Riot Girl: still relevant 20 years on
Jessica Hopper on Riot Grrl’s legacy!
Yet, for Annie Clark, the singer-guitarist who performs as St Vincent, what she found within those songs was more than just empowerment. She was a burgeoning musician in her early teens when she discovered the remnants of Riot Girl through online forums and mail-order 7in singles from Kill Rock Stars, and the ideals spurred her even more than the music. “It was an outlet for me, growing up in this conservative Dallas, Texas landscape. I didn’t know there was a big world out there, or what it looked like. It was very exciting to me, to know there was this pocket of culture happening, and it was super-subversive, or so it seemed to me at 14. Seeing that empowerment made me really want to escape Dallas.” While Clark was well versed in female classic rock icons – Janis Joplin, Grace Slick – the stance of Riot Girl bands was something else entirely. “It seemed like they were trying to own rock in a new way.”
Super awesome cool time!
