Seeing Heavenly on the soozradio playlist reminded me of my younger days when Riot Grrl was in full swing and I was all about starting a band, starting a zine, joining the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade because it had cute boys... (oh, wait - that last one was my friend Krissy. Never mind). So I Google'd three of my favorite labels from that time: Simple Machines (defunct, but still putting out their back catalogue - you can also find a lot of their releases by typing 'simple machines' into a music search on Amazon), Dischord and K Records.

Jenny and Kristin of the band Tsunami were the driving forces behind Simple Machines, which published the Mechanic's Guide to putting out your own records in the early 1990s: a PDF version dating from 2000 is available here. After Sassy magazine made it 'cool zine of the month,' SM's popularity shot through the roof. One really cool project they did was Working Holiday, a once-a-month 45 rpm (yes, vinyl) subscription in 1993 similar to the infamous Sub Pop singles collection. Working Holiday is now handily compiled into one CD with booklet - available here on Amazon. Bratmobile, Scrawl (from my home state of Ohio, yay!) and other fine bands abounded on SM. Lots of indiegirl rock at its finest, but definitely not in the folksinger genre. This is a post about Riot Grrl nostalgia, after all...

Dischord is and was the pet project of Ian McKaye from Fugazi, who both wrote and distributed super-punk music. Back in the day, Dischord was the place to find "straight-edge" records. One favorite Dischord-published album is Nation of Ulysses' 13-Point Program To Destroy America, featuring the vocal stylings of Ian Svenonius on "You're My Miss Washington D.C." and other fine tunes. Ian was a former Sassiest Boy In America: I am convinced that Sassy magazine had a major influence on decent rock in the early 90s.

K Records held down the fort on the west coast, particularly the Olympia-Seattle hop that gave Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill (now in Le Tigre) and other Pacific Northwest bands to the world. Dig through their back catalog, it's chock full of MP3s. K put together the International Pop Underground Convention compilation CD (HIGHLY recommended, for the Spinanes, Bratmobile, L7, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet...plus much more)

Oh, and for all you trainspotters out there, it was Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill who inspired Kurt Cobain to write "Smells Like Teen Spirit." You can read all about it in the book Heavier than Heaven, and there's a great compilation CD out from the Kill Rock Stars label that features more of the bands I've mentioned above.

Sigh, riot grrl nostalgia. Who'd have thought it?

(a version of this post originally appeared here on Listen Up! back in May)