SEVEN UP

Rip It Up, Issue 180, 1 July 1992, Page 12

SEVEN UP

The first time I heard L 7 I was rooting around the bargain bins in Real Groovy. it was Saturday afternoon, hot, crowded, when I heard the words "Get out of my way or I might shove" gnarling out of the speakers to a grind-core accompaniment.

Yeah, I thought, right on. Who is this band? It was L 7, of course, the all-girl rock band from Los Angeles and 'Shove' was the lead cut on their Sub-Pop EP Smell The Magic. Six tracks — hook-laden, muddy, menacing — these gals were riding the broomstick and how. Now that they've released their first major label album, Bricks Are Heavy on Liberation/ Slash, everybody loves L 7.

L7's rise to the top of the grunge-rock pile seems to have triggered an avalanche of media stories in America and Britain about the New Female Rock Invasion. The female bass player

syndrome has been with us for some time (Kim Gordon, Kim Deal), but the rock press on both sides of the Atlantic have been getting very excited about the proliferation of "ethereal" female rockers (British) and hard-core all-girl rock bands (American). That reads My Bloody Valentine's . . . and Curve's Toni Halliday in the first instance and Babes In Toyland, Scrawl, Bikini Kill and L 7 in the latter.

Jennifer Finch, L7's bassist and vocalist, doesn't like talking about a female rock phenonenon. She says women have always been part of the underground scene in America from whence L 7 sprung. "Perhaps it's a phenomenon," she says over the line, mid-tour in Amsterdam. "We don't like to think of it that way because it totally trivialises it, meaning that maybe this is just a fluke and not going to happen again.

Usually in interviews we don't like to concentrate on it. There's so much more, we like to be treated the way an interviewer would treat any other band." The way an interviwer treats any band is to look for an angle and the fact that L 7 are a bunch of women who rock is definitely an angle. The fact remains that 40 years after the birth of rock 'n' roll an all-fe-male rock group is still a freak occurance. 1 have my theories (men need rock music to get in touch with their feelings, women don't need that stimulus so much; men take to the stage as a socially acceptable

way Of getting attention, women get more than enough attention walking down the street.). I ask Jennifer why she thinks a band like L 7 is still a unique thing. "Um, it is really unique, I couldn't really tell you why, but it is. There's always been women playing in the underground bands. There were always women that played in the 60s, that were strong front people like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick. I think that we're the generation that was affected by the feminist movement of the early 70s when we were told we could do anything we want to do, be anything we want to be, there were no limitations. My parents and Donita's parents especially and I'm sure Dee and Suzi's too. We haven't really talked about it, but they never said 'you have to get married or become a housewife or a nurse'. They said become a doctor, go

for it, do what you want to do." But didn't you find growing up in the 70s that the prevailing rock mentality was still very macho? "I never listened to mainstream rock music in the 70s. I started listening to Blondie and the Cramps and the hard rock and hard core bands. There wasn't a deterrant there."

Jennifer's been playing in bands since high school. L 7 started seven years ago when Suzie and Donita got together and started jamming. They had a drummer called Roy and a bass player who quit so Jennifer joined. When Roy got really drunk one night and failed to turn up to a show he was kicked out and replaced by Dee, a friend of a friend. What's it like going from the underground scene to potential mainstream success? People talk about L 7 as being the new Nirvana.

"That'd be nice if it hap-

pened. I don't know if it's going to. We've been around for quite a while, since 85, and we slowly built our following and slowly got better and better e very year, the live shows got tighter and tighter and hopefully there'll be a pay off. It's every musician's dream to be able to ma ke a living out of making music. Not an extravagant living or anything, but just being able to buy dog food and pay the rent. We experience that now so we consider ourselves very successful. We've achieved what we want to do. It's also a dream of every musician to get music out to people whether they like it or not so they can at least hear it and this year has been our year for doing that." L 7 are a multi-pronged beast. Dirty riffs and grindy rhythms are complemented by dead-pan vocals and pitch black humour. "We like black humour," confirms Jennifer. "We like

irony. Those are the kind of books we like to read, the kind of movies we like to see and the words we like to hear is utilising that kind of stuff."

So you get a song called 'Scrap' about a glue-sniffing skinhead who renounces solvents to become "a Christian from hell".

"We're not anti-Christian," says Jennifer, "there are plenty of Christian groups that are right-on, but there are also Christian groups that are very fanatical and want to impose their views through law-mak-ing policies on other people." Although they don't consider themselves a political band, L 7 are known for taking a stand on issues that they feel strongly about, such as the right to safe and legal abortion. "We just care what's going on around us just like anyone should care what's going on around them. I mean, we're just lucky enough to have a vehicle with our music to express it. If we were working bars or working at day jobs we'd care just as much as we do."

Who would you put on your 'Shit List', to quote the title of another song. "Pretty much the people I just mentioned, our right wing government, artists who are very irresponsible in their lyrics towards women or racist lyrics. There are certain rap artists who think it's cool to want equality between blacks and whites yet they want to bash women." So what are you really trying to do with your music, how do you want to affect people? "That's an interesting question. We play music for ourselves, we play the kind of music that we like to hear and if people are goin g to be affected by that that's great. We like it when we play and people drop their pants and stage dive, that's the fun side of it. And then there's also a serious side. 'Pretend You're Dead' is addressing the apathy that's going on in the world right now. We're not

a preachy band, we just do what we do." Wasn't that single a tad consciously commercial? "It's not consciously anything. We have a lot of different influences, we like a lot of different music —" Such as? "Oh everything frorq Black Flag to Black Sabbath to Johnny Cash. And surf music. There's a song on there that's reminiscent of a surf song called 'Mr Integrity'. There's a lot of different stuff on that album." What do you think separates L 7 from the herd? "T think we're unique because we're playing music that we want to play on our own terms, doing what we want to do. And we're very involved in the course of our careers. We're not the kind of band who let our management and record company tell us what to do. We're here designing our record covers, selecting photographs, choosing our own video artists. That's unique in this day and age." Boy bands dreaming of stardom have generations of role models to choose from. Girl bands have not. L 7 might have to write the book . "I think it's too early to tell whether we are going to go down in the annals of rock. We don't feel like rock stars right now. All my rock idols are predominantly male ' — Joey Ramone, Lemmy from Motorhead, Ivy from the Cramps, Ozzie Osborne from early Black Sabbath, Henry Rollins from Black Flag." What advice would you give to girls starting a rock band? "The same advice I'd give to anybody who wants to start a rock band. You just have to keep doing it and don't get frustrated because there's going to be a lot of barriers. It's a very difficult, difficult, difficult business and you just have to be united with your band on how you feel on things."

DONNA YUZWALK