On the tail-end of the Nineteen Eighties, a bunch of New York/New Jersey bands had been sifting by means of the dying embers of glam steel and creating unusual and great new hybrids.
Revelling within the distress of medicine and poverty and quarter-life malaise, D Technology grew to become the glam-grunge emissaries of the Everlasting Bummer. Mixing conventional rock’n’roll bullshit with cosmic teenage dirtbag fantasies, Monster Magnet turned 80’s glam right into a 70’s sci-fi Jack Kirby comedian e book, pulsing with main colors and pill-shovelling area monsters.
White Zombie dragged every thing into a horny pseudo-industrial B-movie nightmare. And the Lunachicks saturated glam’s already eyeball-bleeding color palette into an alarming smoosh of scorching pinks and screaming yellows, gave it a fierce feminist twist, and turned the historically male-dominated style proper on it’s dumb, Aqua-netted head.
Nostalgia tends to erase the jagged edges of the previous, and that’s undeniably true of glam steel. Certain man, the glitter and sweat and arenas and Headbangers Ball and the teenage make-outs within the again seat of Camaro Z’s had been, certainly, fairly fucking glorious throughout. However the music was additionally shockingly conservative in its gender/sexual politics.
That appears unattainable, given the PMRC’s government-sponsored makes an attempt to ban bands like Mötley Crüe or W.A.S.P., to say nothing of the truth that your complete style was constructed on dudes in drag shaking their tail feathers, however consider me, glam didn’t entertain many factors of view exterior of the normal straight white male’s need for simple ladies and misplaced weekends.
Ladies had been represented largely as set ornament in music movies, and because the fodder for chest-thumping “tell-all” interviews in regards to the soiled backstage lives of filthy-rich rock stars. Granted, there have been a couple of exceptions. Lita Ford was in a position to grasp in there. And there was Vixen. However Vixen by no means had it straightforward, ever. The very fact is, it was a person’s world. However no one informed that to the Lunachicks.
Not that the band ever professed to be about defying or breaking down gender roles. Simply the alternative, actually. They’d get requested about it in interviews on a regular basis, and their customary snarky reply was that they had been “socially unconscious”. And whereas they did write loads of songs about fucking, it was extra in regards to the gory glory of all of it, not the politics.
In addition they had a whole lot of songs about meals. Meals and intercourse was their factor, for essentially the most half. However additionally they wrote in regards to the strain younger ladies went by means of every day to look and act in socially acceptable methods, even on the expense of their very own well being.
Songs like Binge And Purge and Bitterness Barbie had been laced with barbed humour, however they addressed some fairly important points. And the reality of the matter is, the Lunachicks had been an all-female band fronted by an precise trend mannequin, and they didn’t kowtow to the male gaze, ever. Their get-ups had been fucking loopy, however they had been created and worn completely on their very own phrases. They anticipated respect, and would crack your cranium with their bass guitar in the event that they didn’t get it. And this was all in, like, 1988, when the prevailing tradition was all-dudes, on a regular basis.
Lunachicks had been bad-asses, straight-up. Whole fucking heroines. Almost thirty years down the road, and it’s a on condition that half the bands on the town have multi-gendered line-ups, however through the Lunachicks’ reign, women-in-rock was nonetheless a rarity. Together with L7, the Lunachicks principally defied each conference created by glam steel and paved the way in which for the Riot Grrls and some other girl who ever needed to rock out with most quantity and never be hassled by males and their macho bullshit.
Lunachicks had been fashioned in highschool within the mid-80s by a pot seller and two of her greatest prospects, principally. The primary tune they wrote was about killing certainly one of their lecturers. Musically, they love-hated traditional rock and simply plain cherished Kiss and Black Sabbath and the MC5, and their signature look/sound shortly grew to become a mish-mosh of low-budget glamour and high-concept absurdity.
They appreciated John Waters and splatter films and quick meals and shiny pink lipstick, they usually poured all of it right into a fright wiggy stew of day-glo punk rock that appeared like a public entry tv satire of mid-80s hair steel carried out by teenage smart-asses ripped on Mescaline. And that’s just about what they had been.
Sonic Youth main-man Thurston Moore noticed them fairly early on and helped get them signed to UK label Blast First, who launched their debut, Babysitters on Acid, in 1990. A traditional of ramshackle extra, Babysitters set Lunachicks on a course that discovered ‘em working amok within the decrease reaches of the burgeoning “alt-rock” nation for the following decade or so.
They confirmed up in films quite a bit, low-budget Z-grade stuff like Blue Vengeance and Terror Firmer, and toured fairly constantly. They had been one of many solely all-female (and even mostly-female) bands to play the Warped Tour, which proved that punk had as many gender issues as steel did. And so they impressed a whole lot of ladies to choose up devices and play rock’n’roll precisely the way in which that they needed to.
The Lunachicks broke up within the late 90s (they reunited in 2019), however their affect stays. Who is aware of what rock would seem like with out them? I’m guessing Warrant would’ve lasted quite a bit longer.
Shudder.
Lunachicks play the CBGB Pageant in New York on September 27. Tickets are on sale now.
