olympia, washington (pop. 40,000) is… different. in olympia, washington there is a spirit ‘maximum participation’. if you’re a punk in olympia, you’re expected to do something. be in a band, put on shows, make a fanzine, silkscreen shirts. it doesn’t really matter what. and if you don’t do something, if you don’t participate, you’re a poser. and nobody wants to be a poser.
so wolfe told a lie.
“yeah, i’m in a band. back in eugene”, wolfe would say, pushing her cat eye glasses up her nose nervously, “with my friend molly. you’ve never heard of us. we’re called, uh, ‘bratmobile’.” everyone would nod and say things like “yeah” or “sounds cool”, but as far as lies of self-aggrandizement went, it was pretty transparent. real ‘canadian girlfriend’ stuff. everybody knew the score.
the inspiration of a pressing deadline
wolfe’s casual lie comes to an end on february first, 1991, at the hands of calvin johnson.
in a city of movers and shakers, calvin johnson moves mountains and shakes the firmament. he’s in a band. he’s in the band, actually. and he runs the record label. and there’s his radio show and all the gigs he puts on. if you saw punk rockers in the nineties wearing cardigan sweaters, it’s because three years before johnson said “you know what? cardigan sweaters are cool, actually.” when courtney love writes a song mocking olympia, washington (pop. 40,000) for being “too cool”, she name checks only one person: calvin johnson.
“i’ve heard a lot about your band,” says johnson to wolfe. “i’m putting on a show on valentine’s day. that’s in two weeks. your band is opening. your set should be twenty minutes or so; five, maybe six songs.”
this, of course, is the time for wolfe to demur; make up an excuse or stall or maybe even just come clean. that’s what a normal teenager would do. but wolfe is not a normal teenager.
“sure thing,” she says. “see you there.”
two weeks ago, wolfe couldn’t say with absolute certainty how many strings were on a guitar.
wolfe cancels her classes, grabs a greyhound back to eugene, and finds molly neuman. she’s told everyone that molly is in her band, so molly should probably be in the band.
the agenda wolfe puts forth is this: find instruments, learn to play them, write five songs, rehearse, beg or borrow a van, and play the show. in two weeks.
it is an absolutely ludicrous proposition, to go from “i cannot say with absolute certainty how many strings are on a guitar” to your first show in fourteen days. but this is precisely what wolfe and neuman decide to do. “i’ve still got my bat mitzvah money,” says neuman. “we can spend that.”
wolfe and neuman have never written a song before, so they ask around for advice from the local punks, and the local punks all say the same thing: “listen to the ramones and do that.” “well, your bands suck”, retorts wolfe. “we’re never listening to the ramones again.” and they don’t.
the fact that they are not good does not mean they are not great
the valentine’s day show is a total mess; a raucus bang-crash of five songs. wolfe a neuman trade instruments after every song. sometimes in the middle of songs.
if punk is defined as an artform that prioritizes authenticity over virtuosity, then this show is extremely punk. wolfe yips and howls and croons and shouts. it’s not so much that she sings, she can’t really sing truth be told, but rather that she emotes. she careens from dismissive to desperate to furious; all of it raw and wrenchingly unselfconscious.
neuman has been a much quicker study on the instruments themselves and does the heavy lifting of holding the songs together. she gallops through her drum duty like a natural, and keeps the right fingers on the right strings on the borrowed guitar. well, for the most part.
the audience reaction is, overwhelmingly, total shock. holy shit, everyone thinks, allison really is in a band. and they’re not bad. actually, they’re kinda… great.
bratmobile have gone from zero to first show in fourteen days.
a guy who’s real, honest-to-god name is ‘slim moon’ has a plan
in the audience that night is slim moon.
slim moon puts on the odd show and gigs with the odd band around town, but moon has bigger dreams. he’s going to launch his own record label called “kill rock stars” and put out a compilation record of olympia-and-adjacent bands, also called “kill rock stars”. it’s a big job for just one mid-level scenster, but this is olympia, washington, after all. anything is possible. and everything is expected. moon already has ten minutes of recorded tape and a thick enough stack of cash to press a thousand records.
“great show,” say moon afterwards, in the parking lot of the venue. “i want you on my compilation. can you be in the studio, uh…” he checks his scribbled notes, “tomorrow?” wolfe and neuman look at each other. sure. why not? why the actual fuck not?
the next day, bratmobile bang out a live-from-the-floor rendition of ‘girl germs’. they do it in one take. “this is gonna be the opener” says moon. he writes “track #1” on a post-it note and sticks it on the tape case.
bratmobile have gone from do-not-own-instruments to first recording deal. elapsed time: fifteen days.
the best laid plans of mice and men are foiled by a rock band from seattle called ‘nirvana’
moon’s plan for his compilation record is pretty straightforward: record some bands, print a couple of thousand disks, sell them through some indie distributors and mail order, make enough money back to break even. it’s a solid plan. a good plan.
then a rock band from seattle called ‘nirvana’ go and fuck it up.
cobain and co had been olympia hang-abouts and layabouts for a while. cobain had dated tobi vail, drummer of the ‘go team’ and, later, bikini kill. kathleen hannah, also of bikini kill, had been the one to drink far, far, far too much strawberry wine and spray paint “kurt smells like teen spirit” on his bedroom wall. nirvana were about as close to being an olympia band as possible without actually, y’know, being an olympia band. moon had recorded one of their songs and put it on his compilation.
a month after moon releases ‘kill rock stars’, ‘nevermind’ comes out. the effect is almost instantaneous. the orders for moon’s compilation start coming in from the flanneled hordes looking to fill out their back catelogue collection; first a trickle, then a flood. keeping up with the demand is futile. the envelopes of mail order cheques pile up in an ever-growing pyramid in moon’s living room. still, moon sells a lot of those records. a lot. and the opening track on every single one of them is that bratmobile song.
“you should go on tour,” says moon.
“fuck that.” says neuman. “we should move to dc”.
wolfe is already packing the van.
the time has come to discuss riotgrrrl
in the spring of 1991, riotgrrrl is barely even a local blip. it’s vail standing over a photocopier at midnight, hannah screaming herself hoarse in some garage or basement jam space, corin tucker meticulously crafting songs in her bedroom. that’s it. on paper, the notion that riotgrrrl is going to become anything is ridiculous. can a gaggle of fifteen or twenty girls from a backwater town like olympia, washington (pop. 40,000) start a movement that not only remakes the national punk rock scene but also reignites, reworks and reimagines feminism as a movement, creating a new, third wave that becomes the de facto standard interpretation for the next thirty years? absurd.
and, yet, that is precisely what happened.
both wolfe and neuman are born for riotgrrrl; it is literally in their blood. neuman grew up a dc political brat, her parents were organizers in the activist wing of the democratic party. she did her grade six book report on eldridge cleaver’s ‘soul on ice.’ for wolfe, feminism and activism are even closer. she had been raised by a single mother who ran a women’s health clinic back in the dark days of the eighties when ‘operation rescue’ was at the height of their campaign of bullying and terror. wolfe’s mom put on a bullet-proof vest every day to go to work. later, someone burns the clinic to the ground. bratmobile were always going to be the sharp edge of the movement. it was inevitable.
over the next three years, hannah becomes the face of riotgrrrl; vail becomes the polemicist. and wolfe becomes the organizer. all those conferences and all those festivals don’t just put themselves together. wolfe does it. she answers the mail and makes the phone calls. she licks the stamps and cuts the stencils. she spends more on long distance than she does on postage and more on postage than she does on rent. it’s the work that turns a pile of records and fanzines into a movement. it’s thankless and tiring and expensive; the sort of work the burns you out, no matter how committed you are. this is foreshadowing.
washington dc
in 1992, washington dc is, literally, ground zero for punk rock in america. this city is the crucible where straightedge was born. the emo movement is being wrought there right now. even the entire concept of ‘american hardcore’ can be traced back to dc’s ‘bad brains’ in ’79. you think the punk rock poster boy is henry rollins? here’s some news: his original name was henry garfield and his first band was ‘state of alert’… from washington, dc.
dc has an extra attraction for bratmobile: erin smith. smith has had some mid-level scene fame for her fanzine ‘teenage gang debs’, but she brings something more important than cred to the band: a guitar, and the ability to play it. bratmobile have certainly gotten more proficient in the actual ‘playing songs’ part of being in a band since that first valentine’s day show, but wolfe and neuman still very much prioritize exuberance and attitude over getting all the fingers on the right strings. smith changes that.
smith’s playing style is a unique mix of single-note surf riffs and jangly chords that both bounce and shreik. it sounds like a cross between an industrial power drill and running a gas lawn mower over a gravel driveway. but in a good way. in 2024, rolling stone magazine released their list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time. erin smith is number 240. erin smith can play.
bratmobile have only been in dc a couple of weeks when they play their first show as a three piece. it’s some all-ages show and wolfe et al jump up on the stage between sets (permission be damned, we’ll ask for forgiveness later) and bang out a five-song set. in any other part of this society, this is trespassing at best. but this is punk rock. this is washington, dc.
the crowd love it. bratmobile have arrived.
you can get a lot for a bottle of black hair dye and a slice of cheese pizza
the album isn’t even really their idea. “you should record an album,” says tim green for the third time, or maybe the fifth.
green plays in the nation of ulysses, and ‘the nation’ are the cool kids. they’ve got jet black pompadour hair cuts and wear italian loafers with no socks and play a music that’s equal parts fascinating and terrifying. ‘sassy’ magazine votes their singer, ian svenonious, the ‘sassiest boy in america’ before they even release a record.
but that cool is only a thin powder coat of jet black. scratch it and, underneath, the nation are dyed-in-the-wool dorky dc keeners. need a place to jam or crash? the nation’s got you covered. need a band for your benefit show? need someone to build you a stage or put up posters? the nation is there. olympia, washington may be the town that preaches ‘maximum participation’, but the nation puts them to shame. when wolfe opens up the riotgrrrl offices, it’s on the second floor of a punk rock house called ‘the embassy’. the nation of ulysses lives there.
tucked in a basement corner of the embassy house, green has been putting together a recording studio. it’s a hot mess of wires and second hand equipment and a lot of duct tape, but it works. or, at least, green thinks it works. what he really needs is a band who wants to cut an album to test it out. and that band is bratmobile.
wolfe, neuman and smith record that album the only way they know how: a one-take, live-from-the-floor, bang-crash effort that’s equal parts zero-fucks and sugar rush. all through the recording, green has the same wild grin on his face that slim moon had a year ago. the ‘this is going to be great’ grin.
green’s payment for his engineering, requested and received, is this: one bottle of black hair dye, and one slice of cheese pizza, no toppings. ‘the nation’ doesn’t need toppings. toppings are for posers. toppings are bourgeois excess.
a week later, the tape is in the mail to slim moon. the album is called ‘pottymouth’.
‘pottymouth’ gets released on june 8th, 1993. it doesn’t move a lot of units or get a lot of airplay or get reviewed much (although ‘spin’ magazine later dubs it as ‘one of the best albums of the 1990s that you never heard’). the punk rock establishment, inasumch as such a thing exists, dismiss bratmobile as a bunch of dorky, awkward, angry girls, which is not untrue. but there are a lot of dorky, awkward, angry girls in the punk scene. a lot. for them, ‘pottymouth’ is an album that opens up possibilites. if these girls, who are so dorky and awkward and angry, can do this, why can’t i?
this is the point of ‘pottymouth’ in specific, and riotgrrl writ large: why sing alone in the car when you can sing on stage? why write in your diary when you could be writing a zine? why date a boy in a band when you can just, y’know, be in a band?
it’s a powerful, resonant message. and while riotgrrl is a short spark that burns fast, dies young and is forgotten quickly, it puts a dent in the universe, even if no one really notices. of course girls can be in bands and create culture, we say today. duh. when was it ever any different? before bratmobile. before ‘pottymouth’. that’s when.
the inevitable on-stage breakup
it’s one of those thick-and-heavy new york summer nights when bratmobile break up, on stage, at the thread waxing space.
everything about the show is hot. the air, the stage lights. the tempers.
there’s an in-fight going on in riotgrrl new york; one of those normal internal conflict things that you get when you build a movement of passionate, motivated people who aren’t afraid of a little confrontation. and it’s spilled over to the show at the thread waxing space. people are barging onto the stage to grab the mic and say their piece. there’s invectives and polemics and rebuttals. there’s pleas for peace and calls to war. sometimes there’s even half a song.
for wolfe, it is a night in ruins. this movement which has consumed so much of her life — thousands of miles driven, hundreds of sleepless nights and so, so much money on postage and long distance — lies before her in flames. in a cooler room with cooler heads, she might have been able to patch over the cracks with some passion and a common cause. but this room is hot. sweat has plastered her bangs to her forehead; it runs down her back in rivulets. she has shouted herself hoarse trying to make some sort of peace. she couldn’t sing a song, even if she could get ahold of the mic.
neuman is the first to quit. the tour has been brutal; a seeming eternity of sleeping on wooden floors and eating out of greasy paper bags and counting crumpled fives and singles for gas. her right shoulder has been hurting for days now. mostly a throb, but sometimes a stab. either way, definitely not good.
the question comes to her suddenly. why am i doing this? is this even accomplishing anything any more? and, in that moment, watching the chaos beyond the stage lights, she knows the answer is ‘no’. she stands up from her kit, tucks her sticks in the back pocket of her jeans, gives smith a small shrug of resignation, and walks off the stage into the quiet cool of the night outside. she can always come back and get her drums later. or maybe not. maybe it doesn’t matter.
smith isn’t far behind; she’s already packed her guitar away into the travel case. she looks at wolfe across the stage, mouths the word ‘sorry’, then turns and follows neuman. and, suddenly, wolfe is alone.
the crowd stops; the sturm and drang of infighting evaporates into the close air of the thread waxing space. what is going on? no one in the audience knows. but wolfe knows. it’s over. it’s done.
bratmobile had always been a celebration of the freedom of raw, unselfconscious honesty, of souls laid bare, of unfiltered frustration and desire and anger and fear. and on that stage at the thread waxing space, alone under the searing lights, wolfe does the most bratmobile thing imaginable: she cries. the entire room stares back, silent and open-mouthed.
at the back of the room there’s some middle-aged lady. she’s got messy, black hair and a leather jacket that looks like it’s seen a thousand bars, and a presence about her that makes everyone take a half-step back when she speaks. she looks like she’s slept in her makeup. she elbows her way through the crowd and climbs up on the stage and grabs wolfe in a tight hug with her wiry but strong arms.
“don’t sweat it kiddo,” she whispers in wolfe’s ear “i was in a band that had a shit breakup, too. you’ll be fine.”
it’s joan jett. of course it’s joan jett. who else would it be?
jett drives wolfe back to dc. outside of the city, the air is cool. they roll down the windows and watch the lights of america scroll by. by the time wolfe is back in her room at the embassy house, she’s already writing her next song.
the most truthful part of this is the epilogue
bratmobile get back together. of course they do. and they bang out some recordings and do some touring and, quite frankly, do a generally better job of ‘being a band’. but the moment has passed.
riotgrrl pried open a crack in the world. it accomplished pretty much all the things that gaggle of teenagers back in olympia, wa. (pop. 40,000) set out to do. third-wave became the standard interpretation of feminism. and a lot of women picked up guitars and started bands. a lot. the year that bratmobile broke up saw hole sell a million records and varuca salt play in front of 60,000 people. over in england, the corporate music machine took ‘girl riot’, watered it down, added some sugar and pink colouring, and sold it back as ‘girl power’ with a whole line of ‘spice’ related merchandise.
of course bratmobile never got any of those juicy recording contracts or massive audiences. they struck the match, but didn’t get invited to warm themselves by the fire. not that they would have accepted it, anyway. ‘selling out’ was never on the agenda.
thirty years later, there’s precious little to attest to bratmobile’s firey existence; a couple of records, a small mountain of fanzines, some old polaroids. fans of the band cling to these artefects; but they’re not important. these records and zines and photos can only attest to the facts of bratmobile, and the facts didn’t inspire thousands of girls to pick up guitars and pens, to craft a secret revolution in coffee shops and school hallways, to put a dent in the stale crust of nineties punk rock hegemony.
the legend did.
the mandatory suggested listening part
