Bikini Kill on Riot Grrrl’s Legacy, Taping Over Nirvana Cassettes

In 1991, the members of seminal feminist punk band Bikini Kill — Kathleen Hanna, Kathi Wilcox, Tobi Vail and Billy Karren — played one of their first shows together at an Olympia, Washington, club called ABC House. The next day, with their equipment still set up, the band recorded 11 demo songs at the same venue. Once the tape, called Revolution Girl Style Now, was finished, it was cut down to eight raw, ferocious tracks, including some of the band’s most iconic songs (“Double Dare Ya,” “Suck My Left One”).

Now, nearly 25 years after that first cassette tape was released, the band is revisiting the recording via a reissue of Revolution Girl Style Now. The contents will be released for the first time on CD, LP and digitally on September 22nd; for the die-hard fans, the band is also offering a reproduction of the original cassette, same bright-red artwork and all. It’s all part of an ongoing effort by the members of Bikini Kill to recirculate the band’s older material: In 2012, they founded Bikini Kill Records and have since remastered and reissued several of their earliest releases.

This new version of Revolution Girl Style Now also features the three tracks that were left off of the original demo, including the doomy “Playground,” which we’re premiering here. These songs have less in common with the anthemic punk Bikini Kill is known for than with the dark, fuzz-bathed work of the band’s Pacific Northwest contemporaries, including Mudhoney and Nirvana (whose members were friendly with Bikini Kill when both were first starting out).

We chatted with Hanna and Wilcox, who were getting ready to fly to Europe for a brief tour with their current band, the Julie Ruin, to get the scoop on the reissue, what it was like to revisit Bikini Kill’s early days and the future of Bikini Kill Records.

This is the fourth reissue that you guys have done on Bikini Kill Records; what was the impetus for starting the label?
Wilcox: Kill Rock Stars, the label that we were on, was being run by a person who wasn’t running the label when we were on it. And Tobi [Vail] and Maggie, her sister, used to work there, pretty much since the beginning. They were both let go at the same time several years ago. We just kind of were thinking, “Why are we on this label? At this point, does it make sense to stay on this label?” We started researching our options, and it made more sense to start our own label.

Revolution Girl Style Now is one of the band’s earliest recordings. What was it like to revisit that nearly 25 years after it was first made?
Hanna: I thought it was really funny. When I listened to it, I laughed a lot.

Wilcox: Yeah, I did too [both laugh].