The band Bratmobile, best known as a staple of the riot grrl scene of the early ’90s, is back with a new album, Girls Get Busy, released Tuesday on Lookout Records. Allison Wolfe, lead singer of the group, chatted with The Badger Herald the night the record was released to talk about riot grrl, her politics and (of course) the new album.
BH: Bratmobile formed back in 1991. What’s the difference in your motivation to make music now as it was then?
Allison Wolfe: I never would have thought I’d be singing in a band. I was really inspired by K Records. [The label’s sound] sounded like a lot of people just sitting in their apartments just making music. You just have to start your own scene and your own fun. We just started singing acapella at parties. I think after a while, though (that was when the grunge boom was happing in the NW) we noticed all of a sudden there was this whole new set of guys just running around with their shirts off being sexist and annoying. I guess we kind of just thought what we had to say is more important than this, and we could do it better. It was sort of a reaction to the hippie town we were living in, as well as the macho-grunge thing going on.
BH: And now?
AW: The same thing. [laughing] It’s called Limp Bizkit. There was a time when I was in between bands and not playing music, and I’d complain and sit on the couch. My roommates said ‘you need to get a band for an outlet for all your complaints.’ I think it’s just as important today as it was however many years ago for women to vocalize their experiences and to speak from our perspective, which isn’t necessarily heard–at least in the grand scheme of things. And so I just think it’s important for girls to be playing music, and I felt instead of complaining about why aren’t there more girl bands, to just be like, ‘well, I can play.’
BH: On the topic of ‘riot grrl’–do you think that label is still relevant today?
AW: It’s hard to say. I don’t want to pronounce for anyone if something that may be important to them is relevant or dead, because things are more or less relevant to different people. So in a way, I think the term riot grrl is pretty dated–it really comes from the early ’90s and describes some sort of community building within girl punk-rock scenes. It was interesting how it got spread to different towns or generations.
I think it describes an era more than anything else. If anything, I think the word is synonymous with modern feminism. As long as sexism exists, feminism must exist for women’s survival. I don’t want to say it’s not relevant, but in a way the term talks about an era that already happened … new generations should keep coming up with new terms for it, though, and keep it going.
BH: What do you hope people will get out of listening to Bratmobile?
A: I hope they get it. Sometimes people take it however they will, and I’m always excited when girls come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I listened to your record and it’s great, because I was thinking about this person I wanted to tell off and then I could,’ or ‘that’s exactly what I said to them later.’ It’s pretty interesting/intense when people talk about what the songs and lyrics might mean to them. In a way, that’s what it’s all about It makes me feel like then it’s all worth it. Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, who’s THAT song about?’ and I want to remind people that there’s no song that’s really ever exactly just about one person. I’m trying to criticize behaviors between people and how people treat each other. And it can be more universal than that, in that everyone has the capacity to treat each other a certain way, so it can apply to different people at different times. I also believe in putting the fear of god into men to be like, ‘you should be afraid to harass women; you should be afraid to treat your girlfriend terribly; you should be afraid to put women down because someone’s gonna come out and get you.’
BH: How are the songs on the new album different, stylistically or lyrically, from what Bratmobile has done in the past?
AW: I think that what Erin came up with on the guitar is a little more complex than what she used to do. We also wrote the songs with keyboards in mind.
Lyrically, I write about what I’ve been thinking about in recent times. This was definitely written post-September 11. My reaction to most of that stuff was like, ‘this is really horrible,’ but somehow I get the feeling that this is too good to be true for the administration in the White House right now. I feel like so many things have just worked in their favor. Nevermind that the presidency was completely stolen, [which has] been proven, and it’s somehow not making front-page headlines and I don’t know why. I felt like, this is horrible.
I’m completely anti-war; I’m completely anti-military. And I just can’t believe what has been happening in the names of all these people that died. And I think there are all sorts of different people that died in those terrorist attacks, and I’m sure there are plenty of liberals and left-wingers that are turning over in their graves thinking, ‘I can’t believe what Bush is doing in my name.’ But also, I just think that to kill more innocent civilians is not the answer. And I think the U.S. has done so many things to cause death and misery and starvation and whatnot in countries all over the world. And by our military’s hands, so many more people have died than what died on September 11. We have to start taking a look at ourselves. So I had a couple of songs that I wrote about that.
BH::Any final words?
AW: Yeah! Look into Ladyfest (www.ladyfest.org). Watch out for us to be out there on tour in July, so get prepared for that. Keep resisting the real axis of evil, which I think is Ashcroft, Bush, and all sorts of other evil people in that administration of ours and the people that we give tons of military money to. You are not alone, even though people might try to shove American flags down your throat to shut you up.