Erik McGregor photo from May y18th
Fan mail.
I’ve written about
the Cannibal Girls a lot lately.
The Cannibal Girls is a 1973
Canadian independent comedy horror film, directed by Ivan Reitman
Its also a Brooklyn
based punk band,
Founded by
Josie/@josieingall
Dodi/@mothtreee
Maya/@mayadelmont
Dodi/@mothtreee
Maya/@mayadelmont
With bits of
Classical
training.
Appreciation for Franz
Liszt
Venezuela
Pop culture.
Feminism,
Movies.
Ladies
and Gentlemen the Faaabulous Stains.
God
Save the Girl
Almost
Famous
The
Clash
A
grandad who played with Jaco.
Memories of
Pete Seegar shows.
Riot
Grrls documentaries.
They
rehearse in the basement here.
Peter Shelley was going, and
the Cannibal Girls were coming.
Last
Saturday, they played a full set,
“passiveaggressivenyc”
wrote on Instagram,
“Next show is
May 18th for Olivia’s birthday at the Living Gallery! Come out and celebrate
with us and our friend on the line up! Doors open at 6pm”
The Cannibal
Girls were last band to play.
Their set
included
two
covers,
And
three
Or
four original songs.
“We
are the Cannibal Girls and we eat men,”
they scream, in unison, much like Johnny
Ramone’s, “1234” before the Ramones began their songs,
Inviting
a blitzkrieg of sound.
Legions
of fans sprint inside, colliding within the mosh pit.
The doors
flew open and the people crowded in,
They
can’t wait for the show to start
Penelope
Houston sang about those old Avengers shows.
The
set begins with “Fairy Tale of the
Supermarket,” from the same daydream.
The
old Raincoats 1979 anthem, released months
before the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket.”
We’re
all big Raincoats fans.
We also love the Slits.
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music,
Boys, Boys, Boys,
Viv
Albertine’s memoir is one of the best books ever.
The
Cannibal girls are Josie on drums,
Maya
on guitars and vocals,
Dodi
on bass and vocals.
But
they usually switch instruments.
Josie
pulls out her flute,
Reminding
the crowd this is an aesthetic experience
fans are entering.
The band
is provocative.
One
observer said the name was cheeky.
But
Priya reminded him, its better for girls to be doing the consuming instead of being
consumed.
The
mosh pit thickens.
A
boy waves his red t-shirt in the middle.
He sometimes writes fan mail to the band.
The
band follows with:
“Basement Song,”
“Hey
there boy,”
“Mother,”
straight into “Cats n Kittens.”
Jazz
and punk
Into
its own jam,
Bodies
lunging.
A
man in people’s hands, crowd surfing.
And
“She
walks onto Me,” the old Hole song.
“She walks over me
She walks over me
Hold you close like we both died
My ever present suicide…”
She walks over me
Hold you close like we both died
My ever present suicide…”
Such
thoughts are everywhere,
A
year after Thea left from the 16th floor in Manhattan.
Thirty-nine
years to the day that
Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy
Division, hung himself in his Manchester kitchen,
On
the evening of May 18, 1980,
The
night before the band was to begin their US tour.
The
Cannibal Girls would have played another song,
But
the crowd was moshing so much that the sound system crumbled.
Chanting
“open up the pit!!! Open up the pit!”
Before
the band was about to play their final song,
“Fractured
mirrors broke her spirit.”
The
originals standing up with the covers.
The
sets no longer include early covers,
Cherry
Bomb and Rebel Girl, by Bikini Girl.
Darby
Crash and Lorna
Doom would have been proud.
But
unlike Germs shows, where heroine pumped through Darby’s veins,
And he screamed for someone to get him a beer,
Cannibal
Girls often play at straight edge venues,
Where
no alcohol is sold.
But it wasn't straight edge for the Cannibal Girls.
Smiling and pounding their instruments,
Bodies
bouncing, in a distinct DiY culture,
A
scene rejecting a world that seems to consign
them to climate catastrophe,
More
guns in schools,
And
PTSD symptoms,
Just
making it through high school.
Many take part in
climate walk outs,
Sit
ins in Times Square.
Climate
strikes.
I
last saw Max, whose band, Big Pitty, played earlier in the night, at the
Extinction Rebellion,
action
at City Hall.
He
changed the name of the band from Big Titty to Big Pity.
I
worry about their turn toward
respectability.
Max
finds his way into half the photos of
the set.
They
are a generation asked to be sane in an
insane world.
They
wear their contradictions,
The
clash pulling at each song in their set.
Everyone
still lost in the supermarket.
The
first song of their set has a distinct place in
the history of music.
Maybe one of the kids in the mosh pit
will remember the Cannibal Girls music,
In the same way Hanna recalls the
Slits and their fairytales.
We all create our own worlds.
Certain the Cannibal Girls are.
***
A few weeks before their gig, they did
a radio interview on RFB.
Here is some of the transcript:
RFB:
Hey, thanks for tuning into RFB. We're live. My name is Sam, I'm here every
Wednesday at 7:00. I'm here with Cannibal Girls. This is pretty crazy. Say hi,
guys.
CG:
Hi! Thank you so much for having us.
S:
I'm so excited. This is actually the first all-girl band I've had on here which
is kind of upsetting since the show has been going on for almost a year and
I've had a lot of bands come on for interviews but I'm so excited that you guys
are here and I'm so happy to talk with you now.
CG:
Yeah we're super excited. Thank you.
S:
So you guys don't have any recordings unfortunately but we're working on that,
right?
CG:
Yeah we are.
S:
So we're thinking we'll just talk a little and play some songs at the end. Do
you want to go around and introduce yourselves and say what instruments you
play?
J:
Sure, I'm Josie, I'm the drummer.
D:
I'm Dodi. I play bass and guitar.
M:
I'm Maya. I also play the bass and guitar and I sing.
S:
Nice. Alright. I'm so so excited you guys are here. So I wanted to start out by
going into... I always think it's interesting to find out how everyone got into
music in the first place.
M:
I started playing piano before elementary school. That was the very start of
it. I did that for two years. Then I did violin for seven. It was for orchestra
and recitals and all that. Then I quit in 7th grade and I picked up the guitar
and I started teaching myself and then I started taking bass lessons. So that's
where I got to where I am now.
D:
I have kind of a different story where I kind of started more recently, like
two years ago. I think it really all started when I started reading about more
of a female music scene. I read the book Clothes Music Boys, which you've
definitely read too and that kind of blew my mind. I was like, "Holy shit,
girls are so cool. I want to do this." So I started playing guitar and
exploring more music and taking more things in and I prefer the bass now,
honestly. But that's how it started for me.
J:
I think my story is more similar to Maya's where I started playing classic
flute as pushed on to me by Jewish parents when I was like 7. So I've been
doing that for literally a decade now and it's still I think I love. I had a
period where I quit in the middle like, "This isn't to me. It's too
regimented," and then I picked it back up to figure out if I could adapt
the type of music I wanted to play, the type of music I was personally interested
in, expanding the repertoire of stuff I was playing. I was also in a
song-writing ensemble in school and I was like, "I'd like to be more
actively involved in the composing of music." Because in a rock
song-writing group, you don't really have a lot to do on the flute. So I
started playing the drums. I'm pretty much totally self taught. I've had
two-odd-ish lessons and I've only been playing a little less than a year now,
but these guys have been super supportive. The classical music background helps.
M:
Since we're all a little newer to our instruments, it helps because we don't
have this pressure where someone is going to be like soloing for five minutes.
Dodi and I switch off on instruments all the time, like in the middle of the
set. And we all song write. So we'll mix and match and help each other.
J:
It's also like, with what Dodi was saying, I think it's kind of nice for us
sometimes that we're all sort of novices because it's a really good way to
connect with your audience and three, I think it's a thing that makes sense for
us as a band and as women, almost. I think what Dodi was saying about five
minute solos where men treat their instruments as extensions of their dicks a
lot of the time. It's so much showing off of technical prowess instead of
creating --
M:
This stuff has happened so many times. Men who are so amazing at their guitar
but there's so many people …I think for us, the most important thing is
creating a kind of new sound. One that we like, but we haven't heard a thousand
times.
D:
Content that actually expresses what we're trying to express in that moment.
S:
So I haven't heard you guys live which I'm really sad about, but I'm going to
your next show. But I've seen some of your videos. You guys -- we're not trying
to go into genres here -- but it's kind of like punk, alternative...
CG:
Yeah.
S:
I had an interview with one of the first female punks in the 70s. Cynthia from
the B-girls and -- you can find that in the archives -- she was talking about
some of the exact same stuff that you're saying. You know, males with the
solos.
CG:
How much has the status quo of music really changed in terms of male behavior
in 40 years?
S:
She's still doing music stuff and she just went on a reunion tour with the
B-girls to Japan. And she was saying that things have really not changed. In
Japan, she said it was great, but you have to think about how much has changed.
I hope you guys are having better luck.
D:
Kind of, but I've seen so many bands -- and so have Josie and Maya -- with teen
bands, and we haven't seen a single female band play. You hear about riot grrrl
and you hear about all this stuff and you think things are progressing and
things are going well, it's all basically better. But the fact that we -- we
haven't played that many shows -- but we've never played with a female
musician.
CG:
Hello Mary, once.
D:
It was an all female set but it was at the all female show, but it wasn't even
all female.
S:
I remember when I first got into teen music, that's what the show was kind of
founded upon. Trying to expose teen artists. It was a lot of male musicians.
But I think the first all-girl teen band that I found was pretty sick. They
were amazing and I was like, "Oh my god, girls can do this." Just
thinking about the fact that I've only interviewed boy bands.
J:
Right, but even when you do see women in music, a lot of the time it's just
limited to vocalists. And absolutely no shade to vocalists. I love our
vocalist. But it's a really big problem that women aren't seen as being capable
of doing things like literally outside of themselves a lot of the time. I think
it very much perpetuated the idea that women are self-centered, or divas, or
only want to perform when they're in the star role. I fucking love being a
drummer.
S:
Yeah. It's awesome.
D:
What I like about the bass is that it's the background. It determines which way
it's going to go. It's not in the front/center like a guitar soloist.
S:
But it really determines the way the song goes. I used to be in a band like
freshman year and they graduated a couple years before I did, so we just kind
of tapered out. But I played bass in that band and we had two drummers in our
band, which is pretty rare, but they would switch off. Being a girl band -- we
were one of the only all girl bands. I had no idea how much pressure...
CG:
You feel like you're a spectacle almost a lot of the time.
To
be continued…
Erik McGregor
cweinbaumphotography
cweinbaumphotography
the shows over.
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