The last time my black Yamaha bass guitar got any real play was when it went on tour with the British riot grrl/queer-core band Huggy Bear for a month, circa 1994.
I'd dropped out of playing my own music a year earlier when I quit this band and that band to spin records on the radio, hoping that championing others' music would cure my burnout. It worked, especially when my friend started floating me test pressings from the label she'd started out in Olympia. One was by a trio called Bratmobile, another by some group named Unwound, and another was this 10" vinyl record that merged British punk with avant-garde aesthetics and a blazing political sincerity that I wasn't hearing in much music at the time. The friend's name was Tinúviel, her label was called Kill Rock Stars, and that 10" EP was Taking the Rough with the Smooch by Huggy Bear. It blew me away.
So when Huggy Bear showed up for their U.S. tour that next year without any equipment and Tinuviel asked me if Nikki could could borrow my bass, the answer was "Take it!" For their first show, they stuffed themselves into a tiny soundproof booth in Cambridge Mass, and the entire band played into a single DJ mic for a live broadcast on WHRB's Record Hospital (I still have the tape). Afterwards we got scallion pancakes at the Hong Kong and I learnt that Brits call scallions "spring onions."
And what happened to Huggy Bear? They were touted as Britain's flagship band in the riot grrl movement, a movement that suffered a lot of media hype in the early 90s. Yet that hype enabled their avant-political-punk music to top Britain's indie charts, often surpassing more mainstream male-fueled outfits like Pavement and Nirvana. Huggy Bear's fashion aesthetic and girls-up-front feminism has had lasting effects in youth counter-culture internationally, and they were one of the few bands with an outspoken queer boy revolutionary fervor back when such things were virtually invisible in the media—underground or otherwise.
And my bass? It's still here. I haven't played it in years.
And my bass? It's still here. I haven't played it in years.
