Excerpted from the forthcoming memoir, Petal Pusher (Atria, June 2007).
Part 1: Tired of Being a Spectator
1985—Madison, Wisconsin
I’m going to start a band with my girlfriends, and we’re all planning a move to the current, or at least closest, music capital of the world, Minneapolis. About that small issue of not having spent our teens locked in our bedrooms jacking off with guitars, but rather, cheerleading and memorizing the choreography from Grease: No problem. We look the part. I can carry a tune. And I know all three chords to “Wild Thing” on guitar, so I’m almost there. As a woman, it’s taken me this long to connect my interest and longing (I’m a twenty-three-year-old college dropout) to something I could actually do—rather than spend the rest of my life just watching.
We’re keeping our band project a secret until we can acquire skills, equipment, and write some songs. No boys allowed. I want me and the girls to be coddled, protected, and admired like the rock boys I’ve been watching. We will rock you—and all we have to do is jam, fiddle with song ideas on a tape recorder, practice a couple times a week, play a gig now and then, record an album a year, and be wry, clever, and funny. In exchange, we’ll have our choice of the cream of the opposite sex as well as the protection and admiration of our peers. Everyone will want us; everyone will want to buy us drinks. Keep in mind that my favorite song as a little girl was “Daydream Believer.”
Part 2: The Birth and Toddler Years of Zuzu’s Petals
1988–1994—Minneapolis
Another all-women three-piece band in town, Babes in Toyland, has become instantly popular. They regularly sell out local venues and are making records for an ultrahip label out of Seattle called Sub Pop. They’re already touring and garnering international attention. Unlike Zuzu’s Petals, they did a good job when they opened for Soul Asylum .… While Babes lead singer, Kat, spits “Vomit my heart/ Spread my legs apart,” my bandmate, Coleen, hiccups, “Boy, you better buy yourself a spine, ’cuz you ain’t wearing mine.”
Nationwide, there’s a ton of all-women bands at the moment: Babes, L7, Scrawl, Calamity Jane, The Friggs. There’s also a lot of women singer-songwriters (Brenda Kahn, Victoria Williams, Shawn Colvin) and even more female-fronted bands with ringer dudes filling in on guitar or drums (Hole, Throwing Muses, The Breeders, Salem 66). The word used to describe the hot, hardcore babes making rock is “foxcore.” Their most noticeable fashion statement is the naughty-Lolita look—a phenomenon, perfected by Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland, of wearing too-tight schoolgirl dresses. The look is known simply as “kinderwhore.”
…The music-loving women who are not in bands work for record labels, music publications, radio stations, and in nightclubs. On occasion, we sense a minor backlash from them. Some dislike our lack of in-your-face politics. Some don’t care for our music. Some respond unfavorably to those we date or befriend. When we invade their turf, they glaze over with an icy reserve or they warily just tolerate us. One night, a soundman breaks the news that Zuzu’s Petals will never get another gig in one of his clubs because, for one of the above-mentioned reasons, its female booking agent doesn’t like us.
Part 3: Why It Doesn’t Last
Winter 1994—Minneapolis
“You guys [meaning gals],” says the president of Restless Records, “need to strike while the iron is hot. You need to get into the studio and crank out a new record.”
“Okay,” I say, not mentioning that our once-prolific songwriting has dried up after a year on the road.
“I want to get together with you alone before we begin recording,” our new producer, Albhy, requests of me over the phone. I meet him at his hotel’s restaurant in downtown Minneapolis on a frozen January afternoon.
“How do things work with you chicks?” he asks.
“We’re a democracy,” I utter weakly, unconvinced of the possibility.
“It never works, believe me,” he says.
Part 4: Summer 1994
—somewhere in the parched Midwest
I used to envy my bandmates Co and Linda for being sexy brunettes. Now I covet their ability to make the most of our situation by insisting we have a good time. What’s not fun about having larger, more receptive audiences? (Nothing.) We’re more functional onstage than we are during the rest of the day, when we’re left staring at the passing highway, lost in private thoughts. There’s a small chance that we’re about to break through to the next level. But it’s not happening fast enough. I keep comparing our progress with other femme bands like Hole, Belly, and L7; they’re all on major labels while we’re schlepping away on an indie. What if we’ve hit our ceiling, like this is the best it’s ever going to be? That would suck. What if I missed my childbearing years while on the road, forgoing a home and a family? Then my greatest fear would become reality: I would become a rock hag, holed up in some crusty apartment filled with cats and a revolving cast of vaguely impressed (yet apathetic) younger lovers. That would really suck.
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