Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

by Carrie Brownstein

  Then Corin and Toni and I did a photo shoot for Spin, where I wore the same outfit as I had for the Village Voice. At the time, Spin was the biggest national publication to cover our band. Clad in a red coat from Goodwill, my hair dyed black, cut shorter in the back and angling down toward my face in a steep slope, and Corin doe-eyed in faux fur, we did our best to look like a real rock band. In other words, we pouted and pointed. It was fun, goofy, and very unrefined. My excitement for the eventual release of the article was palpable. I was eager to exist in a familiar and known context where my pursuits might be validated, not so much by the public—though that was part of it—but by my parents and grandparents. Anything that might help rationalize my not attending graduate school or my clear lack of a “backup plan.”

  So I was full of hopefulness and anticipation when my father called a few weeks later to tell me that he had seen the magazine. I had yet to see the issue. The first thing I asked about was the photo. Did I look okay? Yes, he said, the photo is fine. Then there was a pause. He asked if there was something I wanted to tell him. He sounded stifled and awkward. I said no, confused by this line of questioning. My father then told me that the Spin article stated that Corin and I had dated.

  Neither Corin nor I had ever told the journalist that piece of information, nor was it something we had ever mentioned to our parents or anyone in our families.

  I felt like the ground had been pulled out from underneath me. My stomach dropped. I lay on my bed. I told my dad that Corin and I had dated but that we didn’t anymore, which was the truth. I said that I didn’t think or know if I was gay, dating Corin was just something that had happened, which at the age of twenty-two was also the truth. It was a conversation that sounded like Morse code. A string of words. Pause. More words. Pause. Waiting. Waiting for some kind of resolution. Finally my dad said that he was cool with it. (This was almost two years before my father would come out to me.) “Cool with it”—it was a strange phrase. Reassuring, yes, but benign. Like so many things, it just felt like another part of my world that didn’t have an architecture or a name.

  Then I called Corin. Her parents had also seen the article. Her mom said it made her feel sick.

  When I finally saw the issue of Spin for myself, it was the first time I felt like I was reading about someone I didn’t know. The writer characterized me as a burbling groupie of Corin’s, casting me as obsequious and frivolous. I wasn’t reading about myself; I was reading about a character the writer had made up to fit his tendentious point of view about the band, a narrative he was creating that we needed to fit inside.

  There is the identity you have in a band or as an artist when you exist for no one other than yourself, or for your co-conspirators, your co-collaborators. When you own the sounds and when who you are is whoever you want to be. There are no definitions as prescribed by outsiders, strangers; you feel capricious, full of contradictions, and areas of yourself feel frayed or blurred. Other times you feel resolute or whole. But it’s all a part of you, it doesn’t feel fractured, just mutable. But once your sound exits that room, it is no longer just yours—it belongs to everyone who hears it. And who you are is at the mercy of the audience’s opinions and imagination. If you haven’t spent any time deliberately and intentionally shaping your narrative, if you’re unprepared, like I was, then one will be written for you. And if you already feel like a fractured self, you will start to feel like a broken one.

  That’s how I felt the day I was outed: splintered and smashed. I had not yet figured out who I was, and now I was robbed of the opportunity to publicly do so, to be in flux. Though the writer had gotten it wrong, I also think there was no way he could have gotten it right. My external persona was open and mercurial, and internally I was something far more complex, at least more multifaceted than a profile could capture or that I wanted to share. From that point on, any denial or rescinding would seem like backpedaling or shame to a group of people whom I didn’t want to alienate. Yet I felt it was unfair to be labeled when I had yet to find a label for myself, and when binary, fixed identities held no meaning or safety for me.

  Thus, I decided to retreat, to put the energy further into the performance. My persona would not be about artifice or flamboyancy, it would not be alien or otherworldly, it would be about kineticism, it would be about movement. Again I returned to the notion that my salvation was to be in motion. I would be galvanic onstage, so that offstage I could try to figure out how to eventually live with a stillness, with myself.

  CHAPTER 10

  HELLO, JANET

  I’m not above superstition. Ask me about how not being on page 13 of a book or magazine—or on any page numbers that add up to 13—when a plane is taking off keeps it from crashing. Or how touching both sides of the aircraft as I board, petting it as one would a golden retriever, keeps it aloft. It’s how I’ve flown safely for decades. Well, that and the guitar pick I keep in my back pocket and the talisman my friend gave me that belonged to her father. I’m practically a copilot.

  One day I was carrying a full-length mirror in Toni’s basement (rehearsing in domestic spaces often requires negotiations with and the transference of household goods). As I rounded a corner, the mirror slipped from my hands and broke. I knew this event was supposed to signify seven years of bad luck. Yet somehow I sensed the mirror breaking meant that Sleater-Kinney was the opposite of cursed; it felt more like a conjuring, of serendipity and fortune, some outside force that would take us. It was also a sign.

  There’s a long drumroll in “Call the Doctor” where the song builds to a crescendo that then breaks open in cathartic release. Toni nailed nearly every change in the songs, but she could not for the life of her tame this roll. Every night on tour she would mess it up, going into the next section either early or late. Corin couldn’t lock in with her to form anything resembling a rhythm section. This drumroll got in Toni’s head to the point that it became impossible for her to succeed. It was a crucial moment, and we couldn’t count on her; it felt deflating and anticlimactic every time. One night on tour, pushed to the point of frustration and embarrassment, I turned around and yelled, “Fuck you!” after she botched the part. It is a moment of which I am not proud. Corin and I were exasperated and began to worry that we wouldn’t get to the next place with Toni. We had to fire her.

  Shortly after, Interview magazine got in touch. They were doing a requisite “women in music” feature for their November 1996 issue, and they wanted to include me along with Team Dresch’s Donna and Jody. I ended up in a pair of baggy designer trousers four sizes too big, a ribbed turtleneck, and my own coat, since it was the only outer layer that fit. Jody wore a blazer and no shirt, putting duct tape on her nipples, part protest, part lack of a better option. Donna wore a men’s suit. It was shoddy and unsophisticated. We looked like thrift-store couches covered up with clean, ill-fitting sheets in preparation for a parental visit, hiding the stains and lumpy cushions. Since it was the fanciest shoot any of us had done—complete with the photographer blasting music in the stark white studio—we tried our very best. The makeup artist that day was named Marnie, and when I mentioned to her that Sleater-Kinney was currently short a band member, she told me she knew of a drummer I might want to check out. Her name was Janet Weiss.

  Corin had moved from Olympia to Portland after she’d graduated college and after our breakup. Now she was living off Alder Street in the southeast part of the city along with Jody and a woman named Anna. Anna owned a rescued Rottie mix, Puppa, who was one of those dogs that comes with a set of instructions when you walk in the door: “Don’t make eye contact,” “She doesn’t like hats,” “Never play late-period Led Zeppelin in her presence.” Rumor had it that at her previous residence, all the roommates had gathered for a human/dog/professional trainer therapy session. We had to carefully sidestep her to make it to the basement stairs.

  There could be an entire coffee-table book (and maybe there is) devoted to basement practic
e spaces. If you don’t grow up in a large, apartment-based city, then your first rehearsal space was likely a garage or basement. Attempts at giving these rooms any vibe at all can be difficult, especially when you’re pushing aside your dad’s lawn mower to make room for the amps. Even when you’re living in your own house in your early twenties—sharing it with five or eight people—creating a room that is suitable for music is not an easy task. But sure, nail a few cots to the wall for soundproofing, cover it with concert flyers, and plug in a lamp. It’s shabby chic meets fire hazard. A busted staircase without a railing was optional, but not required. A dead possum rotting in the walls? Sure. The basement practice space at Corin’s resembled a mine-shaft. It was a half-finished room, part foundation, part dirt, replete with a bright, unforgiving bare bulb.

  Janet arrived at Corin’s front door one afternoon with shiny black pigtails and a snare drum. She was nine years older than me and part of the more vintage-y Portland set at the time, the “Cocktail Nation” that exalted vintage dresses for the girls and suits and skinny ties for the boys. It was a clean-cut aesthetic, part Mod, part moped, with just a hint of lounginess mixed in. They were stylish and adult—at least it felt like that to me. I was not yet twenty-three. And though I had traveled around the country and halfway across the world I still hadn’t found a way out of my college town.

  The three of us slunk past Puppa and went down to the basement. Corin and I had some new songs we’d been playing on a West Coast tour with Toni, but only one stood out, and it felt like a good one with which to audition Janet. The song was built around my guitar riff: fast and careening, a skid into a crash, then it reset. Corin’s vocals were desperate and angry—even in the relatively quiet bits there was a viciousness. The melody was a frantic headshake, though whether it was a “no” or a “yes,” I wasn’t sure; it was past that, on the brink of oblivion, frenzied yet resolute. The tune was an outsized, fevered version of her, of me, of us. We called it “Dig Me Out.”

  Janet hit the drums harder than anyone we’d played with. Corin and I were used to having drummers follow along and defer to us; they were percussive cheerleaders or meandering, interpretive artists, serving as more of an augmentation than an equal component. Immediately Janet grounded the song in a way we’d never heard, giving each of our guitar parts a place to go. Janet had learned all the songs from Call the Doctor as well. She bashed out a body, a spine, finally making that album title sound like an order and not a plea.

  So now we had a drummer, but it was still on a trial basis. We had already been through four—Misty Farrell (who played on the first 7-inch single), Stephen, Laura, and Toni—and we wanted someone permanent, a collaborator. Janet would join us for the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, after which we loosely and mutually agreed that we would decide whether to make it official or not.

  CMJ—which stands for College Media Journal, though the magazine was long ago renamed CMJ New Music Monthly—is a music industry trade show that takes place in New York every fall. The showcases, pre–digital age, felt not unlike an auction, or a high school talent show writ large. They did what the Internet and social media do now on a daily basis, which is to highlight and amplify certain acts. The main difference is that CMJ took place in a physical space (or spaces) where you gathered once a year, and in a matter of days tried to make sense of who was the most exciting band, which musician had the most hype, who utterly surprised or thoroughly disappointed, and who would get signed. Back then, CMJ was attended mostly by labels, journalists, music publishers, and booking agents. It was very much an industry showcase at which unsigned artists could find representation and where everyone was vying to be deemed the “next big thing.”

  College radio and what CMJ stood for was actually quite viable in the ’80s and ’90s. Now CMJ is known mostly as an acronym, but there was a time when it was both part of a serious strategic goal and also a market unto itself. Particularly for independent bands and musicians, charting on college radio or having a local DJ promoting your music was extremely important; it could affect album and tour sales and was nearly as important as having a label. So established was this subsidiary market—along with who it championed and what artists had success within it—that it came to identify a genre in and of itself. Sleater-Kinney arrived at the tail end of a time when “college rock” bands were in fact a thing.

  The trip out east with Janet was whirlwind, four shows in four days. Our official CMJ showcase was at a club called the Cooler in the meatpacking district, playing with a handful of bands associated with the Pacific Northwest like Unwound and Modest Mouse. A long and eager line snaked around the block and the crowd continued to pour in until the numbers far exceeded a safe capacity. The show was oversold by a grossly negligent and dangerous amount, an absolute fire hazard. I recall little of playing other than feeling a drenched, dizzying excitement. The walls of the venue literally dripped with perspiration—they were glistening with sweat, just shy of tropical.

  We also packed onto even smaller stages, such as Coney Island High and the lesbian bar Meow Mix. Mike D from the Beastie Boys was at the latter venue, along with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. Even though we’d meant it respectfully and playfully, I hoped Thurston wasn’t mad that we’d referenced him in our “Joey Ramone” song. It was thrilling and nerve-racking alike; people we looked up to were starting to take notice. I was too shy at the time, however, to say much of anything to those musicians as they stood in line.

  That night on the sidewalk outside Meow Mix, a young guy with wavy hair and a warm, easy smile approached us. He was with the singer/songwriter Lois Maffeo, whom we knew from Olympia. He told us he loved our music and he lingered around awhile to chat. A few months later a package arrived for us at Kill Rock Stars. In it were two black VHS cases with silver writing on them, fastidiously neat and in all caps. They were addressed to Corin and me. Corin’s case featured a long note, explaining how her music had changed his life. The words were sweet and sentimental, poetic and charming. Mine simply said “Carrie.” The tapes were from Lance Bangs. Three years later he and Corin were married.

  Those first Sleater-Kinney shows with Janet felt wild, fervent. We had seldom put much thought into performance, sound quality, or equipment. The plan was always simple, maybe even feral: play, emote. Start the song, then stay with the song until you are the song. I didn’t think about what I was wearing or put on any makeup. Our music was its own theater, it created a heightened world on its own so we didn’t have to. But now hype was building up around our band—we’d been featured in the Village Voice and Spin, music critic Greil Marcus was writing about us, we’d been incubating, poised. Then all of a sudden we got to New York and it became real.

  And in Janet, despite the stress of living up to the accolades, we realized that we had a drummer who was not only good enough but extraordinary. We realized we might be able to succeed in fulfilling expectations, others’ and also our own. Our songs and our sound now had an anchor and a backbone that Corin and I could rest upon. We felt a huge sense of relief.

  Janet was the best decision we ever made. She was no-nonsense and outgoing, olive-skinned with sleek, jet-black hair and blunt bangs. Her look, like her determination, was signature, unwavering, and ageless. She was the cool one, the social one, and we could count on her to attend after-parties and play pool with the opening bands on our behalf while Corin and I retreated to our hotel rooms early to shower, read, and sleep. Forget drummer jokes, Janet is one of the most musically intelligent people I know. And she was certainly the most musically gifted member of the band, the one with the largest musical lexicon and sphere from which to draw influence and reference. Janet was also the road dog of the band, a term used to describe the lifers, the ones who can live on the road and feel as at home there as they do in their own beds at night. Me, on other hand, I always wanted to magically transport myself back to my own house after each show, a feeling that sometimes left me feeling splintered on tour.
While Corin and I shaped the world of Sleater-Kinney from the inside, conspiratorially, as if from a bunker, Janet was able to see the bigger picture, translating the secret handshake into a more universal greeting.

  CHAPTER 11

  SELLOUTS

  With the modest success of Call the Doctor and our CMJ buzz, a fair bit of attention had turned toward the band. Chainsaw was the tiniest of indie labels, and we had the inkling to look elsewhere to take the next step. An obvious front-runner was Kill Rock Stars, the Olympia-based label run by Slim Moon, who had put out Bikini Kill and Elliott Smith, among others. They had a diverse roster and the label was a statement as much as anything, the moniker itself like a middle finger aimed at profligate decadence. But there were a slew of other great indie labels across the country, and major labels, too, some who were quite interested in seeing what was next for us.

  We met with A&R people from Warner Bros., London, and Geffen. (The A&R—artists and repertoire—division of a label is responsible for scouting and developing talent.) People—men—took us out to gluttonous, exclamatory-laden dinners previously of the sort we’d only experienced for birthdays and graduations. The kind of meal where I felt license to order soda and wine, with refills on both. They also paid for us to stay in swank New York City hotels. The Soho Grand had just opened, and we each got our own room for the first time in the band’s history. I called my friends from the phone in the room, ordered ice cream sundaes, and stayed in bed the entire time, wanting to relish every second of this novelty excess. We borrowed a convertible Cabriolet from one A&R guy and drove to a show at the Middle East in Boston with what we could fit of our equipment jammed into the trunk. For all the time we’d spent being suspicious of or even vilifying major labels, this courtship had a humanizing effect. Everyone was kind, intelligent, genuinely interested in the band.