book letigre by federica quadrelli

le tigre

Progetto a cura editoriale Jackie Lin Progetto grafico e impaginazione Federica Quadrelli Redazione Micol Meoni Indici Valentina Soldati Collaborazione iconografica Chiara Odone Tutti i diritti sono riservati. E’ vietata la riproduzione dell’opera o di parti di essa con qualsiasi mezzo,compresa stampa,copia fotostat ica,microfilm,memorizzazione elettronica e qualsiasi forma di archiviazione,se non espressamente autorizzata dall’Editore. www.mondadori.it ©2012 mondori editore S.p.a,Firenze-Milano prima edizione aprile 2012

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chi sono? il loro incontro i loro temi lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;origine del nome le interviste i live i cd

CHI SONO

JD SAMSON I was born and raised in Northeastern Ohio in a town outside of Cleveland. My parents were both artists, who later turned to other occupations. My father, a miner of sand and gravel, and my mother a party decorator. My first year was spent on a farm in Newbury, Ohio.So that is where my father fell down the stairs with my sister on her shoulders, and where we grew a large garden full of vegetables.we moved to Pepper Pike, so my sister and I could attend a better school system. I lived there in the same old house until I went to college. Then the house seemed all alone on the road, but over time we grew up, and so did the neighborhood. In high school, I played left inside for Team Orange High School Field Hockey Northeastern Ohio and made the All Star team too. My favorite class is the article for each year until I graduated. I was the president of the Environmental Club and founding the Gay / Straight to my school.It â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s been really hard to come out as fifteen years in Ohio, a lesbian. My parents and I fought a lot, and I was constantly getting into trouble for being different (eg shaving my head, dying my hair). I was extremely lucky to have some other gay and lesbian friends in my school and surrounding areas. We participated in meetings at the LGBT Center in Cleveland every once and a while and quickly found a strange friendly meeting spots for the guys. Whenever there were problems with the kids perked troublesome we had a whole bunch of guys who support us.E â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;was also very helpful to have an aunt in Los Angeles gay impressive, and the best grandparents in the world. Oddly, my father cut out a newspaper article by Jennifer Reeves, who at the time he was attending the summer Bard College Masters Program for cinema. The article was on Feminist Experimental Film, and after attending the screening I had a new interest in the film process.At 17, I left Ohio to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. I went to school to pursue my interests in queer studies and feminist

experimental cinema. Unfortunately they will pay my loans for a very long time. While I was in Ohio I loved seeing a rock concert, but unfortunately all ages with no real place, I was stuck seeing the biggest bands and losing a lot of things the city has had children. I’m not up to the age of 18 I went to college, so that when I really had a chance to recover to see the shows that I had always wanted to see and find the community that I had only dreamed as a teenager.I spent my time in school three jobs: director of the coffeehaus, campus tour guide, and for my research assistant professor of queer theory. Punk rock shows I have also promoted the coffeehaus, and co produced and directed the Sarah Lawrence College in Film and Video Festival with my friend Sarah Shapiro. I spent a summer in Chicago teaching ‘The history of Graffiti’ to children young Robert Taylor and Girls Club. Before leaving for the

summer, my professor of Queer Theory, Beth Freeman told me to findSadie Benning (the filmmaker) when I arrived in Chicago. I incSince then, I co-formed ‘Dykes Can Dance’ with Emily and Tara Roysdon Mateik.I also made a calendar called Calendar 2003 JD Lesbian college, we are all to love each other. We write original songs and have also covered songs, George Michael, Tracy Chapman and Dave Matthews. I also worked with Nicklcat and DJ Lambchop on track, “Who Let the Dykes Out” to LTTR (a new magazine lesbian / queer / feminist, edited by Emily Roysdon, K8 Hardy, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi). I lived in Brooklyn, New York since 2000. I love dancing, driving, playing solitaire, and research RV. I hope someday to have my RV and explore all the places in North America that I have never been.

kathleen hanna Kathleen Hanna (Portland, November 12, 1968) is an American singer and activist. In the early nineties was the vocalist of the punk band Bikini Kill, before moving to the dance-punk band Le Tigre. In 1997 he made a solo album under the name Julie Ruin. He has collaborated with various artists, including Joan Jett, Green Day and Yoko Ono. In 2007, he taught art at New York University [1].Born in Portland, Oregon, but in 1971 he moved with his family in Calverton (Maryland). Became interested in feminism at the tender age of nine, when he and his mother goes to an event which also participates Gloria Steinem, an icon of the movement. In 2000, during an interview for publication BUST, declares:”My mother was a housewife, you could not define” feminist “. When Ms. Magazine was published there was incredibly inspired. I used to crop photos and make posters that said “Women can do everything” and the like, while my mother began to give courses on domestic violence. Then he took me to the Solidarity Day and was the first time I found myself in a vast audience made only by women screaming, so I decided that I wanted to do this forever [2]. »(Kathleen Hanna)In the 2006 documentary Do not Need You: the Herstory of Riot Grrrl, Hanna said his interest in the feminist movement grew when his mother bought the book The Feminine Mystique. The divorce of her parents, which occurred during his high school years, is due to the disapproval of his father for the feminist approach of the two [3]. At the end of the eighties Hanna attended the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. During this period he worked as a stripper to support her studies in photography. With her colleague Aaron Bausch-Greene, works at a photography exhibition focusing on the themes of sexism and AIDS; university administrators do not permit publication of the shots. Following this event, along with Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland, gives life to an art gallery independent. Moreover, the three women formed a band called Amy Carter, who plays the first of photographic exhibitions [4].A few years later he joined another band, Viva Knievel, and together they will face a U.S. tour for two months before the final dissolution of the band. On the way back to Washington will begin to work with his university colleague Tobi Vail after attending a performance with The Go Team, a group formed by the same Vail, Billy Karren,

and Calvin Johnson.The first work of Hanna and Vail is a zine called Revolution Girl Style Now. Later will give life to another journal, Bikini Kill, as a response to sexism in the punk music scene. The two, together with Kathi Wilcox and friend of Vail, form a new band with the intent to transform into music their ideals. The band will take the name of the zine Bikini Kill.The first publication of the Group for the label Kill Rock Stars is a self-produced EP. The Bikini Kill started a tour of Great Britain and meanwhile recorded a disc with the English band Huggy Bear. And the European performances are recorded along with some interviews will be included in the documentary It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill In The UK. To return to the U.S. begin to work with the rock icon Joan Jett, which produces one of the most famous tracks in the group, Rebel Girl. After the release of the album, Kathleen Hanna participated in the writing of some songs for the new album by my colleague.At the same time produces a variety of solo songs that will be included in the collection of Wordcore Kill Rock Stars.The first two of Bikini

Kill EP is remastered and published in 1993 on compact disc, entitled The CD Version of the First Two Records [5]. Later, in 1994 and in 1996, will be published two new disks in the group: Pussy Whipped and Reject All American.

johanna fateman Johanna Fateman (born 1974) is a writer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is a member of the post-punk rock band Le Tigre and founded the band MEN with Le Tigre bandmate JD Samson. She grew up in Berkeley, California, where her father, computer scientist Richard Fateman is a professor at UC Berkeley. On the official Le Tigre website, Fateman refers to filmmaker Miranda July as being her “best friend from high school”; July is also from Berkeley. At the age of seventeen Fateman moved to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College, which she later left for art school in New York. Fateman began her writing career producing zines including My Need To Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock; ArtaudMania!!! The Diary of a Fan; The Opposite, Part I; and SNARLA, which she co-wrote with Miranda July. It was through her zines that Fateman first met bandmate Kathleen Hanna. At a performance of Hanna’s band Bikini Kill, Fateman gave Hanna a copy of one of her zines. As Hanna has related in interviews, she was impressed and inspired by Fateman’s writing and the two kept in touch. Later, when Bikini Kill was on a hiatus, Kathleen Hanna moved to Portland, Oregon, where she and Fateman lived with several other women in an off-campus Reed College house known as “The Curse”. (All such “Reed Houses” have a clever or ironic name of some sort.) Radio Sloan who also lived at The Curse, taught Fateman how to play her first songs on a bass guitar that cost $60. Around this time, Hanna and Fateman formed their first band together, The Troublemakers, named after the film of the same name by G.B. Jones. The band played at house parties in Portland but broke up when Fateman moved to New York. Hanna soon followed her to the east coast and the two women joined forces with filmmaker Sadie Benning to form Le Tigre. After their first album Benning left the band to return to making films. JD Samson joined the line up for Feminist Sweepstakes, their next release. The band’s most recent album is This Island[1] & as of January 2007, they are on hiatus.[2] While working with Le Tigre, Fateman started her own solo project called Swim With the Dolphins, named after a book by the same title with the subtitle “How Women Can Succeed in Corporate America on Their Own Terms”.

She made a five-song cassette entitled “the struggle for the full exercise of woman’s equality” during the winter of 1999, which she describes as “sample-based, dj/dance-floor inspired music for the feminist rave in my head.” [3] She was also the sound-designer for experimental filmmaker Cecilia Dougherty’s Gone.[4] In June 2011, a feature documentary about Le Tigre’s final year of touring was released by Oscilloscope Laboratories. “Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour” directed by Kerthy Fix documentsdmates Hanna and Samson wrote and produced the Christina Aguilera song My Girls ft. Peaches for Aguilera’s album Bionic Fateman wrote about the experience on the Le Tigre blog: “Together we tailored themes and specific references to her personality and image but found a ton of common ground in our aim to make upbeat da Starship song “Shwick.” Fateman continues to write critically about art and pop culture for Bookforum and Artforum magazine. Fateman has donated her early zines and correspondence to the Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library, NYU. She is credited as the music director

and composer for artist Laura Parnes’s 2011 episodic video work “County Down.” As mentioned in a 2006 interview with the vegan-oriented magazine Herbivore, Fateman owns a West Village, New York hair salon called ‘Seagull’. Both Fateman and her business partner, Shaun SureThing (a regular collaborator with performance artist K8 Hardy) were featured in a short documentary on Current TV.[5] Seagull has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer and many other publications.

il loro incontro

We started in 1998, when Kathleen moved to New York. Having just put out her first solo record, Julie Ruin, it seemed logical to try and translate that album into a live show. Not wanting to perform alone, she asked Jo to help her with the project. (Jo had just bought a sampler and was getting into home recording too). Earlier that year Kathleen had gone to Chicago and made a video for the Julie Ruin song “Aerobicide” with her friend Sadie Benning. Sadie expressed interest in doing visuals and/ or helping with the music for the live performances Kathleen was planning. So back in New York, Jo and Kathleen worked hard, trying to re-shape the Julie Ruin material into a live show, but ended up writing new songs together instead. They sent cassette tapes of what they were making to Sadie in Chicago and she visited New York and began working with them on their new, as-yet-unnamed project. This material ultimately became the first Le Tigre album. Because we wanted to have a visual component to accompany our live performance (and couldn’t afford to buy a video projector) we made a slide-show that had to be manually triggered. Our first show was on a snowy night at a collectively run queer art/performance space in Brooklyn called Dumba. The line-up at that time was Kathleen, Jo, & Sadie, with JD Samson running the slide projector. JD came on tour with the band as the slide technician/roadie, but it was immediately apparent that she should have a more active role in the performances. We were already talking about having her dance and sing back-ups with us on stage when Sadie decided she didn’t want to be in Le Tigre anymore. Since a month long US tour was already booked and Jo had quit her job to do it, we asked JD if she would become a full-fledged member of Le Tigre. Luckily she said “yes”. JD added an undeniable flair and charisma to the live show and took to touring and recording like a fish to water. Since then we have put out three records and gone on 8 tours, and now we have a video projector and two crew members to make our team complete: Dusty Lombardo, the best merch-selling video tech around; and Killer, the sound woman everyone wants to steal!

We started in 1998, when Kathleen moved to New York.

i loro temi

Le Tigre mixed the politics and feminism of Riot Grrrl movement to electronic sounds and lo-fi beats.

Le Tigre mixed the politics and feminism of Riot Grrrl movement to electronic sounds and lo-fi beats. Training is best known Within the feminist movement and LGBT. We wanted to make a new kind of feminist pop music, something for our community to dance to. In our scene, the Notion of “community” had been so problematized by postmodern theory and identity politics gone haywire, That it was cutting easier retreat to irony or Purely oppositional self-definitions. Instead we wanted to be sincere and take risks. For example, It Had Been A long-standing dream of Kathleen’s to write a song like “Hot Topic,” a celebration of the people who give us strength as feminists and artists and with Le Tigre, that song finally Happened. The movement “Riot Grrrls!” Was born in the summer of 1991 when thousands of girls “angry” invaded Olympia, near Seattle, shouting “Revolution Girl Style Now.”The manifesto of the movement preaches mutual aid to survive in a society ‘where women are disadvantaged at birth, in a world where they feel helpless and abandoned. In particular, women should speak of the abuses they have suffered, must confess their troubles, so that they become more and more ‘strong and less need of male protection.The way they dress and speak not ‘totally punk, indeed: the girls get angry often exhibit an attitude of mockery against “nerds”, the “L7” (bourgeois, mediocre, obsolete), of what’ should be and are not. So ‘can dress with white schoolgirl skirt, but paired with leather boots from “headbanger” sexy lipstick, but a paper clip into the nostrils, and so’ on. It ‘s also common to bring carved or painted on clothes words like “RAPE” and “INCEST”, as if they were self-marchiarsi the abuses of which they were victims. Instead of denouncing the negative stereotypes of chauvinists, these girls exaggerate them and if they have: the tattoo on the abdomen and sometimes’ a “SLUT” (“bitch”).Their relationship with the older feminists’ nothing; often ridicule. They are primarily girls (age ‘twenty years on average), not women, and are defending their independence, but their dignity’. I am in favor of sex, not against, and basically monogamous. At a march in favor of abortion have outraged feminists, who were praying the rosary in their slogans pedantic, starts screaming and making noise like potted with all items available: and ‘their way to be heard.Do not know (yet) anything about the world of work,

family, equality of rights, they only know what ‘he knows a girl of twenty. Enough to want to form a “girl culture”.After all reflect a rapidly changing cultural landscape, which has challenged all the dogmas of feminism and post-feminism. The inspiration comes rather from the methods of ACT UP (AIDS) and “Queer Nation” (homosexuals): Do not talk, act. Among the first “angry young girls” Molly Neuman was that the University ‘Oregon with his partner Allison Wolfe gave life to the zine “Girl germs,” which became one of the first means of alternative communication for American college girls.In the meantime (February 1991) Kathleen Hanna, a nightclub stripper Olympia, At the head of the movement “Foxcore”, the all-girl rock to complex. In short, the complex multiplied throughout the USA.And so ‘the “fanzine”: “My Super Secret” by Nikki McClure still Evergreen State College in Olympia, “Teen Action” by Erin Smith (then fifteen), “Jigsaw,” “Sister Nobody,” “Chainsaw “Donna Dresch,” Bikini Kill “.The editors of these fanzines were very young, under twenty: Jessica Hopper, founder and chief editor of “Hit It or Quit It”, was sixteen years (and at twelve he had already ‘founded a movement in favor of abortion) . The distribution of the fanzine on a national scale would not have been possible without the use of existing infrastructure: in this case were vital networks and those of the punks’ “homocore” (hardcore homosexual), in particular that of GB Jones, a lesbian from Toronto gave way to the phenomenon in 1985.To promote the dissemination of “girlzine” was also the magazine for girls “Sassy”, directed by Christina Kelly, born in 1987 in opposition to the brutal realism of even the more ‘conventional women’s magazines for adolescents like “Teen” and “Seventeen” ( now boasts a million avid readers). “Sassy” accepts “lipstick feminist” feminists excommunicated who likes sex, but in any case does not make it a topic of discussion.Each “girlzine” (magazine for girls) functions as a blackboard on which the girls are free to write what ‘they deem important. Someone compared this system to that used in the bathrooms of many American colleges, on the walls of which the girls write the names of comrades who have been raped so that all the other girls know it. It ‘a secret space, limited only to girls, that men can not penetrate.Many grrrrls were victims of incest or rapes, have grown into companies of punk, were consumers of

drugs and early twenties are already ‘exhausted. It ‘s not a coincidence that many grrrrls adopt ethics “straight edge”: no drugs, no meat, no alcohol.In girlzine you read letters which tell how the girls have been raped by her father when they were thirteen years, or describe the erotic nightmares that haunt since they were beaten by the boy. And ‘as if to replicate the sexual abuse of which have been the victim indefinitely, until’ has been made so ‘many times that no more’ evil. Rightly, and their ‘has also been called “rape culture”.The artist Stella Marrs and ‘typical cultural humus of Olympia: his “sculptures” and its performance concern about residues of femininity’, as high heels, dresses rookie, panties soiled with blood, and so ‘on. These girls relive their trauma, but they live on in the company of hundreds, thousands, millions of other girls that they can understand better than any psychiatrist.In fact, the “sexual harassment” becomes a bit ‘the dominant theme of the new sexual

revolution of the ‘90s, even to the point that will soon begin trials of men guilty only of expressing appreciation for the body of a woman. “Backlash: the undeclared war Against Women” by Susan Faludi, which examines the social and economic consequences of “sexual harassment”, became an immediate bestseller. The girls are tired of having to defend against male violence and having to prostitute themselves for favors, to be harassed in the street and being raped by family members. (In southern states a famous line says “the only virgin and ‘a girl who knows how to run more’ fast of his brothers”).In a way these girls are the alter ego of “Valley Girls” era of realism. If the Valley girls, grown in the economic boom and carefree era of Reagan, impersonating only the positive aspects of being a woman “, the” grrrrls “, typical representatives of the recession, so the” feet on the ground “, emphasize only the negative aspects.Olympia ‘was the center of the movement, although weekly meetings

are held in “riot girl” in town’ of different States. Hanna has opened an office in Washington, the capital, where the punk movement “Positive Force” has provided his muscles counter-information. In Washington, however, ‘the success of the movement and’ came mostly from high schools, and therefore the girls are even more ‘youth. While Olympia ‘become more’ politicized, more ‘closer to the demands of traditional feminists, Washington, and’ remained longer ‘linked to the original spirit of “grrrrls” aspect of confession and consolation.The network of “riot girl” grows from week to week and are one of Foxcore complex structures. The motion ‘was born and raised in the local punk rock of Olympia, and spreads the same way. These girls have no other celebrities and models themselves. Courtney Love (future wife and widow of Kurt Cobain), in particular, and ‘by many considered the patron saint of the movement.In the U.S. every day 1871 women are raped, of whom 61% are minors. The heroine of grrrrls not ‘terrible and’ terrified.not.

L’ORIGINE DEL NOME LE TIGRE

“Le Tigre” was one among many conceptual bands (existing in name only) dreamed up by Kathleen and Steve Dore in Olympia, WA circa 1994. They also came up with many brilliant song titles such as “13th Generation Bootleg Snoopy.” When we were trying to choose a band name it resurfaced as an idea, and with Steve’s blessing, we became Le Tigre.

LE INTERVISTE

INTERVISTA A KATHLENN HANNA Better Propaganda Editor Terbo Ted talks to Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre betterPropaganda: When I do interviews with people, I like to have the person being interviewed define themselves in their own words, instead of me doing it for them. Since you’ve got a neat thing going on there in New York, I wanted to see how would you describe Le Tigre to, say, an out of town conventioneer from another state, that’s there in New York City right now. How would you explain your project to them? Kathleen Hanna: Well, I guess the same way that we explained it to a cop in Texas one time. We call ourselves Punk Feminist Electronic. bP: Okay. KH: We like to someday hope that there’s going to be a divider at the music store that says that on it and there will be like a hundred bands in there. And you can be like “Le Tigre’s not really my thing, but there’s 99 other Punk Feminist Electronic bands that I can choose from.” Kind of our hope. bP: Alright. Okay, you’ve got a brand new album coming out. I’ve heard the new single, “New Kicks,” which is based on sound recordings you guys had made at a demonstration there in New York City February 15 last year, which was the largest single day of protest in the history of humanity worldwide. bP: Can you tell me about that track? KH: Yeah, well, on our last record, Feminist Sweepstakes, we had a song called “Dyke March 2001” and it was kind of similar in that it was like a montage or an audio collage, very cinematic and meant to kind of make you feel like you were in the middle of the march, and we wanted to do a similar thing with a lot of the anti-war marches that we had been to, and specifically with that particular march in New York that JD documented really well. And then we went back

and we got even better documentation of it, from different sources on the web, through Democracy Now! and stuff. And the basic idea was just to be like “this really happened.” (laughter) There were a lot of people there. It was kind of like snapshots or film or video reminding people that there’s millions and millions and millions of people who disagree with the current administration. We wanted to have kind of a beautiful document of that, and something that would remind us that we’re not alone in our protest and our struggle. bP: Who are some of those speakers- you have a lot of crowd chanting, of course- but who are some of the individual speakers who are making remarks in that track? KH: Susan Sarandon is on it. Ron Coopy, I think that’s his name... Oh wait, actually, I have (laughter) a record over here that I can look at. bP: Oh, you credit them on the record. KH: Yeah, they’re all on there. Al Sharpton, Ron Kovac, Ozzie Davis, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! And a lot of our friends actually, we had them come over to our house and we re-did a lot of the chanting... The background is real people at the march doing the chanting, like, you know, “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY SOUNDS LIKE!” But we had a bunch of friends over and kind of had a party and we recorded them, making it sound even bigger, and making the audio sound a little clearer, so people could understand what they were saying. bP: Just like doing backing vocals on a normal song. KH: And it was actually really fun, and the whole thing was led by our friend Lewis who is ten years old. bP: (laughter) cool. KH: He kept being like “YOU GUYS SOUND LIKE BUNCH OF PEOPLE IN A ROOM, YOU DON’T SOUND LIKE PROTESTORS!” It was really funny (laughter)

bP: Kids are good at being authentic. Alright, so right now, obviously, the Republican National Convention’s going on in New York City there. And as far as I can see, the news is saying they’ve arrested 1,500 hundred people so far in the last couple days... KH: That’s what’s true, and they’re holding them in CAGES down at the pier. bP: Right, shouldn’t they, they’re animals, right? KH: Yeah, exactly. bP: Have you gone out and watched or participated in any of these things going on there? KH: I actually have been out of town almost the whole entire time, I had a previous engagement that I planned before this even happened. But, um, my bandmates have been out protesting, and they said that Sunday’s march was like incredible. And I haven’t even walked by anything, it’s really crazy, I mean, I’ve only been back for a day and a half. It’s amazing how you can just see it on TV, and even when you’re here. There’s like stickers and stuff everywhere, but it’s easy to miss a march, you know. They’re kind of arresting a lot of people. People are scared, people are really scared bP: I noticed on your guys’ website, you joke that you guys

invented feminism in 1998. bP: You said a really neat thing on there, I guess you were kinda saying just a bit before, where you weren’t trying to pin feminism down to any one way of being. How would you elaborate on that? KH: Well, it’s really interesting, because people are often like, “oh, you guys are feminists” and they just assume that this means this one thing. There’s so many different kinds of feminists. There’s like cultural feminism, there’s like marxist feminism, there’s like socialist feminists. There’s a lot of different styles of feminists, there’s like materialist feminists, there’s all different kinds of feminists. You can prescribe to yourself to one position, or you can be like, “I’m kind of a cultural marxist materialist feminist...” bP: (laughter) KH: You know what I mean, make up your own CRAZY feminist style or whatever. But it’s also like women kind of do feminism, and men do feminism in all different ways... I think that yeah, we don’t want to be like so overly- water everything down that it’s like- everything’s feminist now. But at the same time, it’s important to leave things open, so that the way that I do my feminism isn’t the only way that anybody can do it. Do you know what I mean.

INTERVISTA A Johanna Fateman Tom Tom Magazine sits down with Johanna Fateman to ask her about the documentary Who Took the Bomp: Le Tigre on Tour directed by Kerthy Fix, which came out earlier this year. You can order your own copy here. Tom Tom: How did you all decide to make this into a feature documentary rather than just a concert footage DVD for fans? Johanna Fateman: At the start we were not thinking that this would be a feature documentary with a wider reach than our core audience of longtime fans. But Kerthy found potential in the April 2005 touring footage for something more, and feedback from an early screening of a very rough cut affirmed this. We all felt that with a bit more context created by interviews and archival material we could tell part of the Le Tigre story, hopefully in a way that would be of interest even to the uninitiated. So Kerthy made this a feature length project and it’s screened at a lot of festivals. We are thrilled. TT: What sort of reactions and feedback have you been getting from people who’ve seen it? JF: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. It has been touching to see how Le Tigre has been missed, and how strongly our music is associated with a certain period of many peoples’ lives. And this understanding of our music as a soundtrack to personal histories has really made me reflect on our early days as a band. Our first record came out in 1999, the year of the Woodstock rapes, rap metal’s pop supremacy, Eminem’s “anger management tour,” etc. People were so hungry for cool music with radical content. And making that music was our mission. People are so thankful to us for that; it’s a real honor. Also people tell us how funny the film is, and how funny the three of us as characters are. That’s a huge compliment. Sometimes I dwell on the hard stuff, the really demoralizing things that happened to us so I am glad that there’s a document of our live shows and some of the adventures and fun that we had.

TT: What do you think of the final product? JF: Kerthy did an amazing job. And I am so happy that the source videotapes did not just languish in storage. I want to watch it in a couple of years with my daughter. I still feel too close to process to really know what to think. TT: Why was Kerthy Fix the right director for this project? JF: She is a true intellectual and operates from the gut. Her feminism is palpable, she understands everything, and she is a great filmmaker. I can’t wait to see what she does next. I love her. TT: What kind of strides in feminism and progressive politics do you think film and music have made in the past decade? How can we as media makers improve our message or our delivery in order to inspire others or to make changes in society? JF: I don’t see huge strides for feminism and progressive politics in film and music in the past decade. I don’t mean to be a huge downer or diminish the incredible accomplishments of certain artists and projects (in fact it would be a huge list if I were to start naming the compelling radical art and endeavors of recent years!). But I don’t see a change in the funding, opportunities, or larger cultural support for this work. I’d like to see media makers set the bar higher for critical commentary, and refuse to engage in dehumanizing their subjects for the sake of appearing hip, edgy or getting a laugh. I see a lot of carelessly reinscribed misogyny and racism, and disturbingly, a lot of it targeting teen girls, in the so-called alternative press and feminist “blogosphere” coverage of celebrity culture, for example. l JF: I think it’s hard for me, as part of Le Tigre, to understand what it means to follow in our footsteps. We were winging it. Our only consistent mission was to create space for something to happen – like physical space at a rock club for people to dance and meet up, or maybe intellectual space for radical ideas and pop impulses to mix (I guess we had

specific aims for the internal content of songs too). All I can do is believe people when they cite us as an influence. That’s cool. TT: How would you like Le Tigre to be remembered? JF: I hope we’re remembered for our bravery and imagination. TT: What projects are you working on now? What would you like to work on in the future? JF: I do a lot of things. I write about art and culture, I own a hair salon in NYC’s West Village called Seagull Salon. My main creative focus right now is writing, co-writing, and producing songs for other artists. I hope you will hear more about that soon!

INTERVISTA A JD SAMSON Tom Tom Magazine sits down with Johanna Fateman to ask her about the documentary Who Took the Bomp: Le Tigre on Tour directed by Kerthy Fix, which came out earlier this year. You can order your own copy here. Tom Tom: How did you all decide to make this into a feature documentary rather than just a concert footage DVD for fans? Johanna Fateman: At the start we were not thinking that this would be a feature documentary with a wider reach than our core audience of longtime fans. But Kerthy found potential in the April 2005 touring footage for something more, and feedback from an early screening of a very rough cut affirmed this. We all felt that with a bit more context created by interviews and archival material we could tell part of the Le Tigre story, hopefully in a way that would be of interest even to the uninitiated. So Kerthy made this a feature length project and it’s screened at a lot of festivals. We are thrilled. TT: What sort of reactions and feedback have you been getting from people who’ve seen it? JF: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. It has been touching to see how Le Tigre has been missed, and how strongly our music is associated with a certain period of many peoples’ lives. And this understanding of our music as a soundtrack to personal histories has really made me reflect on our early days as a band. Our first record came out in 1999, the year of the Woodstock rapes, rap metal’s pop supremacy, Eminem’s “anger management tour,” etc. People were so hungry for cool music with radical content. And making that music was our mission. People are so thankful to us for that; it’s a real honor. Also people tell us how funny the film is, and how funny the three of us as characters are. That’s a huge compliment. Sometimes I dwell on the hard stuff, the really demoralizing things that happened to us so I am glad that there’s a document of our live shows and some of the adventures and fun that we had.

components, whether that was video, slides or dancing. Or talking and explaining things. I think that’s something that carries over from Le Tigre for sure. It’s kind of important in electronic music that, that component is… Hold on someone is at the door. I don’t know how to do this... Hello? Hello? Hello?Is that hello for me? Or... No, someone’s at the door downstairs but I don’t know how to make it go. I don’t know how to, like, buzz someone in. Weird. I’m staying at my friends house. Sorry. They should have left you a How To guide.

JF: I do a lot of things. I write about art and culture, I own a hair salon in NYC’s West Village called Seagull Salon. My main creative focus right now is writing, co-writing, and producing songs for other artists. I hope you will hear more about that soon! In terms of that artistic approach, do you find that electro music is significant in that it is accessible? I think that something in particular that happened in Le Tigre was that we found ourselves not playing instruments a lot of the time, because our music was sample based. The production of the music was kind of the artistic part in a lot of senses. So when we found our hands free we really realised that we could be doing a lot more, and it was really important for us to give the audience more than just us like, you know, singing along or something. We added other

I know, right? Oh shit, I’m really sorry. That’s fine. Hello?! I don’t know how to open it! Okay, I think I did it. Hello?... I’m still here? Okay! Oh my God, I was like, ‘Now I’ve ruined everything’. You totally didn’t.Oh wait I was going to say, yes I think that with the electronic music and extra things, like extra performance stuff or multimedia arts or whatever, I think it’s important to give to the audience when you’re playing a show with electronic music.

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the last tour diary’s

U.S. Summer Tour July 11 August 10, 2005 SANTA CRUZ CIVIC CENTER—SANTA CRUZ, CA JD: Hey tour-diary readers! The bus picked us up early in the morning from the Sheraton at the SF airport and drove us to sunny Santa Cruz to get these Le Beckre gigs started. We got familiar with our new home-away-from-home, chose our bunks, checked out the VHS tape selection on board etc. The bus parked at the venue and we wandered around. Drinking coffee on the sidewalk we ran into Will (hey willpower!), Dusty (LT crew veteran), and Michelle (who gave us perfect haircuts backstage after the show). We ate falafel, went shopping at the drug store, and waited around for soundcheck. I’m reading The Commanders (Bob Woodward) and JD’s reading The Executioner’s Song (Norman Mailer). Soundcheck was brief and traumatic, our set was short and to the point, but hey, that’s the way it goes sometimes. SAN JOSE, CA JD: Today we made it up to San Jose for our second show with Beck. The show was fun, especially because we saw our friends, Gravy Train!!!! dancing crazy while we played. Their new record, “Are You Wigglin?” came out today! So we got cds and all kinds of new Gravy Train!!!! merchandise including some turquoise hotpants. After the show we went onto the bus for our first real bus party! We ran into a bunch of girls who had made signs and homemade Le Tigre shirts with keyboards on them that looked super cool. Then we got on the buzzle and we hung out with The Train and we played a game where we tried to recreate a picture of Brontez looking at his balls in horror. It was the best game we ever played. Then there were a couple of imitations etc. Fun with digital cameras... What else can we say... QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATER—VANCOUVER, BC JD: Vancouver was a blast!!! We had the night off before the show and went and had drinks with our pals from new york who were in Vancouver shooting the next season of The L Word. Yes you heard it, The L Word. I got to take a beautiful walk on the water with Bitch (from Bitch and Animal fame)

and Daniella who scored a new role on The L Word this season. Yippee!!! We had macrobiotic smoothies and went out for drinks with Alan Cumming and the Le Tigre touring party. It was a delight to spend some off time with pals. The show in Vancouver was great too because even though it was a seated theater there were a bunch of people up and dancing while we played. That hasn’t happened very often during these shows with Beck, so it was really a treat for us. Vancouver loves us and we love Vancouver. After the show we had a party backstage which quickly moved out to the bus where we could play loud music and dance the night away. Since we didn’t have a proper record release party for Gravy Train!!!! we figured we should really give them props on an amazing record. Kathleen hit the cd player in the front lounge, cranked up the speakers, flicked on the disco lights and there it was... The best bus party we have ever had, smiles galore. We listened to the whole record and then went back for our favorites and no one got bored. Three

cheers for Gravy Train!!!! and for our old and new friends from Vancouver. Thanks for a great night. THE PARAMOUNT—SEATTLE, WA Jo: I woke up early and drank coffee on the bus, recovering from our Gravy Train dance party the night before, and waiting for a decent hour to call my friend Shaun so I could make him take me to breakfast somewhere. He took me to a delicious french place where he horrified me by eating what looked like a milky-white embryo on toast, but that’s not what it was really. Then we went to a consignment shop and he almost convinced me to buy a necklace of giant triangular wooden beads before he had to go to his job (he does hair at Vain). So then we did our usual boring stuff like our vocal warm-up tape and sound check blah blah blah. Our show had a calisthenic/vaudeville vibe. The stage felt like a walk-in freezer and we gave our all to a tough crowd

saving their love for Beck. Post-show I drank some vin rouge and socialized until suddenly I became very very sleepy. MEMORIAL COLISEUM—PORTLAND, OR JD: Today we woke up in the parking lot of the Memorial Coliseum. Jo and I worked out at the Holiday Inn and then I went to Chipotle Grill and Radio Shack which sucked. Then we sound-checked in the crazy huge metal coliseum that had so much crazy slap delay on everything that we couldn’t tell what was us and what was the echo of us!!! That was rough. Then we played the show and heard our friends and Kathleen’s family cheering from far into the crowd, which was so nice. After the show we hung out backstage for a while with Kathleen’s awesome family and family friends until I had to go to my dj gig at The Dunes with Nathan from The Gossip. The party is called Suicide Club and it was the same party that we saw Lesbians On Ecstasy play last year. We had such a good time spinning for all of the happy lesbians and dancing fags. It pretty much ruled. Then I got picked up by Jo in a car so that we could make our curfew on the bus... Just in time... and we were off to San Francisco for a nice day off! BILL GRAHAM CIVIC CENTER—SAN FRANCISCO, CA Jo: This was a fun show, even though they spelled our name wrong on the marquee and I broke a guitar string in the first 20 seconds of On The Verge (our first song!) I was nervous because we had so many friends and family-members watching us in a 8,500 capacity venue, but after a few minutes on stage it just felt like a normal show. Gina Schock from the GoGo’s came back-stage to say hi and we were totally star-struck! Some people went around the corner to a bar, I went and found my sister and we watched the Beck show together. And luckily my mom made brownies for the bus so nobody went to bed hungry. SANTA BARBARA COUNTY BOWL—SANTA BARBARA, CA Kathleen: This was our first outdoor show with the Beckster

and the crowd was loving us (hahaha). No really, they warmed up to us after a few songs. The amphitheatre we played in was like fake ancient Rome AKA the set of The Flintstones. I was sleep-deprived (as was much of the band and crew) so the show would prove to be an experiment in sleep deprivation slash delerium. The theme of the show was “this crowd can suck it” which I know SOUNDS mean, but believe me, after being on tour, off and on for a year, there are times when it just can’t be about CONNECTING with the crowd , its about SURVIVING them, especially when you’re the opening band and you feel like you are totally on acid. I’m sure I seemed totally wasted since I was talking to myself off mic between songs and laughing hysterically at complicated jokes I was making in my own head. On top that we were using every opportunity to tell each other secretly to “suck it.” At some point JD acted like there was something wrong with the sampler so I would go over to her area and find the sneaky piece of bright orange tape she had left me a little message on. Appropriately, it said “suck it.” It was one of those rare Wonderful/Terrible shows that I will remember for a long, long time. THE AVALON—LOS ANGELES, CA Jo: We played one of our first shows ever with Electrelane in London. At the time we were completely fascinated by their garage-y, haunted space-travel aesthetic and regal stage presence and they’ve only gotten better since then. This summer I painted my kitchen with their new album “Axes” on repeat. So needless to say we were happy to see them for our first headline show of the tour, although our preshow routine was disrupted by some ominous signs. A huge pipe (part of the lighting rig) came crashing down on to the stage as Electrelane was walking on for their sound check, nearly hitting Verity (who plays keyboards for Electrelane). Then, as I was ironing our pink stage outfits (we wanted them to look good for Ben and Jennie, who designed them) I somehow ironed a big black mark onto the white neckline of Kathleen’s dress. I went into a superstitious stress-out, but everything ended up fine. The crowd was on fire straight through the opening song of Gram Rabbit’s acid-head movie score to our fucked-up encore (the DVD skipped during

Deceptacon)! Thanks everybody! After the show we drank champagne with friends, and planned a pool party at our hotel for the next day. I was incredibly relieved when Ben and Jennie said they could fix Kathleen’s dress. Outside the club a good-looking kid who claimed to work at the MAC counter at Nordstrom delivered a scathing-but-loving critique of the show which we found deeply validating. DAY OFF—LOS ANGELES, CA JD: Today was really great for me. I stayed at my friend Emily’s house and we had a wonderful day full of delicious breakfast and swimming and then dinner with my aunt and her girlfriend. And then I djed at two different parties, after watching The Go Team!! play at the Troubadour. What a wonderful day. The second party that I djed was our friend Rudy and Jeppe from Junior Senior’s party in downtown LA. I had so much fun! It was absolutely amazing. Electrelane came and we danced all night. We got so fucking sweaty it was incredible. Check out these pics! BECK SHOW AT UNIVERSAL AMPHITHEATER—LOS ANGELES, CA JD: This was our last show of our short but sweet tour with the Beck-ster.The show was in this really huge amphitheater in Universal City so there was all kinds of people taking tours of Universal Studios right outside our dressing room. Weird! It was a pretty fun show and we had a bunch of fans spread out among the thousands of Beck fans. So it was nice to see people dancing and singing along and cheering for us in little pockets all over the place. Then we got to hang out after the show with our friends and family. Kathleen’s sister and her friend came out to LA to see the show and my aunt and her pals were there, who I love so much! We just kind of hung out and watched people all night in the VIP area. Including a bunch of young boys who i ended up doing a photo shoot with, and some young girls who we met and hung out with for a while. Then we were off in the bus to Las Vegas. Finally time to play the slots and hit the roulette wheel. Tomorrow Le Tigre is playing on “The Strip”! a photo shoot with, and some young girls who we met and

LAS VEGAS, NV Kathleen: Tonight we played the House of Blues inside the Mandalay Bay Casino in Vegas, which I’m sure sounds like a total nightmare, but it was actually really great.The kids were total adorable jumping bean weirdos and the sound was awesome (thanks to the people who run the place for having a decent PA and to our sound crew, Mary and Jonathan.) It was kind of surreal cuz our bizarre feminist punk rock/performance type thing was happening inside this gnarly casino filled with hyper-normal suburban types doing as many boring “bad things” as possible on their vacations. Electrelane was amazing tonight. They are so cerebral and soundtracky to me, while at the same time being completely-absolutely-stunningly moving, i.e. I feel like I am gonna cry whenever I hear them. Verity has the most perfect voice, it is so effortless and huge. Mia, their guitar player, reminds me a little of Michelle, the original bass player for Babes in Toyland, just cuz she has a really intense stage presence that is so understated and sexy, especially when she does this thing I like to call the horse hoof dance. She has totally pioneered her own subtle, just-at-the-right-time, guitar style. The fact that women can create such swooping dynamics as a team gives me a lot of hope. I can’t really say any of this to their faces though, maybe I’ll tell them to read this so they’ll know how I feel. Anyways, after the show we all went to the New York New York casino and I got kicked out for not having ID. I guess yelling “but I am 36 years old” all the way to the door wasn’t a great plan. So I returned to the bus with the ten dollars I was planning to gamble and made a really big sandwich. SOMA—SAN DIEGO, CA JD: Well, today was another super fun exciting day in San Diego. Complete with a trip to the gym, Target, Mexican food, and In and Out Burger. Phew it was actually pretty exhausting. With the Beck leg of tour over, it was time to say hello to our fans for good, and this show was the perfect place to do it. San Diego is always great. We have so much fun with the kids there who love to dance and cheer and give us so much love. The show was great even though

Gram Rabbit couldn’t make it because of flooding... So it was just Electrelane and us and we just want to say thanks so much for waiting all that time to all of our fans. We know it can get grueling sometimes when you show up really early and then no bands come on for a a few hours. yikes. After the show my friends, Eden and Emily, and I went onto the Electrelane bus for our first real bus party with those girls. It was really really fun to hang out together on their super cool bus. Basically kids, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. GOTHIC THEATRE—DENVER, CO Jo I woke up on the bus to a note on the dry-erase board in the front lounge that David, our driver was going to have to take the bus in for a repair, so we were going to have to get our stuff off the bus early and hang out in the venue. Carmine and Jonathan were awake, with a fresh pot of coffee, and Carmine had already conducted a video

interview with David regarding the problem with one of the wheels (I don’t know, something about a ball bearing). The only problem with hanging out in the venue was the overwhelming odor of MOLD. Frankly, it made everyone a little cranky. And I got a really disgusting salad at the sandwich place next door which didn’t improve my mood. The pervert Kathleen and I encountered in the supermarket didn’t make us very happy either. But backstage Amy lit a candle, got crazy with the febreeze, and the vibe improved. After the show, we partied like we had spent the whole day trapped in a moldy cave and had a day off the next day, which fortunately we did! Some of us got extremely rowdy with Gram Rabbit and some strangers on Electrelane’s tour bus. Let’s just say there was a hot dispute (still unresolved) regarding proper arm-wrestling form which prevents me from declaring a champion. Kathleen, strangely, was not not involved with these antics. She was back on our own bus watching Some Kind of Monster (the Metallica documentary). We eventually calmed down,

I CD

ALBUM Le Tigre Le Tigre is the debut studio album of American feminist electroclash trio Le Tigre. The song "Deceptacon" was featured in the 2006 Norwegian film Reprise and the 2003 skateboarding film Yeah Right! It is listed in the reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Feminist Sweepstakes is the second studio album by the American feminist electroclash band Le Tigre. The album is the follow-up to the trioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-titled debut and the first to feature JD Samson as a member of the band. She had previously worked with the band as a roadie and the operator of Benningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s slide show during live performances in support of their first record.

This Island is the third album by American electroclash trio Le Tigre. It was released by Universal Records on October 19, 2004. The album was the band's major label debut and reached #130 on the Billboard 200.