independent music – chickfactor zine

July 8, 2025July 8, 2025

Excerpt: Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats by Audrey Golden

Ana da Silva by Joe Dilworth, 1995, courtesy of the Raincoats

Gina Birch by Joe Dilworth, 1995, courtesy of the Raincoats

We are thrilled to present an excerpt from Audrey Golden’s new book SHOUTING OUT LOUD: LIVES OF THE RAINCOATS: Read three sections from the book’s midsection about the impact the Raincoats’ music had on Olympia, Washington, in particular. It’s a wonderful snapshot of how we all discovered music in the pre-internet (basically) era and it shows how bands like the Raincoats exploded the notion of what it means to be punk.

US folks can order here – out July 15
UK folks can order here – out July 31

Or come get a book at one of Audrey’s book events next week:
July 17 Seattle: a book reading and a Raincoats sing-a-long at Hex Enduction Records in Seattle as part of Art Walk!
July 18 Portland: Come to Powell’s Books for a book launch event featuring Audrey, Corin Tucker, former Raincoats U.S. manager Sheri Hood and Gail O
July 25 NYC: Book talk and signing at Rough Trade Below in NYC
July 31: MassMoca book event

LIFE NUMBER 2

“We realized eventually that in the United States, that’s where we had the most people interested in what we do, and where we had the biggest influence,” Ana says. And so, in the rainy musical wilds of America’s Pacific Northwest, The Raincoats’ second life began.

Beautiful KAOS at 89.3 FM

Unbeknownst to the band, their second life was germinating well before they’d even broken up and their first life came to a somewhat unceremonious end. It all began at KAOS, Olympia, Washington’s independent public radio station operating in partnership with the gloriously radical Evergreen State College.

Bruce Pavitt, who’s perhaps best known as a cofounder of Sub Pop Records in Seattle, developed a lifelong interest in hyperlocal music communities once he made it out to Olympia in 1979. As he saw it, the scene in Washington’s small capital city was a place shaped by the influence of The Raincoats. When Bruce left his hometown of Chicago to attend Evergreen and joined the slate of presenters at KAOS, he discovered “the most progressive music policy in America,” and what he emphasizes is “an unexplored impact.” That story actually starts with John Foster, Bruce explains.

“John was the music director at KAOS, and his feeling was that a community radio station should play music that prioritizes music made by members of the community,” Bruce says. “So he instituted a policy that stated eighty percent of what got played at KAOS had to be on an indie label. This is where I got my real education.” Bruce started his KAOS show and zine of the same name, Subterranean Pop, out of which he eventually formed Sub Pop Records to the north, “and all this flowed out of the KAOS music policy.” Bruce got a quick introduction to the Rough Trade bands, which were central at KAOS. “Rough Trade happened to be an indie DIY, of course, but what’s also crucial contextually is that they were supporting so much music made by women.” In Bruce’s KAOS show, he pulled from the station’s vast collection that included The Raincoats, Delta 5, Young Marble Giants, and others. “‘Lola’ by The Raincoats was getting a lot of airplay,” Bruce says, “and it influenced the culture of the whole community.”

As John reflects, “The one thing I can say about Olympia in the late seventies and early eighties is that it was not a bunch of snobby scenesters; folks were very nice. Everyone who participated in the scene, playing or observing, was welcome and accepted for whatever they brought. The Raincoats embodied that ethos to us.”

Bruce cites Calvin Johnson and his band Beat Happening as particularly influenced by The Raincoats, thanks to KAOS. Calvin was playing The Raincoats on his KAOS Olympia Community Radio show Boy Meets Girl. Fellow Olympia artist and musician Lois Maffeo also draws a connection between The Raincoats and Beat Happening: “It would be pure speculation to say that Beat Happening found inspiration in The Raincoats’ music, although sonically, I can see a parallel in the skronky songs of Supreme Cool Beings, whose cassette was the first release on K Records [the label Calvin would later establish in Olympia].” Referring to Calvin specifically, Lois says, “His anti-corporate philosophy and esthetic of both music-making and music-listening are central to the Northwest scene.”

Slim Moon, who’d go on to found another influential Olympia label, Kill Rock Stars, remembers Lois’s own KAOS show Your Dream Girl as a constant source of Raincoats songs. It created a dialogue among a wide and diverse range of female artists, and there was rarely a Your Dream Girl show, if there even was one, that didn’t feature at least one Raincoats track. Lois frequently drew from The Kitchen Tapes, playing “Puberty Song,” “Rainstorm,” and “No Side to Fall In.” As for the latter, Lois was completely taken in by the sound of the electric violin on that track, explaining, “‘No Side to Fall In’ just starts with that ripping scratch sound and then matches it at the end with the bare chorus of voices singing along with, what, a stick and a can? That combination of wild sound and plain sound was catnip to me! Today!” She also loved “In Love,” the first Raincoats song she ever heard when she bought a copy of Wanna Buy a Bridge? on vinyl in a Seattle record shop.

Lois’ playlist from January 1985, courtesy of Lois Maffeo

Lois regularly featured tracks from The Kitchen Tapes for a simple reason: “I was proud to own it,” she says. “I’m not a record collector/nerd/jerk in general, but I think I was bragging a little with that. I loved that tape because it was authentic-sounding. It had all the mistakes and out-of-tune moments that only happen on live recordings and I found that really invigorating.” For Lois, the cassette was also a prized possession because it “shared songs from my absolute favorite record by The Raincoats—the ‘Animal Rhapsody’ 12-inch with ‘No One’s Little Girl’ and ‘Honey Mad Woman’ on the B-side,” so she was “delighted to hear live versions of beloved tracks.” Lois loves that single so much that, she says, “It’s the only record I have two copies of. I wanted to make sure that if I wore the first one out, I’d have a backup!”

As a KAOS presenter, Lois’s show was crucial not only in cementing the significance of The Raincoats in Olympia, but illuminating a sonic lineage of which The Raincoats were a crucial part. On Your Dream Girl shows, The Raincoats played alongside artists who came long before like Eartha Kitt, contemporaries such as Kleenex/LiLiPUT [due to legal issues, the band initially called Kleenex changed its name to LiLiPUT in late 1979] and Crass, as well as more recent hip-hop and disco artists like Taana Gardner. Lois describes her playlists as “genre-busting.” That term, she says, also emerges if you listen solely to Raincoats records. “If you hear The Roches, African electric guitars, eighties NYC hip-hop, nursery rhymes, British pop,” Lois reflects, “yep, it’s there but it’s re-patterned and made into something new. Radically different from pastiche.”

Bruce is certain: “KAOS came to shape the culture of Olympia,” and “KAOS is ultimately the roots of Raincoats appreciation in Olympia and ultimately the Northwest.”

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But Really, All Roads Lead to Olympia

The Pacific Northwest became ground zero for the birth of The Raincoats’ second life, centered on a vibrant new generation of feminist, anarchic, queer musicians. After KAOS playlists had enough airtime to shape the cultural framework of the small Washington city, connections to The Raincoats really became apparent. Fellow West Coaster and drummer extraordinaire Patty Schemel declares, “Olympians revere The Raincoats.”

According to Lois Maffeo, the “ethos of the music and art scene” in Olympia at that point in time was akin to what The Raincoats revealed was possible: “Make do and make magic out of nothing.” Simple enough, right? But as Lois emphasizes, “The scene in Olympia was aware that simplicity wasn’t simple”—they recognized the trick of The Raincoats’ music.

The Raincoats’ songs became part of the fabric of the city and the culture it (re)produced. “The acts of making music and making art were liberating,” Lois says. “What were we liberated from? Corporate culture. Patriarchy. Religion. Military. Expectations. And many of us heard the sound of those expectations being dissected and the sound of that freedom being enacted in the music of The Raincoats. The arrow flies from ‘No One’s Little Girl’ to Riot Grrrl pretty swiftly.”

Like Lois, Jean Smith of the Vancouver band Mecca Normal was also taking cues from The Raincoats. Although Jean was based in a city a few hours north of Olympia, her two-piece band with David Lester would, like Beat Happening and so many of the Riot Grrrl artists to come, become abidingly linked to Olympia and K Records. “Listening to The Raincoats freed me from many previously held limitations,” Jean says. “That they were women made that freedom tangible. Visceral. I could hear their like-minded affinities and encouragement, yet their approaches were all very different. They seemed to be functioning based on working fully with what they had at hand, giving it everything in terms of creativity, confidence, and vulnerability.” Jean underscores that she and David are a bit older than the Riot Grrrls who emerged out of Olympia in the early nineties; Mecca Normal’s music was important, like Lois’s KAOS show, in making Riot Grrrl possible. “The Raincoats allowed me to take inspiration, to build and maintain confidence, and some years later, to inspire the cofounders of Riot Grrrl,” says Jean, “along with The Raincoats and all those other women-fronted bands that energized a social movement that, to this day, still shows signs of being ongoing as opposed to over, in the way that rock historians like to nail things down.”

Corin Tucker during the time Olympia was discovering the Raincoats. Courtesy of Corin

Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, who were some of those original Riot Grrrls in Olympia (with the bands Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy), confirm Jean’s words. “I always liked how The Raincoats felt deliberately and dangerously strange,” Corin says, “and that gave license to a lot of bands in Olympia, including Sleater-Kinney, to forgo traditional instrumentation. We didn’t have a bass, and often we were playing dueling melodies. The Raincoats deconstructed all these entrenched, codified ideas about music and yet remained very appealing and clever.” Carrie agrees: “I love the artiness of The Raincoats combined with this intellectual quality. The music showed a real openness to experiment within the band that I really related to, and that avant-garde element was something that really influenced Sleater-Kinney.”

As any fan knows, the band name Sleater-Kinney originates from Sleater Kinney Road that runs through Lacey, Washington, adjacent to Olympia. “We didn’t relate to that meat-and-potatoes punk rock and were always striving for something more experimental,” Carrie says, “so The Raincoats were very influential to us in that way.” Corin adds, “I don’t know if they were trying to be ugly, with a sort of dissonance, but to us, there was something so charming about that, and that charm had teeth to it. It was a kind of cloaked weaponry that Sleater-Kinney was really into.” She continues, “With Sleater-Kinney, we wanted to say, ‘Come a little closer, and out come those teeth,’ and The Raincoats did that, too. I feel like bands in Olympia wouldn’t dare be as weird as they actually were without The Raincoats, because otherwise people are too afraid to do that stuff. But The Raincoats sounded fearless.”

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In 1983, Calvin wrote one of the first US Raincoats cover stories and interviews in OP magazine, in which he asked Ana what she liked to have for breakfast (she wasn’t keen to answer). John Foster of KAOS was a cofounder of OP with Toni Holm, Dana Squires, and David Rauh. The magazine was short-lived—only twenty-six issues, one for each letter of the alphabet—and the founders wanted more Raincoats. Dana, who also served as art director for the magazine, says: “They were an influence, as they sounded like they were doing what they needed to do . . . sounded natural.” Bruce Pavitt remembers Dana’s love of The Raincoats in particular. “I very specifically remember her reproducing the Odyshape cover,” he smiled. He also describes OP as an influential magazine that did in print what KAOS did in sound, ultimately reaching a bigger audience. “KAOS DJs wrote for OP,” he explains, and, “Both KAOS and OP began getting international recognition.”

Kathi Wilcox and Ana da Silva, 1993. Courtesy of Kathi Wilcox

As a fan and interviewer of The Raincoats, Calvin would ultimately be the one to introduce The Raincoats to one of the artists who permanently put Olympia on the feminist map. Tobi Vail, cofounder and drummer of Bikini Kill, “first heard The Raincoats in September 1984 because Calvin put them on a mixtape for me,” she says. She was fifteen years old.

She knew Beat Happening as a local band and had gone to see a few of their shows, but she also associated Calvin with his day job: He drove a shuttle from Evergreen State College to downtown, and that’s how Tobi got to a lot of gigs. She’d also listened to Calvin’s KAOS show and was eager to know more about some of the female artists he’d been playing. Tobi spotted him one day in downtown Olympia. “I ran up to him on the street and said, ‘You just played this song on the radio, and you said the band was all girls, and they weren’t singing in English. Who was it?!’” Calvin assumed it was Shonen Knife (an all-female Japanese pop-punk band from Osaka, who’d ultimately be released in America on K Records), but Tobi insisted it wasn’t and that she needed a mixtape. It turned out the band was the female-fronted French group The Calamities, who recorded a single eponymous LP on Posh Boy Records (a Hollywood label linked to the rise of the early-eighties punk scene in Orange County). Calvin’s mixtape included The Raincoats’ “In Love.” Tobi fell in love with The Raincoats.

She started hanging out at Calvin’s apartment where she could listen to his Raincoats records, and a couple years later got her own KAOS show. “The reason I did it was because, that way, I wouldn’t have to bother other people to tape me records,” she remembers. “I could hear all the music I wanted and listen to The Raincoats [album].” KAOS was the only place in town besides Calvin’s apartment with an original copy. “I immediately started listening to that record. It got stuck in my head, it lasted, and there was more and more to discover,” Tobi says. The song “The Void” would become her anthem of sorts, shaping her musical sensibilities as she formed bands that included the Go Team (with Calvin) and, soon after, Bikini Kill. “I was obsessed,” she admits.

Tobi didn’t actually own the record herself for several more years—British import copies from 1979 were extremely hard to come by. “I’d never seen it in a record store here ever,” she remembers, initially assuming it was because Olympia was “pretty isolated, and the record stores here had a limited selection of punk and post-punk.” When she went on tour to San Francisco in 1987, she thought she’d find it, but nothing. “As a kid in the United States, it turned out you could only have that record if you happened to be alive and buying music when it came out in 1979.” Tobi introduced her friend Kurt Cobain, who was about to become known worldwide as the frontman of Nirvana, to The Raincoats. They’d listen to them together on the cassettes they’d recorded from Calvin’s vast collection. She eventually got her own copy when Kurt and Nirvana went over to Europe. “He brought me some Wipers records from Germany, too,” Tobi recalls.

A manifesto from Ana and Gina for @wepresent

Meanwhile, in a more roundabout way, Calvin was also the link between Kathi Wilcox of Bikini Kill and The Raincoats. Around 1984 or ’85, Kathi’s stepbrother gave her the Fairytale 7-inch EP. He was a student at Evergreen and lived across the hall from Calvin, so “he was familiar with the music scene and bought all these records,” Kathi remembers. She wasn’t even in high school yet. Eventually, her stepbrother wanted to listen to his vinyl on cassette, so he brought the goods to her and asked if she’d make cassettes of them all; the upshot was she could keep the vinyl. Fairytale was in that stack. “Suddenly I had the Raincoats!” Kathi says. “I didn’t have any frame or reference for understanding their music, but that record hit me the hardest when I got into high school and was really trying to wrap my mind around what music was.” It gave Kathi a way to completely recalibrate her thinking about songs—how they’re made and what they can do. When she eventually met Tobi, they came to one another as Raincoats fans. Kathi didn’t have the self-titled LP The Raincoats, and Tobi didn’t have the Fairytale EP, so they shared their records.

Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney confirms that the apartment complex where Calvin and Kathi’s stepbrother were living was a Raincoats hotbed. “I definitely first heard The Raincoats in the Martin Apartments in Olympia, around 1994. Everyone was looking for those records,” she says. “They were just something you were searching for. And if you had a Raincoats record, you definitely showed it off in your apartment!”

“I didn’t know then, but it seems like lots of encounters people were having with our music was through tapes, and people making tapes of tapes of tapes,” Ana says. “In Portland, Olympia, I heard from Calvin of K Records that he was doing that kind of thing, and Rob Sheffield in New York, as well.”

Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill eventually made her way to Olympia to attend Evergreen State College. It was there—thanks in large part to the ethos of a city inspired by The Raincoats—that she learned without a doubt “punk is NOT a genre,” Kathleen declares. “I was already open to the idea that punk wasn’t a genre—it’s an idea!—but listening to the bands on K Records, and listening to The Raincoats, made me know that punk doesn’t have to be this in-your-face aggressive, fuck-you music. It can be this really complicated, nuanced thing.” What punk meant, Kathleen learned from The Raincoats, “was that we could do whatever the fuck we wanted, and what felt important was making the kind of music we wanted to make.”

Here’s Audrey in the Quietus on the Raincoats

You can read another excerpt here

Lois and Heather Dunn (who drummed for the Raincoats) on tour

Kurt liner notes, image courtesy of the Raincoats

Portland merch sales, image courtesy of the Raincoats

August 19, 2021

IPUC at 30! The International Pop Underground Convention Remembered by Those Who Were There on its 30th Anniversary

We asked a few folks to look back and try to remember what it felt like attending, organizing, and performing at the very influential International Pop Underground Convention, which took place August 20–25, 1991 in Olympia, Washington, was organized by Calvin and Candice from K Records, and featured a crazy good lineup including Beat Happening, Bratmobile, the Pastels, Jad Fair, Kicking Giant, Some Velvet Sidewalk, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses, Sleepyhead, Scrawl, Nikki McClure, Rose Melberg and loads more. This type of festival became a blueprint and surely influenced our foray into party throwing a few years later. Some folks remember it as a magical utopian moment in time, others were stressed and disillusioned. Whatever those who attended felt, it was a pivotal moment for independent labels, great pop and punk music, and a spirit and community still with us today.

Convention pass courtesy of Rose Melberg

Did you attend the convention? What made you want to go?
Nikki McClure: Yes. It felt like it would be the center of the world that week. I had a job in the mountains during the week (field ornithology) and threatened to quit when my boss wouldn’t let me take the week off as promised. He let me go and keep my job. I was willing to risk complete poverty for the Convention. My boyfriend at the time went to Europe with Nirvana to the Reading Festival. That moment felt like a cultural divide. Everything shifted in August 1991.
Erin Smith (Bratmobile): YES! I was a major K kid from ’87 on, so it was a no-brainer I was going. That was the entire center of my universe—virtually EVERY band I loved at the time was playing IPU. I was OBSESSED with Beat Happening! Bratmobile were asked by Calvin Johnson to play as well—a total dream come true! Bratmobile were actually the only band to play 2 shows at IPU—both on Girl Night—8/20, and an early morning show with Kicking Giant and Jad Fair on 8/23.
Michael Galinsky: Sleepyhead got invited to play, largely due to Tae’s suggestion. I don’t think we even had a single out yet, maybe we did… it’s murky, but we had just done our first 10-day, 5-show tour that July. So, we were a little more prepared to play. I might have gone even if we weren’t playing, but I was also pretty broke so it would have been a big reach for me. Thankfully the awesome folks in Treehouse offered us a place to stay, which made it more possible. Allison from Bratmobile lent us her car to go pick up Rachael, our drummer, about two hours before we had to play. All went smoothly until we left the airport and realized we needed gas. She had given us the key to the car but not the gas key, which we discovered when we pulled over to get gas. Thankfully we made it into town and had to jump on stage shortly after we got there.

Tobi Vail: Yes. I honestly don’t remember if I wanted to go or not. I mostly grew up in Olympia and I was a part of the K scene as a teenager but after I was assaulted by a stranger at 18 (in my first apartment in Eugene) what I perceived to be traditional gender roles and cute 1950s aesthetic of K no longer spoke to me (if it ever really did). I was in a band with Calvin (’85–89) as a teen and I looked up to him but that experience ended on a bad note. The year before IPU I was part of a feminist awakening of young women in the NW music scene, which eventually led to us starting riot grrrl. We were angry and pushing back against male domination and patriarchy and at that point I feel like most men in the Olympia music scene were threatened by us—exceptions were the teenagers in Unwound and the guys in Nirvana, who were super supportive. We had a little trouble communicating with K when they were distributing our self-released demo tape and ended up pulling it from their mail order to distribute on our own and I don’t think they understood why we wanted to control everything but that was really important to us at the time. So it was nice that the festival was organized by a woman (Candice) who became a co-owner of K. In retrospect I do appreciate that K sold our tape through their mail order and I appreciate their support but I wish that we had been able to communicate with them a little better about sales.
Ira Robbins: I was there and wrote about it in Rolling Stone, which earned me a death threat from Ian Svenonius.

Bratmobile photographed by Michael Galinsky

Had there been other festivals like this you’d been to before? What felt different about it?
Nikki M: It really felt like a Convention and not just some shows. A Convention needed banners! So I made some from dyed sheets with sticks found on the old growth forests I was working in. I made them on the floor of the ranger cabin that I lived at during the week, rolled them up and headed to Oly then unfurled them from the windows of The Martin apartments. There was more happening than music. It was a collection of people forming an international underground community and network. It was important work.
Candice Pedersen (IPUC organizer/formerly K Records): I’d never been to a music festival or conference before. The IPU was designed so that the bands and the audience would come to us! But seriously, the IPU convention was a chance to be at a conference that was designed by the kids for the kids.
Erin Bratmobile: Festivals for “our” brand of indie were not so commonplace at this point. Of all things, I’d won tickets to the first Lollapalooza, so attended that in DC the SAME week as IPU, turned 19 that day, then flew to Olympia.
Tobi Bikini Kill: No.
Michael Sleepyhead: We went to a couple of others after this. Lotsa Pop Losers (which wasn’t as big but had a similar inclusive vibe) and Lollipops and Booze, which was more of a schedule of shows with a pass over the course of a week than a festival like this. So, no, this was a truly unique and powerful event.

Organizers, what do you remember about putting it together?
Candice Pedersen: Everything and nothing. I remember being adamant that the design should include blackberries as they are Olympia in August in a nutshell. I remember hand making the badges. I remember when it was proposed (not by us!) that there should be a “girl night” and worrying that if it was the first night no one would be there. Which was exactly what didn’t happen. It was the most electric night of the entire festival. I remember the Sub Pop BBQ—it was great to have them as part of the convention even if there wasn’t any food.
Nikki M: I made banners. I helped Candice make invites. Calvin had issued a call to action which is still vital and raw. She wanted formal invites mailed to people. I made a blackberry vine image, which now seems fitting for those hot, sweet, thorn-scratched days.

Convention pass courtesy of Stephen Pastel

Performers, what did it feel like to be there? What were the fans like?
Stephen Pastel: From our perspective just being invited was really exciting. It was the first time we’d played in the US and it was the first time we’d played a community type event on that scale. Everything about it seemed thought through, joined up—the groups, the audiences, the spaces, the city. We were so impressed by all the work that Calvin, Candice and their friends had put into it—it was so ahead of its time. I remember the Beat Happening show being incredible, seeing them at their best in a beautiful theatre space with an absolutely packed out audience just going wild for them. It felt like we were at the epicentre of something new and the world had suddenly changed for the better.
Rose Melberg: I remember going to my first punk show at 13. all guys of course. it was like Social Distortion and Battalion of Saints and I was standing in the back of the venue in Sacramento. I was tiny. I was up in the top and my first thought was: the safe place is on stage. I was terrified of what was happening in the pit but I wanted to be a part of that and I saw it in my mind. I was having all these ideas of what it would look like and feel like to sing in a punk band, just scream and be above everyone. it was my first punk show and that was the feeling I got. I wanted to be on the stage. partly out of fear and partly out of power but mostly because I wanted to be part of it so bad. I was 19 when got up onstage at IPU. I was terrified. I had a physical reaction to it. my hands shook violently. I wanted to get on that stage so bad but my body wouldn’t even let me. I had to kind of detach because I knew I wanted it so bad—even though my body was telling me “don’t do this”—I couldn’t even hold my guitar pick. I was so desperate to be included. I didn’t want to feel left out. I didn’t want to be in the audience. I wanted to be liked and acknowledged and heard (from chickfactor 18, interview with the Softies).
Nikki M: This was also my first time performing. I sang a few songs at Girl Night, the songs I sang in the woods to ward away bears. It was powerful to hear those songs fill the theater. Those 5 minutes were life altering.The theater was packed. It was the first night and every one was so eager and open to possibility. We were creating our own world.
Michael Sleepyhead: It was wonderful to be there, but no one had even heard of us so it was kind of like going to a film festival with your first film, where you don’t know a lot of folks. Although, this was a little different as we knew a couple of the bands from their visits to NY and we had Tae to make some introductions. It was fun to play for sure, but also kind of hard to do an outdoor show when we had never done anything remotely like that. We were young and excited and it just meant a ton to us to be invited into the community.

Bikini Kill photographed by Rose Melberg

Tobi Bikini Kill: Bikini Kill got to play the festival but we were added late and had to play an afternoon show on a small stage. I feel like someone from DC got us on the bill at the last minute but I really can’t be sure. I remember feeling kind of bummed that we didn’t get to play with Nation of Ulysses who we had been on tour with and spent the summer with in DC but I was happy that we got to play. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to practice that summer as Kathi, our bass player, had gone to Europe by herself. It was a hard show for us. We weren’t ready and had a lot of equipment trouble but I think some of it was pretty good.
Erin Bratmobile: Girl Night especially was completely intense. The stuff of legend now! The launching point for so much. Heavens 2 Betsy played their first ever show at IPU—Rose Melberg as Tiger Trap, too. So I got to witness both Corin Tucker and Rose Melberg’s first times on stage. I remember Corin coming up to me after the show and complimenting me on the Bratmobile set. It was all so new to me, too—I had no idea how to respond!

Beat Happening photographed by Rose Melberg

Fans, what do you remember loving about it?
Nikki M: Probably many Performers were Fans 90% of the time. I remember dancing and responding to the immediacy of sound and to the intimacy of hanging out with those who just made you dance so crazy afterwards. It was a Convention, We were all attendees, not so much fan or performer.
Michael Sleepyhead: As a fan I was blown away by seeing a lot of bands I had only heard about, like Bikini Kill, Jad with the Pastels was amazing. Seeing Beat Happening play to a packed house that was all in was astounding. Nation of Ulysses was on fire. the Bratmobile Kicking Giant show was inspiring. It was also nice that the whole thing felt very community focused.
Erin Bratmobile: Olympia is magic. Being able to just WALK and see every band I loved over the course of a week was wild. All of my heroes were playing! When Stephen Pastel asked to borrow my Sears Silvertone amp—well, he was a hero of mine to say the least. Just a couple years before I was buying my first Pastels album, and now, not only was I playing the same festival of them, Stephen liked my amp?! There was not a whole lot of divide between the bands and the fans. The bands were fans, too!
Tobi Bikini Kill: I lived across the street. It was overwhelming. People kept coming over to my teeny tiny apartment. It was nice to have friends in town but there was no escape. I don’t remember the fans, it seemed like everyone here was in a band and it was just like people in the audience getting up on stage and vice versa. That was pretty cool.
Rich Siegmeister: I was friends with Sleepyhead but they made their own arrangements and I traveled there by myself. I needed a hotel. K records was offering to help and it sounds crazy now but they randomly placed people together. I ended up in a room with a nice guy. We didn’t hang out much together but when it came time to sleep, he came out in silvery silk pajamas. We were each in our single beds but crazy. Also I was hanging outside talking to some nice people from New Zealand. I was telling them how I loved the Clean and the Chills and this all girl group Look Blue Go Purple. They got a look on their faces and then one of them yelled out “Lizzie you got a fan.” A member of the band was there and couldn’t believed I was listening to them.

Sleepyhead photographed by Michael Galinsky

It was a very exciting new fresh time for music and culture: What did the community feel like then and is some of it still intact for you?
Candice P: The community felt intimate and yet also disparate. Everyone was together but still had their own thing going, which I appreciate. I wouldn’t say the community from then is still intact for me. But, many of the friendships I had then and made then are still the most important friendships I have today. And many faded as they do.
Erin Bratmobile: It’s hard to understand in retrospect, and it might not even be fully understood unless you were there, but IPU was like the big bang and really everything came from that in a lot of ways. It’s all still totally intact. Friendships formed over that week for so many have been life long. It was life changing, and that’s not hyperbole.
Michael Sleepyhead: That community is still foundational for me. Tae drew the cover for our first single and he designed my photo book two years ago. I went on to make films but my foundational community is still the music one. It is wildly more open and supportive than the film world.
Nikki M: The community was always present then and possibilities were always blooming. Now that spirit is there, but things aren’t nearly as spontaneous or untamed. It feels like it might just be me, but I think we all are thinking that…maybe? We all have embers we carry from that time and still use in our lives.
Tobi Bikini Kill: For me it was a little bit of a sad time. Nirvana wanted to play and they were not allowed because they had signed to a major label. The ’80s were ending and the ’90s were starting. L7 were great. I was confused that they got to play but Nirvana didn’t. I remember wishing that they didn’t sign but understanding why they did. I didn’t think we needed corporations to buy and sell our music and I think that was kind of the main idea of IPU.

What performances do you remember? New artists discovered?
Candice P: I love all my children equally.
Erin Bratmobile: I STILL hear IPU stage banter replaying in my head. Thee Headcoats: “Oh, fuck your mother.” L7: “Keep your elbows off the knockers!!” The Bikini Kill set was absolutely revolutionary. The Mummies were incredible! I remember heading straight to the pit—all of Bikini Kill and all of Bratmobile together—to watch the Nation of Ulysses. After their blistering performance, I remember James Canty coming back out onstage to humbly announce the release of their first record. I was SO PROUD!
Tobi Bikini Kill: Bratmobile played two sets I think and they were very good. Heavens To Betsy at girl night were incredible. Mecca Normal were great, as always. I remember being excited The Pastels were going to play but I would have been more excited to have seen them a few years earlier when they were still one of my favorite groups. Nation of Ulysses was my favorite group at the time but I remember Thee Headcoats as being the best group at IPU by far. They had played Olympia the year before and both shows were nuts. I think the band I discovered at the fest is The Mummies—they were so good and fun and funny. Fugazi was great too.
Nikki M: Fugazi. Heavens to Betsy. Rose. Jad Fair. Beat Happening. I Scream Truck. Nation of Ulysses. The Pastels. Cake walk. A picnic with no food.

Slim Kill Rock Stars, Rose Melberg and Al Some Velvet Sidewalk (photo courtesy of Rose)

What was the vibe in general?
Candice P: For me the vibe was hectic. The Pastels were staying in my apartment, I had to co-host the event, and I was trying to spend time with friends. The time flew by. I was supposed join the Pastels on their west coast tour after the convention but I was too exhausted/sick to go. Chris Jordan so kindly took my place at the last minute.
Nikki M: Festive. Spontaneous. After this past year, it seems fantastical that we once so freely mingled and danced and ate cake. It was powerful. All dreams became possible.
Tobi Bikini Kill: A little stressful. Like too much going on at once. It was also very odd to have people not from here acting like it was quaint or cute or utopian or something and not really understanding where they were. By 1991, Olympia was no longer a milltown but the brewery was still here. It was still pretty working class, the center of southwest Washington, which was populated by loggers and timber workers. It was a kind of rough place to live if you were nonconformist. The Evergreen State College is a public school and very progressive but it’s very small. Olympia never really was a liberal college town because the population of students has always been just a few thousand and my impression is that most people who end up going there are kids from the NW who couldn’t afford or get into a more expensive school. Local kids who went to punk shows and hippies from Evergreen got targeted and bullied and physically assaulted by guys in pickup trucks downtown. The IPU people didn’t really seem to notice any of that. Also it rains more than 150 days a year in Olympia and it was very sunny that week. It all seemed like a dream.

Tae Kicking Giant photographed by Michael Galinsky

Why do you think there was this link between D.C. and Olympia? Was it down to individuals or was it just a shared ethos?
Nikki M: Both! Individuals sharing an ethos but with differences between the East and West. Both explored and created cultural freedom. For the Cake Walk, Cynthia Connolly (DC and Dischord) made a vegan chocolate cake topped with freshly picked blackberries, if I remember correctly. That cake seemed the perfect pairing of the 2 sides of the country.
Candice: It’s a shared ethos.
Erin Bratmobile: I think it began as certain individuals and grew to be a shared ethos. Calvin Johnson lived in Bethesda, MD, in the late ’70s/early ’80s, so was involved in the DC punk scene before going back to Olympia and Evergreen. Then the cross-pollination of the scenes continued. DC had great record stores like Yesterday & Today that stocked K titles, and Calvin visited family in the DC area all through the ’80s into the early ’90s, always bringing along records and making more connections. I connected with being a K and indie kid before I then grew to intensely love Dischord and the DC underground. Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi were my gateway drug in that regard, if that makes sense!
Tobi Bikini Kill: Olympia is the capital of Washington so there are a lot of natural connections—one of them being that Calvin went to high school in both places.
Michael Sleepyhead: I think it was both the shared ideals and the musical influences created a strong cross current that made sense—I felt like going on tour was like being in the pony express. Bands carried information and ideas from one town to the next and in some ways DC and Oly were kind of the terminuses at the end of the routes.

Rose Melberg, the very first time she ever got onstage or sang into a microphone. (Photo courtesy Rose)

Was it covered by mainstream media then and if so, did they get it?
Nikki M: Who cared? We were mostly happy to outnumber the logging trucks.
Tobi Bikini Kill: Yes and no.
Candice: I think there was national media outside of indie fanzines. I remember Ira Robbins wrote something. But, if people “got it” or not didn’t concern me. “It” was something for different for everyone. And, I didn’t care if media got what it was to me.

The Pastels photographed by Rose Melberg

Is there anything else you remember?
Candice: I don’t remember meeting Scotty but he remembers meeting me (I asked him how old he was!). But, I’m glad we were both there because one year later we started dating and 29 years later we’re still together.
Nikki M: Driving with Calvin to the Sup Pop picnic but there was no food left. People signing the back of the Kill Rock Stars albums like they were yearbooks with the silkscreen ink still a bit tacky. Melvins at the park. Blueprint posters taped to my door fading over time. Was this the festival that the theater cat peed on the shirts?
Erin Bratmobile: The first Kill Rock stars comp came out on vinyl the week of IPU, all hand silkscreened covers, with no time even to put the art on the back yet. So all of the copies given to the bands that were on the comp had hand done covers and blank backs. Several of us, myself included, got autographs of the other bands on the blank backs, high school yearbook style.
Tobi Bikini Kill: The first Kill Rock Stars compilation came out at IPU. The front was silkscreened and the back was blank so everyone used the back like a yearbook and signed each other’s records. That was pretty cool.
Michael Sleepyhead: I don’t have a good tactile memory. Thankfully I have pictures, though not nearly enough from that event. What I do recall was that the whole summer felt the beginning of something for me. It takes a lot of hope to start a band and then commit to it in the way that we felt we needed to. The summer before we had moved to Providence to live together. It wasn’t an easy transition but we muddled through and became more of a band. We started to play out in NY a lot which connected us with NY bands like flying saucer, ruby falls, antietam, and many others. II spent months booking that first tour which we went on a few weeks before IPU. On that trip we met some incredibly creative people and that just changed my life. Then we went out to Olympia and that sense of being part of a community became some much more profound.

See more photos of IPUC by Michael Galinsky here.