Riot Grrrl

It's easy to get hung up on academic terms like third wave feminism and radicalized subculture, but the riot grrrl movement is a whole lot simpler: these women found rock's door closed, and they promptly kicked it open. They didn't wait on an invite and certainly not a constitutional amendment — it was all D.I.Y. Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" tosses sex, politics, and revolution into a Molotov cocktail of she-power that leaves no ear unscorched, while Bratmobile's cover of the Runaways' jailbait-rock anthem "Cherry Bomb" lays irony on as thick as a schoolgirl's first tube of lipstick. But Sleater-Kinney keeps its tongue planted firmly in pop-punk cheekiness, carving up an art-damaged hanger-on with "You're No Rock 'n' Roll Fun."

In Next Steps, we hear a little more dish about guysæand it's not real pretty.

Sue P. Fox's "Town Idiot" isn't so much a song as a dark, polluted stream of consciousness; first, her voice cracks — no, shatters — every time the "town idiot" gets mentioned. Then she sees the idiot in herself, and herself in God, and God in everyone, including the . . . you guessed it. Boys, as a class, don't fare much better in Mecca Normal's acid-grunge slap at the "Strong White Male," with Jean Smith's dentist-drill vocal slashing across guitarist David Lester's wall of fuzz like a buzzsaw through a beehive. That said, how many bands do you know that cite PiL and Phil Ochs as influences? And with their Johnny Ramone-meets-Debbie Harry sonic attack, Bangs — not the Bangs, just Bangs — slam-dance their star-struck boy-toy's rep into the ground in "He's a Groupie."

In Deep Cuts, we track down the offspring of Bikini Kill, the Yardbirds of the riot grrrl movement.

Just like the Yardbirds gave us Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, Bikini Kill proved to be a fertile spawning ground for double-x-chromosome spinoffs. The group's cofounder Kathleen Hanna covered Noise Addict's "I Wish I Was Him" pretty faithfully, right down to the out-of-tune acoustic guitar…but with a twist: it was written by a boy, and Hanna torques the lyric around 180 degrees, claiming her hero "thinks he can be a girl better than me." Hanna defies tradition again, with a riot grrrl track that doesn't sound very riot-y, in "Apt. #5," a lo-fi-meets-low-budget kiss-off from her alter ego, Julie Ruin. And when Hanna decided to take Ruin out of the bedroom studio and onto the road, she assembled the post-punk electro-pop trio Le Tigre, whose "Deceptacon (DFA Remix)" maintains the grrrl-power attitude, but with a suburban dance-funk groove.

Sad but true: rock 'n' roll has always been something of a boys' club. How wrong is that? Wrong enough that, in the early '90s, a group of women latched onto punk's D.I.Y. ethic, strapped on guitars, and kicked some serious butt. A slew of 'zines, including Girl Germs, Satan Wears A Bra, and Quit Whining, laid out the riot grrrl manifesto in four simple words: "Revolution Girl Style Now!" Political, aggressive, sexual, confident, and empowered, these bands turned to Angela Davis and Gertrude Stein for inspiration as much as they did Joan Jett and Kim Gordon. From scene founders Bikini Kill and Bratmobile to unsung — but definitely singing — heroines like Sue P. Fox and Lois, we've got all the uncut, unfiltered female ferociousness that two ears (and a thousand garages) can hold.