Tobi Vail

Tobi Vail (born July 20, 1969) is a musician, influential DIY punk zinester, activist, and feminist theorist from Olympia, Washington. She formed one of her first bands as the drummer for The Go Team when she was 15,^[1] later collaborating in several other groups like Bikini Kill, as well as being involved over the years with a prolific assortment of project bands, figuring prominently in the Olympia music scene. Currently she fronts the psychedelic-garage-punk band Spider and the Webs, plays drums in The Old Haunts, as well as running her own indie cassette label, Bands Against Bush, the Kill Rock Stars mail order department, and publishing various zines.

Biography

Vail was born on the day of the first moon landing and named after Toby Tyler, who ran away to join the circus.^[2] Growing up in a very musical family, she started playing music early.

Her younger sister Maggie Vail also plays drums, guitar, bass, clarinet and cello,^[4] and has played in such bands as Bangs, Gene Defcon, The Geoducks, The Slatternlies, The Stowaways, Frenchie and the German Girls, and Bonnot Gang (named after the famous French anarchist group of the same name). She currently plays in both Romancing and Leti Angel, as well as being the vice president and head of West Coast operations for the independent label Kill Rock Stars as of the current president Portia Sabin's move to New York City in 2006 with her husband, label-founder Slim Moon.^[5]

The Go Team and Doris

One of her first bands was The Go Team, an experimental punk project started with Calvin Johnson in 1985. The group released several cassettes and 9 singles on the independent label K Records, mostly on the 7" vinyl format - a practice Vail continues to this day. Billy "Boredom" Karren was one of the rotating musicians who played with The Go Team, and it was in this band that he and Vail played together for the first time, later collaborating in several other bands like Bikini Kill, The Frumpies, the upallnighters, and Spray Painted Love. Other guest musicians included Rich Jensen, David Nichols, and Donna Dresch. They toured the West Coast as a two piece, adding Billy Karren for two U.S. tours.

Vail was also working as a DJ for KAOS (FM) and playing in an all-teenage girl band called Doris with Cheryl Hooper and Tam Orhmund at this time (1986-1988), which played shows around the Northwest with Beat Happening, Spook and the Zombies, Rich Jensen, Oklahoma Scramble, and Snake Pit. They made a demo tape, which was recorded by Steve Ross (Cactus Love, the Briefs) but never released. After the demise of The Go Team, Vail played in various project bands and made a record as the drummer for Some Velvet Sidewalk.

Bikini Kill

Jigsaw #3

Vail is best known as the drummer of Bikini Kill, which lasted from 1990 to 1998. The band was often met with resistance and misunderstanding due to their chaotic live performances, controversial lyrics, and political zines which dealt with various activist-punk topics like anti-racism, vegetarianism, anti-corporatism, anti-capitalism, anti-heterosexism, and in particular feminist issues such as rape, incest, domestic violence, abortion, sexuality, body image and eating disorders, stalking, patriarchy, sexual assault, and sexism in general - all with a strong emphasis on community and DIY culture.

Vail recalls:

Despite frequent mainstream media misrepresentation^[8][9] and serious violence at shows^[10] (usually against singer Kathleen Hanna), they continued for several years and today are largely credited (along with Bratmobile) with starting Riot Grrrl, a movement that merged Do It Yourself punk culture with feminism. The actual word 'grrrl' was coined in Vail's seminal journal, Jigsaw (1988-present), one of the first Northwestern punk zines to address gender issues explicitly. Prior to this, many influential female-centric bands like The Slits, Girlschool,^[11] and Bush Tetras^[12] had long resisted the notion of being thought of as "girl bands" and almost always avoided the word "feminism", with the occasional exceptions of bands like Poison Girls, Frightwig, and Au Pairs.

Vail had started working with schoolmates Kathi Wilcox and Kathleen Hanna at The Evergreen State College, together producing a zine called Bikini Kill - the name of which came from a phrase coined by indie-godmother and fellow KAOS DJ Lois Maffeo, which Tobi asked if she could use.^[14] Along with Bratmobile's Girl Germs and riot grrrl, these zines are credited as the first manifestos of the movement, reclaiming feminism for the punk scene in an attempt to disrupt the straight white male bias thereof, and rebelling against such annoyances as having the women at their shows fall victim to sexual assault when attempting to enter the mosh pits or even get closer to the stage, their bodies often groped, their clothes deliberately torn off. In one instance in particular, a man was caught rubbing his penis on a female fan in the audience at a Rock for Choice benefit.^[15] In response to such attacks, not only against the girls in the audience but often against themselves and their friends,^[16][10] Bikini Kill was one of the first bands to declare their mosh pits "women only".^[17]

The general feeling of wanting to encourage more girls to start bands, zines, make their own culture and create their own homemade and fiercely independent media grew rapidly in popularity through a largely underground network of similar-feeling fans, artists, musicians and writers, and soon regular meetings started taking place, usually in punk houses like Positive Force. Bikini Kill had started working there with friends like Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi after moving to Washington DC in 1991.

Much like her influences Billy Childish^[3] and Moe Tucker,^[18] riot grrrl emphasized a strong advocacy for the DIY indie-punk philosophies and "you can do anything" attitude of amateurism.

The band itself released several LPs and singles on their friend Slim's then-new label Kill Rock Stars, of which Vail is now a chief editor, and toured extensively across the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia, which helped spread the word further.

The Frumpies

In 1992 Tobi started The Frumpies in DC with bandmates Kathi Wilcox and Billy Karren, Molly Neuman of Bratmobile and The PeeChees, and later Michelle Mae. They wrote and recorded several 7" singles, most of which are compiled on the Kill Rock Stars release Frumpie One Piece, and many recorded in the basement of Vail's parents' home.^[19] The Frumpies Forever single has on its cover a polaroid still of A Taste of Honey, a favorite movie of Vail's, who likes a lot of French New Wave and 60's British cinema.^[3] Distinctly less overtly political in nature than either BK or Bratmobile, and refining a much different sound (no bass player, 3 guitar players), they toured the U.S. with Huggy Bear in 1993 and Italy with "yes wave"-electro-avant-punk-noise band Dada Swing in 2000. They also developed a mini-rock opera called Mohawk Toupee.^[20]

Other projects

Apart from the 5 other above mentioned bands, and occasionally releasing under her own name and various pseudonyms, Vail has played in quite a few underground bands before and after the friendly break-up of Bikini Kill in 98, including:

Inactive

• The Feebles
• Frenchie and the German Girls
• My New Boyfriend
• Severed Lethargy
• Spray Painted Love
• the upallnighters
• The Bathtub is Real
• Panic of the Square
• the Fiasco
• Listen to the Elephants

Current

• Chopped Liver
• The Retirement Band
• Spider and the Webs - with James Maeda and Chris Sutton of Hornet Leg and Dub Narcotic Sound System.
• The Old Haunts
• Love Can Lose
• Repetition Vision

As a guest

• Mary Lou Lord
• Phranc
• Bangs - one of her sister Maggie's many bands
• Earth
• Davies vs. Dresch
• Gene Defcon
• Rice
• Rancid once covered a Frumpies song "Intertube Tomorrow" in which they sampled her voice on an unreleased demo^[2][22]
• Nation of Ulysses^[23]

Bands Against Bush, Ladyfest, and FAB

Although she continues to enjoy playing in some predominantly male bands, Vail still keeps with her DIY efforts to encourage more women into the independent punk scene as a founding member of Ladyfest, a volunteer-based music and arts festival for female independent musicians, performance artists, spoken word poets, visual artists, and authors, for which most of the proceeds are donated directly to non-profit organisations. The festival also holds workshops for girls on everything from music lessons, to how to make a zine, to self defense courses.^[24]

She is also one of the founders of Bands Against Bush, an international resistance network of artists and musicians dedicated to promoting and organizing activism and direct action against George W. Bush, his administration and the rest of the PNAC. It was inspired by the very first show she ever attended: a Rock Against Reagan benefit in 1983.^[25] A recent New York Times article claimed BAB was under surveillance by the U.S. government.^[26]

She also founded FAB (Feminist Action Brigade), a feminist book club based in Olympia that attempted to start an activist network using zines and the internet. Her current publications are Spider Magic, Feminists Against Bush and Pogo for Peace.

Bumpidee

In 1994, Vail started her own DIY cassette label called Bumpidee (named after the Portland-based Sunday morning children's show and eponymous character Bumpity) and released music by Worst Case Scenario, the Corrections, the Bonnot Gang, and the Slatternlies. Recent releases include demos by Spider and the Webs and Marissa Magic and a compilation called "Spider Friends". Each tape comes with a newsletter called The Bumpidee Times which contextualizes each release, and many are often free in the anti-capitalist DIY punk spirit of sharing. Currently there is also a web site, bumpidee.com, of the same name.

Although many KRS artists have since signed to major labels (Sleater-Kinney, Kathleen Hanna, The Gossip), Vail's output has always remained consistently independent of corporate ownership. A letter she wrote appears in the liner notes of a KRS compilation called Stars Kill Rock:

Despite the much publicized notion of the non-existence of such a thing, underground music is very much alive, as this record is evidence of, and so let it be known that the mass dissemination of an ideology indicating the otherwise should be taken for what it is. A desperate plea on the part of those “alternative nation” co-conspirators who are so busy trying to convince themselves that simply because they are no longer punk rockers, punk rock must no longer exist. This is an obvious solipsism but because of their connections with major labels and to the music industry in general they have the ability to widely distribute their opinions, henceforth perpetuating misinformation to such the extent that the situation demands at least some kind of an acknowledgment by those of us who know better.

Later, in Mark Andersen's book Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capitol, she continued:

Personal

From July to October 1990, Vail dated her friend, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, with whom she had collaborated during her tenure in The Go Team on another side project called The Bathtub is Real. They remained friends after they broke up, their bands hanging out and often playing together at shows, and they were on good terms until fame, drug addiction and depression obscured many of Cobain's connections with old friends, including Vail.^[6] The end of their relationship occurred during the period when Cobain was writing material for Nirvana's foundational album Nevermind and some of the songs seem to contain veiled references to Tobi, including

• Smells Like Teen Spirit - Teen Spirit was Tobi's choice of deodorant at the time, and Kathleen Hanna had spray-painted "Kurt smells like teen spirit" on his wall one night.
• Aneurysm - Cross' biography of Cobain incorrectly claimed that this song was written in an attempt to win Vail back, the line "love you so much it makes me sick" referring to the fact that when they first met, she made Cobain so nervous that it once made him vomit.^[27] The song was actually written during the relationship, not after.^[6]
• Lounge Act - Krist Novoselic is quoted as saying that "Lounge Act" is about Tobi and Kurt wrote in an angry (unsent) letter to Vail that "Lounge Act" was the only song written about her and wrote that he never played it, unless Courtney Love wasn't around.^{[citation needed]}

A fair amount of fallacy has been circulated about their relationship due to Nirvana biographers and rock journalists relying largely on second-hand misinformation, rumors, and erroneous conjecture presented incorrectly as fact, as neither Vail nor Cobain ever spoke of their relationship publicly. For over 15 years, as Jenny Toomey relates, "Tobi refuses to speak publicly and participate in the exploitation of the Cobain myth by hack journalists trying to make a career, record companies trying to sell records, and feeble attempts made by ex-"friends" to mark their place in history."^[28] The only interview she's ever given on the subject of her old friend was for Everett True, another old friend of hers and Cobain's. True is the only biographer who was actually close with them during this time, and he has derided Cross' book as the "Courtney-sanctioned version of history."^[29]

Discography

The Go Team

Singles

• "Sand/Jigsaw" (January 1989)
• "Outside/Stay Ready" (February 1989) with Billy Karren, Louise Olsen, Dave Nichols
• "Breakfast In Bed/Safe Little Circles" (March 1989) with The Legend!
• "Milquetoast Brigade/She Was Sad" (April 1989) with Jeffery Kennedy
• "Ribeye/935 Patterson" (May 1989)
• "Go Team Call/Three Ways To Sunday" (June 1989) with Quang H., Billy Karren, Brad Clemmons
• "Scratch It Out/Bikini Twilight" (July 1989) with Tamra Ohrmund, Louise Olsen, Donna Dresch, Kurt Cobain
• "Tummy Hop/Maverick Summer" (August 1989) with Brad Clemmons
• "The Pines Of Rome" (September 1989) with Brad Clemmons

Cassettes

• Recorded Live At The Washington Center For The Performing Arts
• Your Pretty Guitar with Steve Peters
• Archer Come Sparrow
• Donna Parker Pop

Bikini Kill

Albums

• Revolution Girl Style Now! self-released cassette (1991)
• Bikini Kill (EP) on Kill Rock Stars (1991)
• Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah split LP with Huggy Bear on Catcall Records in the UK, Kill Rock Stars in the US (1993)
• The C.D. Version of the First Two Records, compilation (1993)
• Pussy Whipped on Kill Rock Stars (1994)
• Reject All American on Kill Rock Stars (1996)

Singles

• New Radio/Rebel Girl 7" single on Kill Rock Stars (1993)
• The Anti-Pleasure Dissertation Single on Kill Rock Stars (1994)
• I Like Fucking/I Hate Danger 7" single on Kill Rock Stars (1995)

Compilations

• Kill Rock Stars on Kill Rock Stars LP/CD (1991)
• Throw: The YoYo Studio Compilation on YoYo Records (1991)
• "Daddy's Lil' Girl" on Give Me Back LP, Ebullition Records (1991)
• "Suck My Left One" on There's A Dyke In The Pit, Outpunk Records (1992)
• Bikini Kill: The Singles (1998)

The Frumpies

• Babies & Bunnies
• Frumpies Forever
• Eunuch Nights

Albums

• Frumpie One-Piece

Footnotes

References

• Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground by Maria Raha
• Girls Make Media by Mary Celeste Kearney (Routledge, 2006)
• Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap Ed. by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers

External links

• Spider and the Webs Myspace
• Bumpidee Online