Frightwig

Anyone tracing the lineage of riot grrrl must account for the groundbreaking San Francisco outfit Frightwig. This ferocious, funky feminist group unleashed a debut LP of scorching noise rock whose raw sexual politics surfaced most bluntly in the track “My Crotch Does Not Say Go,” propelled throughout by unrelenting punk energy. Rejecting every standard, male-defined notion of women’s role in modern rock, the band confronted listeners head-on and refused to retreat. After only two albums the original run collapsed; a 1990 reunion produced an underwhelming EP that felt like little more than a juvenile gag. Nevertheless, numerous feminist-minded women’s rock acts of the nineties—L7, Bikini Kill, and Bratmobile among them—trace a clear debt to this trailblazing predecessor.