Back in 1999, I took my new boyfriend, Kid C., to see Sleater Kinney at The Roxy.
"I think I'm the only guy here," he whispered.
It was the reversal of our previous excursions to grindcore shows, when I would turn to him and ask, "Am I the only girl here?"
I have seen Sleater Kinney a few times before and, just as with shows involving Bratmobile, Le Tigre and others, I was always a bit disappointed to notice that the crowd consisted almost exclusively of women. Maybe it means something in terms of empowering us to start our own bands, but I always saw it as the result of guys automatically ignoring the contributions of girls. Gender should not be a genre, but it often is. Have you ever noticed that bands featuring women are often referred to by gender before style of music (as if anyone has ever referred to Oasis as "boy rock")? Have you noticed that women are automatically compared to other women in record reviews, whether or not the comparison makes sense? If you play a guitar, you're like Chrissie. Sing poetry in a growl? Then you're just like Patti. If you're music is a bit less angry, well, then you're just like Kate.
That said, the first thing I noticed at last night's show at the Henry Fonda was that the crowd was mixed evenly between male and female fans. In addition, the guys in attendence were not just the sort of creepy geeks with girl band fetishes that we might be used to seeing at such shows (want to know what I'm talking about, go see The Donnas or The Iron Maidens live and you'll meet lots of those guys). It was the sort of crowd one would find at any other major rock show. At last, it feels like the walls around the girl ghetto are starting to crumble.
But enough with my quasi-feminist ramblings. Mary Timony, accompanied by Devin Ocampo on drums, opened the night. Although I've been a fan of Timony since high school, when I first heard Helium on a Kill Rock Stars compilation, this was the first time I saw her live. I remember thinking that there was something eerie about her voice when I first heard her, something in her phrasing mixed with the huskiness of her voice that made her records sound better during a blackout. That vocal quality translates well into the live setting. With just a guitar and a drum, Timony and Ocampo were able to create a very large, heavy sound, sort of like listening to classic rock radio with bass players and cries of "baby, baby, baby." Timony played like a guitar god as well, jumping around the stage with her hair flying in her face.
I have yet to purchase a copy of The Woods, so last night's show marked the first time I heard most of Sleater Kinney's new songs. The major difference between the new work is that the songs, at least in a live setting, are lengthier, complete with mile-long bridges that make me think of Tony Iommi and blacklight posters. This made for a striking contrast when paired with the older tunes ("One More Hour," "Get Up," "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," "You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun," and "Dig Me Out"). Sleater Kinney's style of performance seems to have evolved over the years as well. I don't recall witnessing such a dramatic difference between Carrie and Corin's stage presence. Corin seemed pretty tame last night. She did the occasional Sleater Kinney bounce (which PDP-contributor Estelle and I tried to perfect when we would do Sleater Kinney impersonations back in college), but, for the most part, she stood fairly still and oftentimes played with her back to the crowd. Carrie, on the other hand, was wild onstage. She swiveled her hips, kicked her leg high up in the air and made come here motions with her hand in true rock star fashion.
The biggest surprise of the concert came midway through the encore.
"Melissa," I whispered. "That's Danzig, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is."
Corin sang lead on the band's version of "Mother," which was heavy without the metal. That song will always remind me of high school in the suburbs back in 1994, when Danzig blared from every aging car in the school parking lot, and so it seemed a bit strange, but ultimately exciting, to hear it coming from people who were already in college and releasing 7" singles when the song was released. They moved from "Mother" into "Dig Me Out" without pausing. At this point, the crowd danced so maniacally that I thought surely folks would collapse when the final song ended. After all, this was a rock show.