Riot Grrrl Quotes

The '90s is my favourite era of music, especially the girl-bands like Babes in Toyland.

I'm not sure Riot Grrrl would have been as big a deal if the Internet had existed back then. Because there's so much stuff on the Internet. People could have been like, oh, whatever, I'm going to go look at pictures of Barbie vaginas, you know what I mean? There's so many different things on the Internet, you read one article and then you read something linked off that article and you go down the rabbit hole.

You know that band that are all over 'Melody Maker,' Huggy Bear, they're just a load of crap, right? Riot grrrl group - y'know, it's all sexism and stuff, women standing up for their rights: 'This girl said this at the gig off the stage.' It's nothing got to do with music. They're probably untalented gits when it comes to the crunch.

To make riot grrrl move into the future in a new way with a bunch of new names and a bunch of new energy, younger people have to learn about it and apply it to their own lives and own modern conversation. And they are.

I go to lectures and girls are finding out about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre for the first time and are like,' This is my jam!' It still feels fresh to them.

It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.

My favourite singer ever in the world is Ari Up from The Slits. Her voice is amazing to me. It's carefree, but it's also really amazing.

With Sleater-Kinney, we have a lot of earnest fans, and we were an earnest band.

The first show I ever played was the International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia, Washington. It was girl night, and I was in Heavens To Betsy. I had just turned 18.

I loooved Sleater-Kinney like a crazy person.

I think Pussy Riot is amazing. I'm honored that they were inspired by riot grrl, and obviously they're making history around the world.

I have Nineties music oozing out of my pores. What made rock & roll back then is that it was uncensored. It was raw and dark. Think of 'Something in the Way,' by Nirvana - he was telling everyone how he felt.

There is a lot to say about what Bikini Kill and other 'riot grrrl' bands were able to achieve when they first set out. They were not some momentary, convulsive, creative spasm of independent music. There was a very real, relevant point of view being expressed.

When I was 16, 17 years old, I became aware of music coming out of Olympia, Wash., which is the state capitol and about an hour south of Seattle. And there were bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile and Heavens To Betsy, and for the first time, I heard my story being explained to me, being sung to me.

I got into punk at 17 after discovering an all-girl band from Long Island on the Internet called The Devotchkas - four crazy-looking girls with fast, driving basslines and high-pitched gang vocals who shared the same dress sense as the punks I used to eye up curiously in Camden.

You don't hear it on the radio. There's something about the voices in Sleater-Kinney that's a little too challenging to ever be on the inside.

We wore our safety pins on the inside of our clothes.

I like 'My So-Called Life' and the 'Riot Grrl Movement' and 'Freaks and Geeks.'

When I was little I wanted to be like Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love or be attached to the X-girls and hang out in downtown culture.

People forget the punk thing was really good for women. It motivated them to pick up a guitar rather than be a chanteuse. It allowed us to be aggressive.

I saw Sleater Kinney perform back when I was in college.

The Butcherettes are led by a female singer, and they're sort of wild.

Listening to Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna gave me the confidence I needed to get up on stage and be photographed every night on tour.

You go to a Rico Nasty show and there's gay people, trans people, white people and black people all in the mosh pit together, and it's beautiful.

I was in a band in the '90s called Bikini Kill, and we were so freaked out about documentation then, and there was the whole thing, not just about the male gaze, but that people were going to misrepresent you... a kind fear of the mainstream that a lot of us had.