I often make mention about being an Eighties kid both because it’s true and because there’s a certain cachet to it. The Eighties are kind of the “it” decade right now as the suddenly cool geek culture has shone a spotlight, with a smirk, on Eighties pop culture. But if you were an Eighties kid you inevitably were a Nineties young adult, and that decade had some memorable moments as well.
For me, the last half of the Eighties was consumed by the tumultuous high school years where as the first half to the Nineties I was spreading my wings through the university years. My musical tastes were also evolving. Culture Club was long dismissed and carefully kept secret. Honeymoon Suite likewise pushed to darker recesses of my music collection. I still made room for AC/DC but not with the windows down on my car driving around campus. The Tragically Hip was in their prime and much of the teenage angst embodied by Nirvana and Guns and Roses at started to dissipate. By 1995, Cobain was dead and our collective anger had found a new, female voice in Alanis Morissette whose Jagged Little Pill was literally everywhere.
It was an interesting time. Chick rock was all the rage and it wasn’t just pretty pop stars in sexy outfits and makeup. These were legit musicians who played instruments, wrote songs, looked like real women (that would scare your parents) and they were speaking their minds in their music. Alanis may have been getting the bulk of the airplay, but alternative radio and video shows, not to mention the college scene, was exposing rubes like me to a whole new world of fantastic female rock, Britpop, and punk bands. And I was listening.
There are two memorable girl groups from this period whose CDs I bought. One was Veruca Salt which I’ll highlight in the future. The other was this band. They unfortunately ended up being kind of a flash in the pan and then disappeared. Then again, much of the chick rock scene did to by the turn of the century. That’s a shame because this group’s debut album kicks ass. It contains a couple of minor hit songs, “Connection” probably being the one you’re most familiar with, if at all. It’s undoubtedly the song that led me to buy this album, that unique guitar riff is so addictive. But the song I like the most is a more conventional rocker and it’s the one I’m focusing on here.
Without further ado, I’m kicking off the weekend with a forgotten gem from a period in rock history when the ladies were thrashing the axes and smashing the skins, not to mention ripping the vocals. A personal favourite of mine, this is “Stutter” from the fantastic self-titled 1995 album by Elastica.
Official Video:
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