No time like the present

Kathleen Hanna is one of my all-time favorites, from the first time I heard Bikini Kill to the present. In her lyrics and singing, she doesn't bother to distinguish between humor and anger, which was a breath of fresh air to me since I myself am always frustrated by people who don't seem to understand that women can have dark senses of humor, too. Bikini Kill's loud music, sometimes angry, sometimes joyful, has been a real mainstay in my life and a great curative for times when you wonder if you're the only person in the world who is thinks so many revered things are utter bullshit.

So a few years ago when I heard that Hanna had a new band called Le Tigre, I was interested to hear what they sounded like, and I don't know if I was foolish or whatever but I did not expect to hear a low-fi pop/dance band. But it was really good--and their first album was ubiquitous in late 1999/2000. You couldn't turn on the local public radio station for more than half an hour without hearing something off of it. It also quickly became one of my all-time favorite albums, and unlike anything by Bikini Kill you can throw it on at parties and watch people wiggle around to it.

Anyway, I was going to hold off doing a daily post on Kathleen Hanna until later, but there's an interview in Pop Matters with her today that's well worth reading. Le Tigre has a new album coming out in a week and a half, so hopefully they will be touring through here again soon. (The last show they did here was on probably the coldest day that year. We had a camera and the pictures are pretty comical--imagine a bunch of people trying to boogie without letting any air leak underneath their overcoats, hats, or gloves.)

Fair warning--Hanna oft-times comes off as a bit of a Valley Girl when she speaks, which only makes her more endearing to me because I get taken for daffy at times for saying "like" and "you know?" all the time. But that she's not self-conscious means that she often can say what the rest of us might find harder to admit about ourselves. So go read and enjoy! And get their new album!