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Read WebGrrl's Point of View from Past Broadcasts Where Did All Those RRR's Come From…? I'm framing this as the week that gave us the bright pink Barbie Printer (an ideal companion to the bring pink Barbie Digital Camera). How's that for Grrl news! Computer products are starting to radically evolve at a pace that produces slicker, faster, cheaper, all-ages-compatible web-cessories quicker than you can say: "Why does that 9-year-old girl have better web tools than I do!" What's a WebGrrl to do? Speaking of WebGrrl: OK - you've heard me say I spell Grrl with lots of R's. Where did that weird growl come from anyway. What's IS a WebGrrl? OK students - sit still and pay attention. Professor WebGrrl is going to instruct: Let's look at the origin of the word. First was GRRRL: 3 R's. It all began with - ready? - RIOT GRRRL. There was a specific origin of the self-conscious Riot Grrrl movement - and it's local for my fellow Pacific Northwesterners. Not to alienate all my new friends around the world listening to WebTalkGuys LIVE on TTALK. But SO MANY good things come from Washington. We have the wealthiest guy, we had the first PC, we had Nirvana, we have Amazon and RealNetworks. Makes me just want to swell up with pride. So being cool and cutting edge is deep in our Radical Washingtonian Roots. As an Historian of Girls in Rock uncovered in her research - and as all savvy girl rockers know - it seems RIOT GRRRL grew out of a scene in Olympia, Washington (our capitol) and Washington, D.C. in 1991. This loosely-organized network of all-girl bands sort of rallied around a makeshift political agenda, heralded via fanzines. Riot Grrrls startlingly quickly grew into a movement that was a genuine female youth subculture with the explicit aim of encouraging women to move into all areas of the rock world. RiotGrrrl were feminist through and through - but they weren't your mom's feminists by a long shot. They disassociated themselves from the 1960s/70s feminist generation through both appearance and attitude. They celebrated girlishness by wearing big plastic hairgrips, barretts - pretty plastic jewelry. Courtney Love is a good example of a Riot Grrrl, although she quickly separated from that movement as being coined by the music press. Courtney was truly a "kinderwhore". Again - that grrlishness but with a BIG GRRRROWL. Babydoll meets slut (in a good way, of course!). The name itself speaks volumes: a recuperation of the term 'girl' against the politically correct (yet now tame) 'woman' of our mothers' feminist generation, but with a new spelling that turned it into a growl of attitude and determination to go where the boys already were. Riot Grrrls dealt in irony, contradiction, and parody. It was a hoot to provoke apprehension in older feminists. I think that's why it seemed so hard for me to get down to any documented definition of GRRRL - they thrived on mystery. Riot Grrrls were not victims, pleading to be let in to the boys club and make a boys salary or to be allowed to be a roadie. Grrrls had a philosophy and were not afraid to ram it down your throat. Also Riot Grrls were more about spirit and raw energy. Riot Grrrl bands were punk, thrash, grunge, simple. They were evangelical towards getting as many young women into bands as possible. Talent didn't matter. Just get out there with a guitar - and if you were truly hopeless - no biggie. You sang - and anyone can band on drums. So let's segueway into the World Wide Web. WebGrrls grew out of this. Guys like to think they have the rights to technology - all that big equipment. That's not so unlike all the guys that thought they owned rock and roll - roadies were all guys - only they could handle the equipment. Well, Grrls like machines, too. And some of us (not necessarily this WebGrrl) can hack out code or sit at a café over coffee with a girlfriend and talk about CGI scripts for an hour - you guys eyeing us as you walk by with your double-tall think we're gossiping about boys. Now I'm going to tie all this together: RiotGrrls taking on the male dominated world of rock and WebGrrls taking on the internet. This in mind, I found a web site this week that took me way back. It's called: Its webmistress says it is the only web site in existence dedicated to all the WOMEN of the 1970's punk rock scene. You want to talk about the leaders from which RiotGrrrls were born - 15 years before - in 1976 - girls like me were idolizing the all-girl group The Runaways. Wanted to be Joan Jett. This site will probably not appeal to those who didn't live through it or were too far gone into disco. But you tech guys out there - you've frankly got to enjoy a site full of rockin' girls. She gives you a huge list of every punk band that had at least one girl in it. She has bios, discographies - even actual audio snapshots of these crazy bands - midi files and even a few streaming media content. I don't even want to think about whether she went around any copyright license to put those actual audio links there. Even a live version I will forever treasure of all punk girls anthem - the Runaways "Cherry Bomb". I still have all their LP's. The web site author - that would be "Rockin' Rina" - was in several punk bands in Canada so she knows what's what. Lots of people think it was a negative movement - but it was really very empowering and creative for Grrls (Grrrrrr). And she has a GRRREAT bibliography on the site - books and videos on Girls in Punk. See - this former punk musician is now a respected Librarian. And you know how librarians love their books. I also work in a library. So - Kindred Spirits…RIOT GRRRLS - PUNK GRRLS - WEBGRRLS…same ideas, different decades. Please tell this WebGrrl what exactly you want to hear in future broadcasts...because basically your point of view could very well be mine as well.
WebGrrl highly suggests you launch yourself into grrl-site-dom by using this radical jewel of a directory...Femina! WebGirl Dana works at Amazon.com and has a radio background as a broadcaster for several stations in the L.A. market. |
For the uninitiated…or the very
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