Following this week’s announcement that Sleater-Kinney are playing the 6 Music Festival, L7 are reuniting and Kim Gordon is guesting with Mary Anne Hobbs this weekend, Sunday’s Now Playing is a celebration of RIOT GRRRLZ!
Great news about L7, huh? Not only is the original line-up getting back to together to play Download Festival, but this week they also posted details of a Kickstarter page, which aims to raise funds for an L7 documentary entitled L7: Pretend We’re Dead.
AND Riot grrrl graduates Sleater-Kinney are also back together after nearly a decade, and they play the 6 Music Festival next month!
So how do we define ‘Riot grrrl’? Sleater Kinney’s Corrin summed it up beautifully recently: “It was a grass-roots movement of young women who were speaking about feminism, violence against women, and any kind of issue that affected women, and it was an incredible movement to be a part of”.
So we want you to give us your best examples of Riot grrrl artists please! Not just artists involved in the movement, but artists who came before, during and after.
Anything from icons such as Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush, to the genre main players such as Babes in Toyland and Bikini Kill. Or you could sneak-in a bit of Hole, Elastica and The Breeders, right up to Bjork, PJ Harvey and Haim.
Ahead of Sunday’s Now Playing, you can whet your appetite with a Sleater-Kinney documentary on the same day at 1pm, when band members Carrie Brownstein and Corrin Tucker recount their early days of the '90s Pacific Northwest Riot grrrl scene, to stadium gigs supporting Pearl Jam, and their return with their first new album for ten years.
Get your Riot Grrrl-inspired suggestions to Tom via the hashtag #RiotGrrrlz6Music to help create a playlist. Comment on the Now Playing Facebook page, here on the blog, email [email protected] or drag tracks onto our Spotify and Rdio playlists.
(We realise the term is “Riot Grrrl”, but we stuck a ‘z’ on the end for the hashtag because we require a playlist that exemplifies what these artists are, rather than what movement they belong to).
