Bikini Kill

by Jason Ankeny
The point band of the early-90s riot grrrl movement, Olympia, WAs Bikini Kill exploded onto the male-dominated indie rock scene by fusing the visceral power of punk with the impassioned ideals of feminism. Calling for Revolution Girl Style Now, the groups fiercely polemical and anthemic music helped give rise to a newly empowered generation of women in rock, presaging the dominance female artists would enjoy throughout the decade.
Bikini Kill formed in the late 80s at Olympias liberal Evergreen College, where students Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox first teamed to publish a feminist fanzine, also dubbed Bikini Kill. Seeking to bring the publications agenda to life, they decided to form a band, enlisting guitarist Billy Boredom (born William Karren) to round out the lineup. Led by singer/songwriter Hanna, a former stripper, the group laced its incendiary live performances with aggressive political stances that challenged the accepted hierarchy of the underground music community; slam dancers were forced to mosh at the fringes of the stage so that women could remain at the front of the crowd, for example, and female audience members were often invited to take control of the microphone to openly discuss issues of sexual abuse and misconduct.
In 1991, Bikini Kill issued their first recording, Revolution Girl Style Now, an independently distributed demo cassette. For their first official release, the quartet signed with the aggressively independent Olympia-based label Kill Rock Stars; the Bikini Kill EP, produced by Fugazis Ian Mackaye, consisted largely of reworked versions of material from the first cassette. In 1992, the band issued Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, a split 12 released with the British group Huggy Bears Our Troubled Youth on its flip side; a subsequent U.K. tour with Huggy Bear in early 1993 raised the visibility of the riot grrrl groundswell to unprecedented heights, and the movement became the focus of many media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. When Bikini Kill returned to the U.S., they joined forces with Joan Jett, whom the band held up as an early paragon of riot grrrl aesthetics. Jett produced the groups next single, the bracing New Radio/Rebel Girl, and Hanna returned the favor by co-writing the song Spinster for the Jett album Pure and Simple. In 1994, Bikini Kill released Pussy Whipped; their most potent effort to date, it featured the songwriting emergence of both Vail and Wilcox, a trend continued on 1996s Reject All American. The group quietly disbanded in early 1998.