sweetheart redux

When I was a morose and pained teenager (as teenagers are), I was in a feminist punk band called Foxfire.  It was a pretty big part of my existence.   Tamra Lucid   from the band Lucid Nation  (our guardian angels who were always letting us share their equipment and promoting us through word of mouth) just finished emailing me a few mp3's she'd been able to create from one of our old cassettes (pardon any incorrect tech verbiage here).  My song "Earthquakes" was my favorite one to sing at shows.  Pretty much everything I had to get off my chest:  feeling ugly, not being taken seriously as a girl, being victim to a violent crime that left me jumpy to things like earthquakes -- it was all in that song.   Foxfire was a three girl band:   me,  Rhani Lee Remedes  and  Andrea Branca .   We all switched around on which instruments we played for each song; Earthquakes is A ndrea on ba...

my favorite of our old Olympia houses.  I like to see it through the eyes of Google Maps.  It's that little gray thing hiding behind trees with a billboard on its lawn. When I was 18 through 22, I lived in Olympia, Washington.  I’d moved there ostensibly to attend The Evergreen State College, but my true reason was the town itself, which was the starting place and still-center for the punk community I’d read so much about since my early teens.  I only applied to one other college, which was prestigious and at which I was accepted.  With  Evergreen State College, I bombarded them with several fine points and essays in my application, and received an early notice of acceptance as well as a full-tuition freshman year scholarship, which I won based on my work on the zines I’d written throughout Junior High and High school, and my extracurricular activity of being in a punk band that played in a few L.A. venues.  There are so many stories that ...

Jean Smith and David Lester of Mecca Normal. Photos by Sean Raggett. Mecca Normal BIO : The literary rock duo of Jean Smith (vocals) and David Lester (electric guitar)  has released thirteen albums on Kill Rock Stars, Matador and K Records. Mecca Normal's 14 th  album  " Empathy for the Evil "  will be out  September 16, 2014 on M'lady's Records. There is a lot of mention in the media of a renewed interest in 1990's culture.  Do you find that to be so, and if so, does it have a direct impact on your life? JS:   It is extremely important to our intensity and longevity to feel that there is some sense of the past being both accessible and of interest to people who participated back then or to those who are just learning about the 1990s now. There were some very important ideals that originated within the D-I-Y and independent scenes that are still valid today. Women writing and performing music about their specific concerns is still...

Tender revisionist history inspired by my mom, whose life was ruined by The Beatles.

Here is Children's Verse, first published Autumn 1998.  Jesus but that was a cold season, obviously.  I misspell Cemetery in here, which is funny because I ended up working in a cemetery for a couple years shortly after  graduating college, and I misspelled it for awhile even when I worked at one.  Enjoy.  or, I mean, enjoy? xoxo robin

Aw, when I was trying to decide what college-age zines of mine to repost here, I completely forgot about my Girl Scout Handbook, a sad yet hopeful college freshman's rewrite of an old version of the Girls Scout Handbook, found in a thrift store or belonging to a house mate I think.  I published my version in December 1997.  In case you can't tell, the 2 handsome boys pictured w/in these pages, one blonde and one w/ dark hair, are both me.  xoxo princesa robin