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SAYS LE TIGRE
by Brenda Kahn |
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| Kathleen
Hanna, Johanna Fateman and J.D. Samson meet at that perfect place
where politics, art and punk rock come together. Call that place
Le Tigre. Kathleen, known as a key voice of the Riot Grrrl
movement, met Johanna in the early nineties, during her Bikini
Kill days. The first Le Tigre CD was released in 1999 (sans
JD) on Mr. Lady Records and Videos (the Durham-based, multimedia
label run by queer video artist/conceptual photographer Tammy Rae
Carland and Kaia Wilson of the Butchies) JD joined the band shortly
after, and the Le Tigre line-up was set to re-conquer feminism,
destroy the conspiracy of political correctness, and re-re-define
rock-n-roll. |
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WOMANROCK:
Why did you choose to do this project with Mr. Lady records?
KATHLEEN:
We had a relationship with the founders of Mr. Lady Records before
Le Tigre even started - our friends ran the label, it was the obvious
choice for us to put a record out on Mr. Lady because it's a lesbian
owned and run business committed to putting out feminist artwork.
WOMANROCK:
What brought you together to start Le Tigre?
KATHLEEN:
We all have really high expectations for anything we do. When we
started and I think even now, there's a cynicism in the air about
feminism, about everything in general, where everything has to be
a joke, or ironic, and I think we approached Le Tigre with our hearts
open and in the mood to be really sincere and to connect up with
a community we didn't feel we were communicating with.
WOMANROCK:
What community specifically?
KATHLEEN:
With other feminists, a feminist music scene that Jo and I once
felt very much a part of and I felt distanced from. After being
in the public eye I had to retreat a little, take time to remember
who you are, not being photographed, not talking to people, and
when I was well nourished from that, I really wanted to reconnect.
That was something Le Tigre helped me to do.
After Bikini Kill I did a solo record called Chili Ruin,
and then I don't know if I wanted to go on tour and make music,
but then my best girlfriend started a record label and I wanted
to be part of it, associated with it, I was proud of what they were
doing, like, I want to make music just so I can put something out
on their label.
WOMANROCK:
Is Mr. Lady a traditional label? Do they provide tour support or
is it run as a collective?
JD:
It's an indie label that started out very small with very little
in terms of money to front to bands to make records, we don't get
tour support from them, but we haven't asked for tour support from
them. They paid for recording our new record. It's 50-50.
WOMANROCK:
Do you work other jobs or do you make your money form Le Tigre?
KATHLEEN:
I quit my daytime job when I was 26 and now I'm 32. Music has been
my main way of earning money. I'll do freelance work, I'll do a
writing project or sing on someone else's record or something for
cash. You know I'm a petite model also (laughing) for Petite Vogue…
so I do that, but I hate modeling it's such a drag…
WOMANROCK:
What's happened with Riotgrrrl since you were so in the center of
the movement?
KATHLEEN:
I'm not really involved in Riotgrrrl anymore. I stopped going to
meetings after the convention we did a few years ago. It's still
happening, I get letters from girls who are starting groups all
over… I think one of the positive legacies that came out of it was,
when I was involved with one of the original groups in DC in the
1990s, one of things we did was refuse to have one sound bite that
we gave to the media, we refused to actually talk to the media and
we refused to be defined. Each woman who entered was asked to define
it for herself so all these lists were proliferating around the
scene which were "riot grrrl is"… and people would write what it
meant to them. And the whole idea is that women and girls could
define what it meant and that there are a million different ways
to be feminist or womanist or to be pro-woman or anti-misogyny and
that it's not one person can decide that. We didn't want to be a
corporation with a mission statement. I think that was an interesting
strategy. People are still defining it for themselves.
WOMANROCK:
What about the band? Who plays what?
JD:
It's not so defined. You'd have to ask for a particular song who
plays what. And what we do live is completely different than what
we record. Kathleen plays the guitar on a recorded version of the
song, Johanna might play it live.
WOMANROCK:
When is the album's release date, will you be going on tour?
JOHANNA:
Le Tigre is on vacation. The album is being released October 16th.
KATHLEEN:
We were going to tour, but I decided I don't want to. I want to
stay home. I'd like to tour the record in January/February for a
few weeks to get out there.
WOMANROCK:
What will you do at home?
KATHLEEN:
I'm writing the theme song for an all female version of Queerelle,
this Fassbinder film that my friend and collaborator Laura Cunningham
is working on, and I'm writing a chapter for a book, called Sisterhood
is Forever, by Robin Morgan which is the third installment
of her anthology series. I'm supposed to score a feminist musical…
WOMANROCK:
So it's more of a working vacation. (laughs) As outspoken feminists
what do you do outside of Le Tigre to support the cause?
JOHANNA:
There isn't time really to support local organizations because we're
gone so much, but we do try to play benefits for things we care
about and as much as we can - support women's projects. With more
time off something more elaborate could happen.
WOMANROCK:
What's on Le Tigre's recommended reading list?
JOHANNA:
Raceman by Hazel Farbee basically about the construction
of masculinity within the Civil Rights and Anti-racist movements,
how gender is used as a rhetorical device within that discourse.
KATHLEEN:
I like this book called The Women by Hilton Als, I
also like this book called Lesbian Ethics by Sarah
Lucia Hoagland.
JD:
I was going to talk about how everyone should read Michael Jackson
was my lover in conjunction with Freud's The Sexual Enlightenment
of Children and Alice Miller's For Your Own Good
because they all come together quite nicely.
KATHLEEN:
That's what we want to do on our break - read. We've all been reading
the same paragraph of the same book for like a year and a half.
You can't get your to do list out your head.
WOMANROCK:
Lyrically who writes for the band? Are your lyrics inspired by the
politics and ideas you're wrestling with as feminists?
KATHLEEN:
Everybody writes. Very much. We each have obsessions. And we try
to figure out how to get each individual's obsessions worked in…
we've been pretty obsessed since the beginning with the political
correctness movement and how it's a way to shame progressive activists
out of their activism. I was re-reading the Dialectics of
Sex by Shlama Firestone at the same time I was reading The
Myth of Political Correctness, another great book, and also
A Critique of Postmodernism by Terri Eagleton and
putting all this together because Shlama writes in her book about
this thing called 'the 50 years of ridicule' which is after an intense
period of feminist activism there's always 50 years of ridicule…
feminism is so stupid, it's such a joke, they can't get laid.
Just totally fucked up ways to humiliate people and spread rumors.
I think that's a really important concept in an era where misogyny,
racism and homophobia is touted as the new individualistic thing
to do, that's supposed to be really wild. There was that "year of
the woman" and now all the men are "taking the streets back". In
college I was called "politically correct" so many times that if
I didn't internalize that at some point there'd be something wrong
with me. I stopped writing things I wanted to write or stopped saying
things I wanted to say because I was just sick of hearing that phrase
so much.
Then I read this book that said the Right Wing was funding that
as a cultural phenomenon. How many times it was used in the media
etc. That censors people. People who are accused of being politically
correct are accused of censoring free speech, where really it's
progressives who are being censored. It's like an island of backwardsville.
JOHANNA:
I was reading - of all things - Vanity Fair, because I was doing
jury duty, there's this article by Gore Vidal about Timothy McVeigh
and how there are probably more people involved in the Oklahoma
City bombing. He makes this interesting point, because he was corresponding
with McVeigh while he was in prison, so he was interviewed for all
these TV shows, and he said as soon as he would talk about McVeigh
and the fact that McVeigh understood his actions as being in retaliation
for the Waco disaster, it would immediately be clipped. Also if
would say the FBI concealed evidence or whatever… the person would
say, "Are you suggesting that this is a conspiracy?" And treat him
like he was from outer space suddenly. There's this idea that if
you think something's a conspiracy or that the government is involved
in some way then you're crazy. And it kind of made me glad that
it happened to Gore Vidal, it's not just us that it happens to when
you suggest that something is in fact more complicated than it looks.
WOMANROCK:
When I started WOMANROCK, a lot of people I consider very liberal,
were actually offended that I wanted to start a magazine geared
women artists. They felt it was too narrow in scope to focus on
just women's music, but for me it's also a political issue of owning
and running your own business.
KATHLEEN:
There's only one President of a label, from Tommy Boy, but that's
pretty much it…
WOMANROCK:
How do you feel about the major labels? Would you do a deal with
a major label at this point?
JD:
We're so happy right now. I don't see a reason to do anything else.
KATHLEEN:
We are living proof you can be on a small label, you don't have
to compromise integrity or artistic vision or visions in our case,
to get your music out into the world. Our distributor, Mordem is
the only indie distributor not a part of WEA (that is the corporation
that all the other distributors went under so there is no more competition
for distribution any more) so you're either involved or you're out.
But we are on Mordem which is an independent distribution company,
we're on an independent label run by two women from their house,
and we earn a living. That's really positive and we want other women
to know that's possible, that you don't have to cater to the major
labels.
WOMANROCK:
Is there a downside to working with a small label?
KATHLEEN:
Well it's like working 10 jobs at a time sometimes.
JD:
But all those jobs, it feels fine to have to do them, I wouldn't
want someone else to be doing them.
WOMANROCK:
Do you have mp3 files on the Web?
KATHLEEN:
We don't have that technology.
JD:
We know people trade our music on the Internet, but we don't facilitate
that in any way. Personally I'm not opposed to it, but it's not
how I get music or listen to music, so I don't think about it that
much.
WOMANROCK:
What was the best gig on your last tour?
KATHLEEN:
I really liked the Bluestockings Benefit, at The Knitting Factory,
in a way it was our last show of the tour, we knew that it was going
to something that we really care about; which was feminism and books,
and it's a community space. It's not just a bookstore, it's a space
where people hang out, and talk - that's not Starbucks - and it
was really awesome to feel like we were being supported by other
feminists in the city that we live in, so we were supporting them
back because they were super respectful and really helpful about
the benefit, and really nice to be around. And that felt really
good. |
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_________________________________
For more information check out:
http://busygrrrl.homestead.com/letigre.html
or:
http://www.mrlady.com/inside.htm |
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_________________________________
Brenda Kahn
is a New York recording artist and the editor of WOMANROCK.com.
Past notes from the Editor. |
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