So why reform Bratmobile? Why have a reunion?
Alison: I hate the word "reunion!" Can't we just say we were on hiatus for like, four years I mean, Seaweed's still a band, Unwound's still a band, Blonde Redhead, Sonic Youth they're all still around. Madonna and the Beastie Boys keep reinventing themselves, why not us? Don't ask why, ask why not!
Molly: There is no real reason other than that we dig each other and decided to try an see what it would be like to play together again. When the PeeChees decided to take a infinite break, I was like, "What am I gonna do?" Chris suggested that Bratmobile get together and I was like, "Yeah right!" But then I was in DC and hanging out with Allison and Erin and it was so fun and funny that I became all nostalgic and it seemed like more of a real idea. Plus, all of our friends seemed so into it and excited that it seemed reasonable thing to discuss.
Erin: It seemed kind
of crazy at first but there was definitely this weird energy going on that night,
with the three of us in the same town together and all of us kind of taking
a break between musical projects. A few people I didn't even know made
comments that night seeing us together, saying things like, "Hey, it's Bratmobile!"
It started to fee right. I actually got the chills.
Back when Bratmobile was first around, the band existed on two coasts at the same time. Even now, you all still live on opposite sides of the country. Can you imagine setting up in full bi-coastal style again?
Molly: We have nothing in the way of long term plans at this point. We had planned on taking it really slowly in order to be sure that it was right, but then Sleater-Kinney asked us to play some shows with them and we were like, "Sure that seems smart and makes sense." So now in the short term, Erin and Allison are coming here in February to practice and then I am going out to DC to practice for a while and we'll see what happens.
Erin: Our shows with Sleater-Kinney will be the first shows we have played together as Bratmobile since May of '94. @ As far as the future, who knows? We're. in a bit of a better position now, 'cuz we've all graduated college. During the first four years of the band, we were only able to get together during school breaks. Now we can pretty much make our own schedules-or at least as much as our jobs allow us to.
Molly: The thing about being bi-coastal before was that we were in all in school. Allison and I were at school in Olympia, but I was from DC originally, so I was always going there for vacation anyway. Now I am married and have a real job so there are more logistical factors to consider. But everyone is pretty supportive so far. We shall see. Plus in back then, there was no mail or cell phone reality so it's a lot more possible to stay connected now,
What do you feel that you are bringing into the Bratmobile fold that maybe didn't exist before or maybe hadn't developed fully yet-musically and in any other sense?
Alison: I think that we were just beginning to realize our full potential by the time we played our last show we played in New York at the Thread Waxing Space. I always felt that musically, it was such a shame we quit playing together at that point. But we were having a lot of problems with conflicting ideals and getting along then and I was having some sort of nervous breakdown and was probably inflicting it on everyone-it was totally ridiculous.
Erin: I think that it's pretty exciting that we get to revisit something from our past but bring five more years of experience into it. It's like when people say, "If only I knew then what I know now." When Bratmobile started, I had been playing guitar for two or three years. Now it's been 11 or 12 - that just blows me away. My abilities are a lot more developed than they were back then, simply from playing that many more shows and writing and recording and touring. I think it will be interesting to see how the songs sound with all that much more experience on all of our parts behind them. We have also all matured as people. We have always stayed in touch and gotten along really well, but now we're adults!
Molly: I have been playing drums now for almost nine years now* so I play a lot better. But there is now a fear that perhaps I will try to over play in order to compensate for the simple style of our songs. It's ridiculous to worry about that since at this point we haven’t even practiced yet! I think when we make up new songs they will kick ass way harder because we are all more skilled and smarter. We were kids, you know, so we figured everything out as we went along. In terms of business, I, along with other people basically run a record company now, so I think we have so much more information and so many more resources at our disposal so we don't have to spin our wheels as much, you know? And it seems like we get along a lot more in a genuine way.
Alison: I think we've all developed musically since Bratmobile started-or at least I know that Molly and Erin have, it's hard to rate myself. And I think we've had enough time and distance from each other and from the general climate of the punk/riot grrrl music scene of the early '90s to better appreciate each other and the music and work we've been involved in. I'm excited to play with them again and see where this might go.
Looking back on Bratmobile, what do you remember most? And what are you looking forward to with Bratmobile 99?
Erin: Bratmobile came about at a really amazing time in music. I don't think it could have been any better, than it was - there are so many great personal highlights and stories. Playing the International Pop Underground Convention twice in Olympia in the summer of ‘91. Doing our first cross country tour ever in '92 with Heavens To Betsy. Touring England in the summer of '93 with Heavenly and Huggy Bear. Having Joan Jett on stage trying to lend encouragement from behind my amp as our last show in NY collapsed around us in ‘94. It was such a wonderful time in the life of so many of our friend's bands as well: Bikini Kill, Heavens To Betsy, Beat Happening, Kicking Giant, Tiger Trap, Huggy Bear, Heavenly, Fugazi, Autoclave, Nation of Ulysses. It was a wonderful time and they were great people to share it with, play shows with and tour with. Everyone was just starting out andjust starting to learn how to do things like play shows and tour and we were all experiencing these things for the first time, together. There was a big sense of the Oly-DC connection in community and in helping each other. This part of the underground was only just starting out and just getting attention and finding an audience, so it was really our first time for everything. With Bratmobile '99 I'm looking forward to getting out there and playing shows and being with our friends again. Most of all though, I'm looking forward to working with Molly and Allison again. They're truly two of my most favorite people in the world. When the band started, I told myself that I'd only want to be in a band with people who I would never get sick of hanging out with. They are just really fun and funny and cool. I'm really excited we're spending time together and playing together again. I've worked with Alison more recently but Molly I think is just an amazing person and incredible drummer, and I'm so glad we'll be in a band together again.
Molly: Bratmobile was our first band so in that way everything we did, no matter how ridiculous it was, in retrospect was exciting, and memorable. Like the first time we played in New York with Kicking Giant; going on tour at all; going to England. It was rad to be in a band at the point we were involved in which was, in my personal opinion, one of the most major times of underground music with bands like Ulysses, Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, Fugazi, Heavens to Betsy, Unwound all out there. It may sound cheesy, but it seemed so fun and I don't get the same sense of things now. Maybe that's because I am older and not as free. I have this hope that things will be fun and exciting and maybe considering the lack of rad things happening in the underground now, we will be able to kick start something.
Alison: I loved touring
the most, and Molly and Erin were really fun to go on tour with. Sioux
City, Iowa! Groupies! Krispee Kreme! Yum-Yum! I just
wanna perform, and party
like it's 1999, that's all.
What were the major factors that brought about the demise of Bratmobile originally?
Alison: Things just got so out of control with riot grrrl, grunge, punk rock, whatever. No one expected the kind of media onslaught we all experienced-or the backlash that followed. None of us were professionals, none of us knew how to process things, how to do good "business," or even how to benefit front the press. It was frustrating to feel so out of control of our own images and words. I think we all ended up taking it out on each other and taking each other for granted. We all had so much to prove, so much to figure out, so much growing up to do. I think some people wanted to tear me down, maybe 'cause they saw my face or name in magazines one too many times. People stopped taking personal responsibility for themselves and spent too much time blaming everyone else for everything. I ended up feeling like I needed to run and hide; to throw it all away.
Molly: We stopped doing Bratmobile because of a number of reasons. For one, we were not really communicating as much any more because of distance-I was living in Oakland, Allison and Erin in DC-and so we were really not in tune with each other as far as what our goals were and what we needed and wanted from the experience. Also, the media scrutiny of what we were doing really seemed to cloud our own vision and as we were not really prepared for it. We had no internal mechanism or common ground for dealing with it.
The Riot Girl tag - maybe it's a stigma - still continues to be attached to bands that spring from the "ashes" of that scene – I’m thinking of bands like Sleater-Kinney or Julie Ruin. Riot Girl is obviously going to be a recurring theme in the attention that is paid to Bratmobile now - do you think it will help or hinder you?
Alison: I don't think the riot girl tag has ever been a hindrance. It's cool to know that there's some sort of network or community - however vague or broken up at this point - of girls who are interested in what we're doing. I'm interested in what they're doing, too! I still don't know exactly what to think of riot girl, maybe 'cause it never was exactly one certain thing or agenda. The term itself seems a bit dated, but I will always support the idea of girls organizing. I think if we ended up effecting even one girl positively, no matter how convoluted the message, then that's a good thing.
Molly: I think in a way it is great because all these girls who have been inspired to do political/feminist stuff within punk rock may be re-energized if they were into Bratmobile and, for example, never got a chance to see us, may now be able to. It may hinder us because people who are quick to dismiss us as being valid only within the context of riot grrrl will not want to check us out and see what a rad band we are and how fun our songs are. However, this is not a new problem, since our records have been available since 1992 and some people dig us and others don't.
The post-'94 punk commercialization "boom" has vastly changed the dynamics of the underground. It seems that only now, five years later, people are starting to see diminishing returns and are reverting back to a late-'80s/early-'90s mentality as far as viewing making music or doing a band. Bratmobile achieved its notoriety before the big punk "boom" of '94 and the band ended well before the boom really caught on, giving you a fairly unique perspective with which to view the whole circus. Do you think this extra knowledge will add to the brightness of the B-Mob '99 future?
Molly: Wow, I really don't know. I think one thing is that we were never really associated with the "boom" and so now we aren't associated with the "bust." Our goal, as I see it, is to do this band as genuinely and sincerely as possible and part of that is to not worry to much about how we are being perceived or scrutinized. I think we know how lucky we have been to be even marginally successful,' without being an active band and we are really just into the idea of being together and seeing what kind of songs we can come up with.
Alison: I think music in the late '90s has become mostly shit, and it's totally due to the commercialization/co-optation of punk, “grunge" and riot girl. There must be no forgiveness for this occurrence. We return with a vengeance!
Is there anything scene-wise that you had envisioned or assumed that would change between when Bratmobile broke up and now that hasn't? Is there anything you're surprised has?
Molly: I am bummed that there aren't more good bands with my friends in them. I guess I always thought that even if our bands had to break up we would continue to make music and art with as much impact and energy as before. While this is true for many, I think there is much more room for new rad bands.
Alison: I think by '94, things had already gone to shit. Nothing that has happened since then really surprises me. Sometimes when I hear about people I knew who went totally corporate, I'm surprised, I guess. I'm surprised at how bad so much music is today and how the badness of a band seems to have a direct opposite correlation with how much money and popularity they receive. If you suck, then you'll automatically hit the jackpot! There's no justice in this world, I suppose.
What scares you most about the reunion?
Alison: That the world will no longer be able to comprehend us.
Molly: What if we
suck? As of this writing, we have not played together yet so everything
we are doing is based on blind faith in each others radness and the belief in
our trinity!
Wolfe, drummer Molly Neuman
and guitarist Erin Smith, who divide their time between the two Washingtons,
sing kicky, hooky punk rock songs about girl stuff - girl germs,. looking cool,
and the way girls and boys interact. They're pro-girl and very funny,
blending Polly Styrene's sing-song strength with Goo-style, high school hipness.
The music is spare: Smith plays her guitar like a bass, and Wolfe's lyrics come
from that Playground world where we all used to sing to ourselves about whatever
was on our mind.
The effect of this mish-mash is, above all, catchy. It's also political:
we breed, we bleed, get used to it. Like Horton's Whos, Bratmobile wants
to here and to be heard. And like the best punk rock, their songs are immediately
memorable, sublimely hummable and uplifting. In boy-heavy rock'n'roll
- and especially in punk rock - songs referential to a girl world are almost
shocking. But please don't call it foxcore. 'People are trying to
get a word to coin the new thing with women in music,' says Smith. 'I
just like girls getting together and having this voice.
Bratmobile formed officially in the spring of 1991 when college hallmates Neuman and Wolfe, who had been singing a cappella, added Smith, whom they met through Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records. They cemented the line-up last summer and did a five-week, coast-to-coast tour. To Wolfe such direct communication with their audience is key. “We've had more interaction with girls when we’ve been on tour" she says.
Neuman hails from Olympia, Wolfe from Washington, D.C., and Smith From the D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. At the moment, Neuman and Wolf are still students at Evergreen College in Olympia, while Smith has transferred to the University of Maryland. Such scatteredness makes songwriting, practicing, touring and the traditional bandmate hanging-out time rather limited. 'Nowadays I write the guitar part,' Smith explains. 'Allison will have some lyrics that she's already written, and Molly is good enough to know how to make it work and just do her drum part right then. We're good at getting it together quickly, because we have to.'
For these women, a long-distance friendship is not as unusual as it might be for others. That's because all three are veterans of fanzines. Wolfe and Neuman publish Girl Germs; Smith put out the one-issue Action Teen and, along with her brother Don, the fairly famous Teenage Gang Debs, which is primarily about The Brady Bunch. In Girl Germs, Neuman says, 'We write about how we about being girls in punk rock.”
So far, Bratmobile has done singles for K, Four Letter Words and Homestead, as well as tracks on compilations put out by K, Kill Rock Stars and Yoyo. Also in the works are projects with Simple Machines and Teen Beat, the label of Unrest guitarist (and Smith's longtime pal) Mark Robinson. Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses has recorded an album's worth of Bratmobile material, though the group is still trying to figure out what to do with it (i.e., which of their friends labels they will approach with the tape). Like their friends Bikini Kill, Bratmobile has gained an unusual amount of attention with such a limited amount of available music. 'We've had a lot of publicity in life, 'so I think some of the people who I haven't even been punk rockers, but just normal teenage girls.'
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