Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 31-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Last month, a riot grrrl panel discussion was held at UCLA. In advance of it, a friend of mine posted a question on Facebook. Basically, he anticipated being asked what was it like being a male in riot grrrl. “How can I even begin to answer that?” he asked. Me being me, I did two things.
1) I used his comment section to write an essay (actually, I rarely do that)
2) I got all self-referential (I try not to do that)
I took his question literally and conjured a reply for him.
“Well, thank you for asking, because back then nobody did and that was exactly the point.”
At that time we’d heard a lot from men about what it was like to be in bands, to be part of one scene or another, but this was a point in time when women put their concerns and experiences forward with an intensity that wasn’t hinged to appealing to men. At least not in the traditional sense. Don’t forget, a lot of men were totally into riot grrrl.
“This Machine” from Dovetail (K, 1992) (download):
