To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

The first time I heard about Bikini Kill was from a friend in the punk scene in Chicago in 1993. He told me there was this girl band that didn't let any guys into their shows. I'm sure I said something like "That's lame" and went back to listening to Jawbreaker and whatnot. For all of the misinformation and general shittiness of our digital age (and hence, hello, vinyl), one can at least make an earnest effort to go online to seek clarification. In 1993, in a scene that was still more or less "underground," a falsehood could remain firmly in place without any obvious means of fact-checking it. Sure, I could have somehow made an effort, but I had a glut of stuff I was already obsessed with, so it was easy enough to shrug and write off a band that possibly wouldn't want me at their shows. However: Holy shit, was that wrong. A few years later, I got word that Bikini Kill was, in fact, an excellent band, and the famed "girls to the front" thing...