New Books In Music

Harkening out of the United State’s Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and songs are still recognized by many rock fans. And those of us who do recognize these bands tend to link them to a larger artistic and musical genre known as Riot Grrrl. In Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (Harper Perennial, 2010), Sara Marcus traces the first five explosive years of Riot Grrrl, 1989-1994. She convincingly shows that although some very cool music was at its core, the movement went far beyond the bands, and far beyond Olympia, WA. Marcus follows the members of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile as they travel to Washington, D.C. forming girls-only collectives, participating in nationally organized political demonstrations, writing stridently feminist fanzines, and playing gigs to audiences of outcast girls who found there was indeed a supportive place for them to express themselves freely. By ’93 the movement was in