| |
The Dishrags
Past is Past - 7" EP
Modern - 1979
Michael Panontin
|
The Dishrags issued just two 7" EPs during their brief existence. Many punk fans today would probably struggle to remember them. But the BC trio were one of the first all-female punk groups, if not the first, in North America. As teenagers - barely - they were on the bill at Vancouver's first ever punk gig on 30 July 1977. And if that wasn't enough, they backed up the Clash on their first North American tour and even had the balls to play 'London's Burning' (which had their heroes actually dancing off to the side of the stage).
Guitarist Jade Blade, bassist Dale Powers and drummer Scout grew up in Saanich, just to the north of Victoria, and actually trace their friendship back to their pre-teens. "Scout and I became best friends when we were around seven, and then the three of us became inseparable in junior high," Blade told the It's Psychedelic Baby site. "The area we grew up in, while physically beautiful and mostly an agricultural community, was a deadly dull place to be a teenager. The band became both our obsession and our ticket out."
Since there wasn't much of a music scene to speak of there, the girls, sporting torn jeans, oversized men's shirts and leather jackets, stuck out like a sore thumb. "The more we showed our allegiance to punk, the less accepted we became at school," Blade recalled. Though they hadn't even finished high school, it soon became clear that the mainland - Vancouver to be specific - was their ticket out of that suburban hell.
As luck would have it, Blade, whose real name is Jill Bain, had a cousin named Chris Arnett who was fronting a rudimentary group called the Furies. The three had hopped the ferry over to Vancouver to attend a concert - Blade guesses it was Alice Cooper, but isn't quite sure - which had to be cancelled at the last minute. And, well, right place, right time as they say.
"Instead - and luckily - we went to watch the Furies practise. Not only did we love what we saw and heard (very Velvet Underground-inspired, sped up a few notches), but [their manager Kat Hammond] was at the practice and learned that we also had a band. She asked us (without hearing a note!) if we wanted to open for The Furies."
The ladies jumped at the offer, but did not know what to call themselves. After much discussion, Hammond decided to bill them as Dee Dee and the Dishrags, and the name, or at least part of it, stuck. From there, it was on to more gigs - "a lot of community halls or small clubs like the Windmill, Quadra, Smilin' Buddha, and Lotus" - a track on the original Vancouver Complication comp and then that proverbial punk badge of success, a seven-inch single.
The Past Is Past EP was recorded at Triangle Studios in Seattle, a city that the Dishrags were quite familiar with having played there on a number of occasions. (Triangle went bust in 1985, but its modest triangular studio would be taken over by Reciprocal Recording and then later by the Hall of Justice studio, making it hallowed ground for fans of grunge and indie rock alike. Everyone from Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Nirvana to Death Cab for Cutie, the Decemberists and Fleet Foxes would make records there.)
The three tracks on Past Is Past are pretty well standard-issue punk, unsurprisingly longer on attitude and energy than on skill. And given its relatively late Nov. '79 release date, it's hardly what you would call groundbreaking stuff. But it is a valuable document of the fertile scene on the lower mainland at the time, especially the terse pedal-to-the-metal punch of 'Love is Shit' and its frenetic twin 'Tormented', both of which clock in at barely a minute each.
The following year, with Powers having left and bassist Kim Henriksen and guitarist Susan MacGillivray brought in as replacements, they followed up with an independently released EP called Death in the Family, which was co-produced by the Pointed Sticks' Bill Napier-Hemy (whom Blade would eventually marry). But by then they were starting to sour on the whole punk thing ("People started doing drugs and decided they wanted to become rock stars - the fun was mostly over by 1980.") The Dishrags had already broken up by the time Death in the Family came out, but in a final blast of in-your-face punkery, the gals chose to release it on fake - and rather convincing - RCA Victor labels.
|
|
Suggestions
Bunny and the Lakers
Numbers
(independent)
The Wayouts
The Wayouts EP -7"
Way Out
Active Dog
Rat Race / Good Filthy Fun - 7"
Active Dog
|
