Bikini Kill Make Late-Night TV Debut With “Rebel Girl” on Colbert
Pitchfork
Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Sara Landeau revisit a punk classic
Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Sara Landeau revisit a punk classic
BIKINI KILL:
Punk icons Bikini Kill will hit the road starting this summer for a North American tour. It will follow the release of lead singer Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, which hits shelves in May. The tour begins in Los Angeles this August and includes stops in San Francisco, Toronto, Brooklyn, and more, with support from Comet Gain, Big Joanie, Tropical Fuck Storm, Snoozers, and R.Aggs.
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD:
The beloved and prolific Australian weirdos King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are touring a lot this year in support of their latest album, The Silver Chord. After a successful string of March festival dates in South America, the band has dates slated for May with Grace Cummings across the United Kingdom and Europe. Then, the group will head to North America for shows in August, September, and November. Crowds in Forest Hills, New York, on August 17; Chicago, Illinois, on September 1; Quincy, Washington, on September 14; and Austin, Texas, on November 15 are also getting the band’s famous three-hour “marathon shows.”
Bikini Kill have expanded their 2024 tour dates with a newly-announced run of shows in North America.
The riot grrrl legends will kick off their 2024 tour dates in Mexico City on March 3rd, making stops across South America and Europe before returning to the United States with a show in Los Angeles on August 15th. From there, they’ll hit cities including San Fransisco, Denver, Chicago, Toronto, and more, before wrapping up in Baltimore on September 11th.
Bikini Kill have announced a new round of North American tour dates for 2024. The outing follows their March shows in Mexico and South America and a tour of Europe and the UK in June, beginning in Los Angeles on August 15 and running through September 11 in Baltimore. See all dates below.
The riot grrrl legends have scheduled tour dates around the world this summer, including a North American tour that starts in August
“When she talks, I hear the revolution/In her hips, there’s revolution,” Kathleen Hanna announced on “Rebel Girl,” the Nineties riot-grrrl battle cry that has come to be revered as perhaps the greatest feminist punk anthem of all time. The song is so potent the band recorded and released it three different times, each with a more joyful focus. The most famous version remains the B side of the band’s astounding “New Radio” single, with producer and guitar ringer Joan Jett singing background vocals and adding guitar.
10. Bikini Kill, Franklin Music Hall, April 7 — I waited almost 30 years for this one. The riot-grrl pioneers led by Kathleen Hanna’s previous show in Philadelphia was on the rooftop of a Drexel parking garage in 1994. The influential band whose “Revolution Girl Style Now!” call to action still resonates didn’t disappoint with a spiky set that double-dared a multigenerational crowd to “do what you want … be who you will.”
“Celebrate they did, though there was also a shared sense of purpose marinating in the venue. One could feel the unspoken agreement that – while there is a lot of work to do to combat all of the recent legislative and judicial attacks on reproductive heath, gender-affirming care, and democracy in general – tonight was a time to dance and recharge in order to rise to fight another day.”
By the end of the first song there is one undeniable truth: Bikini Kill is just as paramount today as they were 30 years ago. Formed in 1990 in Olympia, Washington, Bikini Kill broke into music with the intention of igniting change. They were a beacon of resistance and actively encouraged other women to embrace their power. Kathleen Hanna is credited for coining phrases such as “girls to the front” and the infamous “girl power.” Their influence on alternative music and feminism during recent decades has been immeasurable. Now back on tour, the women who helped pioneer the Riot Grrrl Movement are reminding us all that our anger is our power.
“Some musicians aren’t invited to play the Sydney Opera House. They’re invited to fight against it. Bikini Kill are such a band, which is something lead singer Kathleen Hanna noted numerous times during their set, in between blasts of raucous, compact punk.”
“In the last 30 years, much of what Hanna fought for has materialised and to see them back together is a vindication of their fraught mission. The Riot Grrrls of the 90s are now women of the new millennium. Yet there’s still plenty of work to do, giving the music an enduring contemporary relevance while retaining its abrasive causticness”
“Over the last thirty years, Kathleen Hanna has been at the forefront of punk and politics. From pioneering the genre of riot grrrl with Bikini Kill to melding third-wave feminism with electro-pop in Le Tigre, Hanna’s music has always rallied against the norms of the day. But despite the music’s specificity, many of the messages still feel frustratingly vital. Chatting with Maps ahead of Bikini Kill’s 2023 Australian tour, Hanna discusses her frustration with the band’s relevance: “I wish that this band had no business being on a stage again” she tells Fee, “the thing that’s really upsetting is that [we’re] still relevant”
“I had the great fortune of seeing Bikini Kill recently and have been buzzing since. I have been going to concerts my whole life (I am 55) and good ones always linger, but this one hit different. It is less the music following me, and more the energy and feminist badass-ery that Bikini Kill imparted upon the thousands of us who were there”
Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” listed as the 10th best song of the 1990s!
“Rebel Girl” is a call to arms. Fuck the patriarchy! Ride a motorcycle in a minidress! Fall in love with your best friend—not metaphorically, literally kiss her on the lips! Set alight by snarls of guitars and bass, the song tells us that love is a revelation, an invitation to worship your friends, to see them as beautiful, to shout from the streets that girls matter. That we’re angry. That we’re all geniuses”
Bikini Kill have announced a rescheduled run of North American tour dates that are set to take place in 2023. After the band was forced to postpone recent shows due to COVID-19, the rescheduled dates are scheduled to take place next March and April. There’s also an added date in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Bikini Kill had to postpone many dates of their July tour as a member tested positive for Covid, and now they’ve announced rescheduled dates. They’ll happen in spring 2023, starting in Nashville on March 30 and including stops in Atlanta, Asheville, the DC area, Philly, Boston, Burlington, Montreal, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Knoxville, plus a newly added show in St Paul.
Redmond’s Marymoor Park has hosted lots of great concerts this summer. Next up is the feminist punk band Bikini Kill, who will take the stage Sept. 17. Doors open at 5:45 and tickets start at $44.50. Get more details here.
Bikini Kill reunited in the spring of 2019 with original members Kathleen, Kathi and Tobi. After two years of rescheduled dates Bikini Kill returned to Portland, Oregon to open up two nights of shows at The Crystal Ballroom.
There wasn’t really a script. But it’d be tough to write a better one.
Feminist punk icons Bikini Kill hadn’t played a full show together in more than two decades when the Olympia-formed band announced a trio of 2019 comeback gigs in Los Angeles and New York.
The ’90s are back. No, not the summer temperatures but choker necklaces, flannel shirts, skater jeans and riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill. The influential feminist punk rock band sprouted from the fertile Olympia grunge/punk soil in the early 1990s and played its last show in Tokyo in 1997, after three albums and a career as fiery, exhilarating and concise as their songs — which rage against the sexist machine. The band, whose “girls to the front” credo ignited a movement, announced a Pacific Northwest reunion tour in November of 2019. (We all know what happened next.) The rescheduled Bikini Kill tour makes its final stop in Marymoor, one of the few shows that have not sold out – yet.
One of Bikini Kill’s best songs is one of their most overlooked. In two and a half minutes, “Outta Me” packs in more emotional nuance than the band usually left room for. Riot grrrl has meant, and continues to mean, many things to many people. But when I think about the central tension of being a woman trying to move through the world, “bein’ in love,” “bein’ in hate,” and just feeling fucking bled dry often seems like the right way to put it. But that’s probably just how everyone feels. “Outta Me,” in its bittersweet efficiency, transcends riot grrrl, it but also sort of defines it — if anything ever could.
‘The songs blasted by in a blur, but Hanna reminded us that “Suck My Left One” is about her 13 year old sister getting harassed by older men. A Bikini Kill show is a lively, fun punk rock gig, but the messages are as important as ever. There’s still work to do. Smash the patriarchy.’
‘There wasn’t much funny business, but there was plenty of joy as the original line-up of vocalist Kathleen Hanna, drummer Tobi Vail and bassist Kathi Wilcox on bass — joined by guitarist Erica Dawn Lyle — entertained a cross-generational crowd. The show, one of more than 50 on their tour, was the band’s first L.A. appearance since their four-night residency at the Hollywood Palladium in 2019, which marked their return to live performances after more than two decades away.’
‘When Bikini Kill in 2019 played its first full shows in more than two decades, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“If anything, people were singing a little too loud, so I couldn’t hear myself,” Hanna says, laughing. “Which is not a bad problem to have.”’
“…Riot grrrl may have never returned, but Bikini Kill did, and when the feminist trailblazers announced they were reuniting to play one-off bicoastal gigs in 2019, the demand was so intense, every show they added sold out within seconds of going on sale…”