The Grrls Fight Back : Girl-Rock Tour Is Also a Lesson in Self-Defense

Olympia, Wash.’s, riot grrl scene seemed like the beginning of something big just three years ago. Bands such as Bikini Kill raked listeners with raw feminist messages on their independent record labels, circulated fanzines encouraging empowerment and adopted little-girl looks--from pigtails to lunch pails--as an ironic twist.

Though the initial rumblings of the riot grrl movement were dutifully charted by scores of magazines, from Spin to Vogue, the scene never erupted. When the movement began blossoming beyond its liberal stronghold and started to be scrutinized by the outside world, its leadership got defensive.

The already press-shy Bikini Kill backed off even further and preached defiance against any mainstream infiltration. An us-and-them attitude prevailed, though it was unclear exactly who the enemy was, and women less privy to the riot grrl music and philosophies were left out.

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That’s unfortunate, because some of the music--especially that of Bikini Kill--was striking and the empowering lyrics could have served as valuable inspiration to thousands of young women.

Today, however, the only traces of riot grrl-dom outside its insular core are cutesy mutations of its once ironic fashions in perky teen magazines.

Perhaps sensing the dead-end elitism of that approach, a more Populist wing of the Northwest’s thriving girl-rock scene has launched “Free to Fight,” a concert tour and accompanying album project that arrives this weekend in Los Angeles, starting Friday at the Macondo Cultural Center in Hollywood.

The tour-album endeavor is the first tangible effort out of the area to spread the same empowering sentiments reflected in the early riot grrl manifesto--self-respect, self-awareness and self-defense.

As such, it’s a healthy, encouraging step toward reaching beyond the clique.

“We want ‘Free to Fight’ to get to as many people as possible,” says Jody Bleyle, singer for the band Team Dresch and head of Portland’s Candy Ass Records. “We want to get on ‘Oprah.’ We want as many women as possible to come to our shows and to have the album. That’s the goal, period.”

The project consists of a compilation album featuring bands such as Team Dresch and Fifth Column, a booklet that emphasizes self-defense and awareness and a tour that will offer self-defense demonstrations between music, spoken-word performances and skits.

“Mainly, we want people to know that self-defense is necessary and not hard to master,” says Lois Maffeo, a prominent singer-songwriter who helped organize and will appear on the “Free to Fight” tour. “You don’t have to be a karate expert to defend yourself.”

So how did rock ‘n’ roll and self-defense techniques meet?

The idea started a little more than a year ago, when Bleyle saw an opportunity to link two very different worlds.

“There was this thing going on with women in music where they were singing basically about self-defense, and I had all these friends that were self-defense instructors, and our worlds really overlapped,” Bleyle says. “There was this connection between the two that hadn’t been explicitly stated, even as much as it could be. I wanted to bring it together in one project that was as interactive as possible.”

She hooked up with bands such as Mizzery and Heavens to Betsy, as well as rapper Axteca X and folk singer Phranc, who were eager to contribute to the album and tour. The album’s release last May was accompanied by a successful show in Portland, Ore., that planted the idea for a national tour. This weekend is sort of the trial run.

But “Free to Fight”--whose participants will split up to play at Jabberjaw on Saturday and Monday as part of the four-day riot grrl convention--hasn’t erased the riot grrls’ mistrust of the mainstream. For instance, the Sunday concert at Eagles Hall in Pomona remains very much an underground affair.

Where Bleyle seems to welcome potential converts, the organizers of the Sunday event aren’t even sure they should be talking to the press.

“Riot grrls aren’t really big with media, so I don’t know how to react,” explains Lela, 16, who organized Sunday’s event with her riot grrlfriend Sam, also 16. “As far as letting it out to the mainstream, it may bring on negative stuff as information becomes more available to the wrong audience. I don’t know if it’s worth it for the few who want to go, and will the wrong people show up?”

While it’s admirable that women in their teens can pull together the riot grrl convention, the real route to feminist empowerment in rock rests with the more open mind-set of “Free to Fight.”

“Our program is for everybody,” Maffeo says.

* “Free to Fight” will play Friday at Macondo Cultural Center, 4319 Melrose Ave., 7 p.m. $6. (310) 306-8267. Also Sunday at Basics, Pomona Veterans Hall, 201 N. Palomares St., Pomona, 3 p.m. $5. (909) 865-2072.