POP MUSIC REVIEW : Solid Performances at Rock Against Rape Benefit

Punk-rock spouses Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love played a wonderfully chaotic surprise acoustic set Wednesday night during the Rock Against Rape benefit at Club Lingere.

The chain-smoking Love, who is working on the long-awaited new album by her band Hole, did two gruff, but commanding solo numbers midway through the five-hour event. She was then joined by Cobain, the Nirvana leader whom she introduced as “Yoko.”

“Watch closely,” she told the packed audience, teasingly, about their joint appearance. “This is the first and last time you’ll ever see this happen.” The pair then launched into two equally raw, aggressive numbers, with Love wailing the loudest, before ending the mini-set with a disarmingly tender kiss.

They were joined on the benefit for First Strike Rape Prevention, a Los Angeles group that offers hard-core self-defense classes for women, by X’s Exene Cervenka, Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano and the band 7 Year Bitch.

Aside from the unexpected Cobain-Love appearance, Napolitano, who played an emotional acoustic set, got the evening’s biggest response from the crowd. In between numbers, she jokingly bragged about macing a guy on her porch like a roach, then, like all others on the night’s bill, urged other women to find similar means to protect themselves.

Cervenka read her absorbing, no-nonsense poetry--ranging on subjects from war to rape, while 7 Year Bitch closed the show with taut, stop-and-go punk rock, femme empowering lyrics and roaring vocals. The female quartet dedicated the show to friend and C/Z Records label mate singer Mia Zapata of the Gits, who was recently raped and strangled to death.