Chapter One: I Have A Name
I didn’t invent the Boise Idaho Punk Club (BIPC), but I was right in the middle of it, despite the fact that all of the founding members fucking hated it. The boys never quite knew what to do with me, and as a woman in my 40’s I can tell you that some of them still don’t know.
What I do know is I came out of the womb a rebel. Not only was I the first female that was born in the paternal line for generations, my father had a vasectomy before he married my mother. Good thing I’m his clone, rebelliousness and impatience included. I always waited until I was good and ready to do something. I didn’t really practice walking. I pulled myself up on furniture and then cruised immediately into the coffee table and ER for stitches for the first time. I was a quiet thoughtful baby. My parents thought I might be disabled (Mom drank the first five months she cooked me, vasectomy, remember?) until I looked at my mother one day and clearly said, “I want to go outside.” I don’t halfass anything and there’s nothing quiet about me anymore.
Since he had no idea what to do with a girl, and I wasn’t interested in traditionally girl endeavors (to the ever present bitterness of my Beauty Queen mother), despite being a chauvinist in general, my Daddy raised me not to take shit from boys. Once they figured out I’d punch them out if they yanked on my pigtails and I had way more Hot Wheels than they did it all sorted itself out. I had my own toolbox and if they were quiet they were allowed into the garage to help with my dad’s never ending car restorations. I always had skateboards and bikes, built ramps and had some small creature caught from the creek in a jar. We moved a lot due to my dad’s job and it made me ballsy and outgoing.
My best friend at the time, Jon, who turns out is autistic (they didn’t call it anything other than “odd” back then - we’ve been in touch as adults), moved away and so I was pretty lost going into High school. He and I did things like went to the library to check out books on Stonehenge and do puzzles while we listened to Weird Al. I was Mayor of Nerd City, complete with knock knees and buck teeth and glasses. After he left I hung out with a couple other dudes in the neighborhood but I lied and said Jon was my cousin as they wouldn’t stop bothering me about it.
That summer the group of guys I was casually palling around with got weird. And I absolutely was mortified when boobs grew in between 8th and 9th grade. I shot up to 5’ 7” in height too and had no idea what was going on. My braces also came off and my mom got me contacts, even though I hated them. I was into wearing giant skater stuff clothes anyway, but during this time I developed my lifelong love of cardigan sweaters due to the attention my new body was getting.
My father finally divorced my mother, and I was a casualty of that process. He had no idea what to do with a young woman and my mother never would have given me up anyway, despite the fact that she’s basically hated me my whole life. Maybe BECAUSE she wanted to punish us both because I was just like him she would never give me up. At one point he tried to help me become emancipated but she made his life hell.
She took to her bed crying for my father for about a year while I tried to piece her back together in our big grey empty house, and then the giant rotating line of younger men started in and out of her bedroom. Some of these men were more interested in me than my mother, but the one thing she absolutely did right during this time was kick them to the curb if they became too interested in her daughter.
So I start high school and it’s like being thrown to the fucking wolves. The boys hate me because I won’t flirt with them and the girls hate me because I don’t give a shit about boy bands. I was listening to Public Enemy and Motley Crue. One thing that my father passed on to me was a lifelong appreciation of all kinds of music.
I start stealing liquor from my mom’s bottles. She doesn’t notice. I steal cigarettes, I steal money from her purse, I start drinking at school and self mutilating, poking holes in my body with pins, carving into my arm. We fight, she beats the shit out of me, I start sneaking out, it’s all out war. I am absolutely drowning in an endless rage of abandonment and no one notices… well no one that matters. I steal a bottle of Robitussen DM and drink it trying to kill myself on her birthday in January, but all it does it make me barf my guts out and hallucinate. Thus a new habit is born. All I do is sit in my room, listen to music, write, and want to die.
And then Nirvana comes out, May 17, 1990 they play a club called The Zoo in Boise. I’ve snuck out of the house with my friend and his older sister because I had a bootleg tape someone gave me and I liked it. I am about one of thirty people in the audience. Chad Channing is still drumming. I had to leave early, because my mom was coming home, but I saw enough for it to blow my face off.
I went to the Record Exchange, asking about Nirvana, the cool clerk at the store recognizes me from shows (remember: they used to keep records with swearing behind the counter and you had to show your ID to buy them - FUCK YOU TIPPER GORE AND THE PMRC) and would sell me whatever I wanted knowingly. Scott turned me on to Fugazi, which led to Bad Brains, which led to the Pistols and the Clash and thus a new love was born. I also discover Beat Happening and K records and get super into indie.
I began to attend both Raves and shows during the week when my mom wasn’t around. My best friend at the time (a wonderful gay copilot) loved to dance, had his own car and with a very bored coked-out mom at home so the party was fucking on. In the days before social media there was no way to get caught. I was on the fringes of the scene, and then RIOT GRRL happened and blew the face off of E V E R Y T H I N G.
I wrote a fan letter to Kathleen Hanna once letting her know that Bikini Kill literally saved my life, and I wasn’t exaggerating. I was sick of watching the bands, and being flirted with by the bands, I wanted to BE the fucking band but hadn’t the foggiest clue how. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy… none of them knew how to do it, but they fucking did it and their anger was rightous and powerful. I’d been date raped at a party at age 14, constantly harassed and groped, and finally someone was screaming about how I felt.
I was given my first guitar for my sixteenth birthday by one of the guys that I was casually dating (older, always older). He wove flowers into the strings of my Pink and Green GTX. I tried to give it back when we broke up, but he wanted me to have it. And that was that. I was a guitarist.
So many of the local punk bands made fun of us. It was me and two Christy’s, and Daen, my new (always) male BFF who was the only one of us that had any musical talent whatsoever. He was the first feminist I met that was male and was raised by a strong single mother. I practically lived in their basement for an entire summer. Later he gave me a place to live when my first marriage finally blew up.
Daen is an amazing left handed bassist, professional level, like a savant. And he sat me down with my GTX and said… “Okay, here’s a chord…. Here’s another…. And then this is a third…. See? You’ve got this, you’re playing punk rock dude.” And Christy - she played HARD, dude, she whaled on those skins.
I played the basslines for all of “Nevermind” on the guitar again and again under his tutelage and nailed them all. I tuned my guitar low and muddy and discovered I wasn’t interested in solos (I found them boring) but loved to zone out on long throbbing oozing beats. I had the wingspan to be a bassist, but I always ended up back playing rhythm guitar or fucking around on the drums. I have no idea how to read music. I can copy things by ear with time practice thanks to Daen.
As good as I ever got:
Kick Your Momma - FIAJ
Band Names of incarnations I was associated with/in:
A Time For Pudding
A Band Called Plebe
Freak In A Jar
Kaotik Revolution
Flaming Diaper Rash
Fleshsaw
You get the picture.
Now the issue is most of the local girls really hate me. Rumors start, I’m a slut, all these typical things. I punch out the other big “band” girl in the scene when she brags about that she fucked my boyfriend first. The douchebag that took my virginity is the drummer in her band, so we are enemies from the start.
The guy I date from 16 and up is a pretty popular drummer in town and I’m finally started to be taken seriously as his band has quite a following. I’m finally playing with musicians that have an idea what they are doing and we sound GOOD. We record on his eight track every weekend. I learn how to play drums.
Everyone is forced to take me seriously through association. The older men stop trying to get in my pants when they realize Brent and I are actually serious (I have a tiny diamond chip on my left hand at this point) and I start to make connections. The guy that sells me strings connects me with a screenprinter. I get snuck in through the back doors of the 21 and up clubs when he plays, the bouncers know me. I show up looking much older, dripping with bravado and a flask in my leather jacket and no one questions why I’m there. I might be a dork at school but who cares when I’m out watching bands until 3am at the bar?
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| Does this girl look 16 to you? |
My mom kicks me out at seventeen, she’s been living with my now-stepdad anyway and leaving me at home alone. I move in with Brent. The positives are he’s super anti-drug, so everything but the booze goes out the window, and that is cut down a great deal. His parents pressure us to get married, so one week after my eighteenth birthday that’s exactly what I do since my mother has disowned me.
This is how I completely fuck up my life for a number of years.
I gave up a scholarship for Journalism at a college in Minneapolis to stay and play punk rock with my baby husband Brent. Sigh. My plan prior to meeting him was to write for Alternative Press and travel the world. That went up in flames. We are driving around town in a brown Pinto station wagon with a porthole window and a pink stripe on the side because it fits all his drums. I’m pissed we can’t find a hearse but until the engine blows its infamous around town.
A month or so after I’m living in our basement apartment, sleeping on an air mattress with approximately 4000 spiders and a bunch of records, we receive news that the club we all go to and play at, the Crazy Horse, is closing down due to the rent hike and low sales. This place is the absolute center of our lives, our social circle, and I’m the only one ballsy enough to say - “So what if we just did it?”
My barely eighteen year old ass hauls Brent into the landlord’s office and I pitch the building’s owner my ideas. I ask him to lower the rent and give him 5% of the door, point out that I’ve already talked to the current owner and he’s willing to sell me the sound system, board, and lights in 6 payments because he just wants out. The old man types up a lease for us. Brent is stunned.
We had no insurance. I don’t even know what liability insurance is let alone how to get it. We were beyond lucky no one ever got seriously hurt and sued us. There were plenty of fights. I mean, it was a punk club.
We gather our friends, crank up the sound system, our bands play all weekend as we take turns painting, remodeling, building a better stage and drum riser. We get rid of the “hippy” bands that we think suck and rent out the stage for practice space for local bands to help make ends meet. We sell out almost every weekend. Word spreads. Every promoter and manager in the universe is calling to have their bands play here because we aren’t interested in ripping them off - they got a flat 40% of the door sales, period. We are able to have a full calendar geared towards our curated tastes.
The Fire Marshall knows the building owner, increases our occupancy and looks the other way on weekends if it is a big show. The local police drive by regularly but seem pleased that all the local color is centered around our block and not erupting elsewhere as in the past. We let the kids that are too broke to pay the cover inside if they agree to help us clean up after the show. One sweet big kid volunteers to be our back door bouncer and we pay him in food and space for his band to practice. He just is thrilled to meet his favorite bands.
I make friends with the locksmith next door and pay for their window when some dumbass throws a rock through it. The uniform company down the road lets us dumpster dive for their thrown away uniforms. We silkscreen them in limited edition batches with show fliers on them and sell them for $5-10 to help keep the bills paid. What, you think Hot Topic invented work shirts with random names on the pocket? Nah, that was 90s DIY at its finest. We buy candy bars, sodas, waters and mark them up a bit to raise funds. It’s more of a cooperative than a nightclub.
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| Singer Christy from KR, our friend Luci and me in a BIPC shirt |
Maximum Rocknroll calls me to do a story on the renewed all-punk Crazy Horse and what we’re doing. I’m interviewed for the piece (I did the booking and marketing, Brent ran the sound and lights) and I’m noted as “Brent and his wife.” They never print my letter to the editor eviscerating them for their sexism and reminding them I have a name.
Here's a video from the time about the last show of Freak in a Jar that we recorded in 1996. I didn't play on this set (it was just the three OG members, those of us that were in and out of the group sat it out), but I'm in the video a few times, talking about missing the pit etc. Ha ha.
Farewell Freak In a Jar - 1996
We rent the fabled apartment upstairs also and it’s blue shag carpet becomes the center of the Boise punk rock scene for almost a year. We throw after parties on the roof. We manage to feed ourselves while having a place to invite our favorite bands to play and crash. This is how I came to operate the Crazy Horse from 1995-1997.
These are the stories, how I remember them.
