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All that made me a punk girl … and still does
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We caught the punk thing when it spread to small-town England. We formed bands, promoted gigs and eventually learned how to play. By then, punk had moved on so we made tunes with our 1990s indie-pop bands Popinjays and Po!
Years later, we met up and talked about how important the first wave of punk had been for us as young girls. So many women had been involved in punk as musicians, influencers, designers, photographers, managers and they made us believe that making music was a fun and very cool thing to do.
In 2018, we started punkgirldiaries.com as a blog. In 2020, we made printed zines and T-Shirts to sell worldwide. We are much older but still punkgirls.
Stuff you can buy for more punkgirldiaries fun!
Three Chord Wonder T-Shirt
Great gift for an aspiring guitarist or a long-term trier
Blogzine 2
40 colourful pages, packed with interviews
Part Time Punk T-Shirt
Take off the uniform, the lanyard, the suit and be a PTP
The blog was just the start…. now Vim and Lene have been doing exclusive interviews with punk girls of all ages, finding weird 1970s pictures and writing new pages for their perfectly-formed and lavishly decorated square zine. Each one is limited edition and individually numbered. They also hand print quality T-Shirts with their own punkgirldiaries 1970s punk references.
Recent blogposts from punkgirldiaries
Punkgirldiaries – Here’s Blogzine 2
In designing the zine, we wanted to make it a riot of colour, with the same scattergun effect you see in old children’s annuals or ’70s zines but with the benefit of modern printing .
Venus and the Razorblades
While punk rock gave many aspiring musicians and energetic teenagers the jolt they needed to get out there and form their own bands, it also signalled to the more cynical or experienced people like Kim a “gap in the market” to be filled by whatever approximate Franken-bands they could cobble together.
Stand Up Girl Drummers!
Moe Tucker’s preferred style was to use a percussion beater or mallet in her right hand and a normal wooden drum stick in her left hand. By not using the feet to stomp on a bass pedal or a pair of hi-hats, the stand-up drummer keeps the beat much simpler.
Punk Covers #4 The Raincoats Lola
In contrast with the democratic, happy-go-lucky, bish-bash-bosh Raincoats, the original version of ‘Lola’ was released by The Kinks in the summer of 1970 accompanied by in-fighting, grabs for songwriting credit and recording sessions which dragged on well over a month for just that one song.
Our most popular posts
Nora Forster
‘Now there’s a saucy girl,’ he grins. ‘It’s love, you know. I’ve always loved that woman. And she knows it”.
Tina Weymouth – Dealing With a Difficult Man
There has been a lot of discussion about Talking Heads’ lead vocalist David Byrne’s autism/Asberger’s. We don’t want to drone on about David Byrne, but the point is to examine Tina Weymouth’s role.
Kay Carroll – 27.12.48. – 06.06.20.
Lots of the tributes to Kay involve the word ‘formidable’, so you’ll probably be able to gather how, er, formidable Kay was.
Kids In America
Peaking at number 2 in the UK charts, Kids in America somehow hit the perfect sweet spot between “family friendly” and “new wave”. Yes, the WASP was good, and the catchy chorus with the “Whooaa’s” and even a surprising namecheck for “east california”, but what really makes the single really special is Kim’s utterly deadpan delivery.