40 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Poly Styrene and Lora Logic

X-Ray Spex may only have released one album during the heyday of U.K. punk, but it is an absolute classic: Germfree Adolescents (1978). The women in the original line-up included singer, Poly Styrene, who is known for her powerful and discordant voice and her unorthodox appearance, and Lora Logic, a fifteen year-old saxophone player who […]

41 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: The Slits

Today it is my distinguished honor to write about the first all-female punk band. And what is even more exciting than the fact that they were an all-female punk band is the fact that they were a punk band who were also all remarkable musicians. Pretty novel for punk band at this time. Additionally, they […]

42 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: The Runaways

Kari Krome is rarely pictured or discussed in literature about The Runaways. She was, in fact, largely erased after she introduced Joan Jett and Sandy West and got them to meet up and jam on some Suzi Quatro songs. But the original idea for their band was hers, based on songs she was writing, and […]

43 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Ann and Nancy Wilson

I’m really worried about how much more writing I am going to have to do when I start writing about all-female bands tomorrow and I have to pay attention to each woman instead of getting to ignore most or all of the band! But that is tomorrow’s problem. I am going to transition slowly with […]

44 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Chrissie Hynde

Chrissie Hynde was born in 1951 in Akron, Ohio, but she spent a lot of her time in Cleveland growing up. She was an outsider in high school, basically because no one else was as cool as her, and she saw much bigger things for herself than what was available around her. She spent a […]

45 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Suzi Quatro

Well, this project is more than half over! And I have decided it is wrong to talk about all-female rock bands without honoring Suzi Quatro very specifically first. I mean, I already posted about Tina Weymouth–who taught herself bass listening to Suzi Quatro records Chris Frantz hipped her to. But, we went back to discuss […]

46 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: The Roots of All-Girl Rock and Roll

So, I was about to start talking about the advent of all-girl rock bands in the seventies, and then I realized that we hadn’t discussed all of the precursors! There were many all-girl rock bands in the sixties, but it was very difficult for them to find success, get deals that were worthy of them, […]

47 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Diamanda Galás

Diamanda Galás was born in San Diego, California in 1955. She began to learn piano from her father, who was a gospel choir director, at age three. He introduced her to jazz and classical music primarily, but she also learned cello and violin and was exposed to a wider range of musical styles. She was […]

48 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Nina Hagen

Nina Hagen was born in 1955 in East Berlin, and grew up in its ghettos, as a Jewish woman whose grandfather had been killed in a German concentration camp. She always wanted to escape the bleekness of the communist state, and it became a huge influence on the trajectory of her life and artistic work. […]

49 DAYS TIL BIKINI KILL IN L.A.: Grace Jones

Grace Jones was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1948. There was a lot violence and a lot of religion in her childhood. Her parents left for the United States to start building a new life, and left her and all of her siblings with Grace’s grandmother and her new husband, Mas P. Mas P […]