April 2–9, 1998

yeah sherr

1998 and we are going mad!

Women in punk rock history and punk rock present.

by Sara Sherr

Inspired by Women's History Month, I've compiled a handful of my favorite records by overlooked women in punk rock history. This isn't a complete list by any means, it's just a sampling of what's on my turntable and scattered on my floor at the moment. I dedicate this column to all my female friends who have shared history, gossip and bands with me, and who are now in other cities, heavily domesticated, or in some cases, lost in space. When I need to hear another familiar misfit, smartass voice, these are some of the records I turn to.

X-Ray Spex: "1977 and we are going mad!" In 1977, when all the riot grrrls were little babies, Anglo-Somalian, braces-wearing Poly Styrene was the teenage female answer to both Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren. With the help of 16-year-old saxophonist Lora Logic, she took the brightly colored clothes that she sold in her own little shop and turned them into brightly colored songs that fought fake with fake. "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think… Oh bondage up yours," declared the very first single "Oh Bondage Up Yours." Their sole album, Germfree Adolescents (Caroline), which frustratingly goes in and out of print, contains countless microwaved quotables: "I am a poseur and I don't care. I like to make people stare"; "I am a cliché"; "My mind is like a plastic bag… I eat Kleenex for breakfast and use soft hygienic Weetabix to dry my tears"; "I wanna be instamatic. I wanna be a frozen pea"; "I clambered over mounds and mounds of polystyrene foam and then fell into a swimming pool filled with fairy snow and watched the world turn day-glo, you know. "

In the Yeah Sherr office in sunny Bella Vista, Germfree Adolescents isn't just an album, it's the employee manual.

The Slits: "Don't create, don't rebel," wailed Ari Up in "Typical Girls," a song that mocked the definitions of ladylike behavior in England, or just about anywhere. In 1977 London, they were one of the first all-women bands to benefit from DIY, and when they couldn't figure out how to play, they'd put down their instruments and dance or jam to dub records. While on their first tour with The Clash, they pissed off everyone just for existing. The then-15-year-old Up, a German-born, Rastafarian rug rat, warbled and squealed like Björk but dressed like the dirtier, scarier predecessor to Madonna, wearing underwear outside of her clothes, men's underwear to be exact. The Slits made it up as they went along, and as a result, nothing sounds like their Dennis Bovell-produced, white-girls-on-dope 1979 debut, Cut (Island Import), on which they appeared naked and covered in mud. Like X-Ray Spex, they attacked the consumer culture with songs like "Spend Spend Spend" and "Shoplifting." (I'm still waiting for a T-shirt that says "I pay fuck-all"). Later on they would proclaim, "In the beginning there was rhythm," and to the Slits, rhythm was about freedom, freedom from all that was typical. In today's Marilyn Manson-era anyone can be "evil," but to be truly mischievous is a rare and wonderful thing.

Totally Wired (Razor & Tie): This 1995 compilation documents a time when women were snarly and basslines were spiky. Among the highlights are The Delta 5's "You" and The Au Pairs' "Come Again," two takes on sexual politics that would make Lil' Kim blush. Besides tracks from Bush Tetras and The Raincoats, the killer is Pylon's "Feast on My Heart," where Vanessa Briscoe tears out her heart and offers it to a new wave arm folder, like it or not. "Pull down your eyebrows/ Uncross your arms/ I didn't choose your sorrow/ No need to worry/ Feast on my heart."

Kristin Hersh: When she was playing with stepsister Tanya Donelly in the herky-jerky cowpunk antifolk rollercoaster that was Throwing Muses, or her sparer solo acoustics like the latest, Strange Angels (Throwing Music/Rykodisc), there was an air of desperation to it, like she writes songs because she has to. Like Pylon's Briscoe, when she offers you her heart, you feast on it. In a Rolling Stone interview, the mother of three once said that love songs are serious business. On Limbo, the final Throwing Muses release, she asked on "Serene," "Why do I like you/ 'cause I'd kill to be you." On Strange Angels, she says things like "You're truly bizarre, you're changing all the rules, and I don't need you, but I want you bad" ("Aching for You") or "A hot shower on a hot day/ Water hangs in the air like you stayed/ Like you never went down your own drain" ("Heaven").

Jenny Mae/The Yips: Jenny Mae had one of the best album titles in 1995 when she called her debut "There's a Bar Around the Corner… Assholes." If there is a bar around the corner, it's in her hometown of Columbus, OH, and hanging out there are Mae and Gilmore Tamny of The Yips. Tamny and Mae offer two different takes on small-town Everygirl. On Mae's latest, Don't Wait Up for Me (Anyway), she's more restrained, like a rootsier Barbara Manning. Like Manning, you get the feeling something's about to blow up or has just blown over. In her voice you hear sweetness and strain, and every barfly she meets leaves a distinct mark on the old wood bar. With only her guitar and drummer Jon Davidson, Tamny rocks out with the same amateur abandon that the Slits did almost two decades ago. But instead of dub records, she probably jams to her male predecessors like the Electric Eels or Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments (and sings like them too). From the great 1995 debut single "1000% Fox" on up to last year's "The Blue Flannel Bathrobe Butterfly" (both Siltbreeze), it's lo-fi rock that remembers to rock and overcomes its limitations by accident (or sounds that way).