If I’m talking to the right people, I can score some “I was there” points by bringing up the time in grad school—probably 1995 or early ’96—when I saw Bikini Kill at a roller rink in Springfield, Oregon. The bands played in one corner of the rink, and to get out there and watch them you had to put on skates. (Kathleen Hanna wore hers for Bikini Kill’s entire set.) Lots of people skated laps the whole time, so that they could only see the band when they were headed in the right direction. This was also an early show for the Thrones, the solo project founded in ’94 by former Melvins bassist Joe Preston; while the DJ played between sets, I spotted him doing the “YMCA” dance in rental skates and a blue gas-station jumpsuit.
- Courtesy the artist
- The Star Pimp lineup on Treasure Trail and Seraphim 280Z: drummer Jamie Spidle, bassist Tom Flynn, guitarist Eric Grotke, and singer Marcelle Poulos
“We wrote all the songs together by improvising until something sounded good,” said Flynn in a 2001 interview. He’d replaced the band’s original bass player in ’91, about a year into their existence. “We’d have to endure a lot of endless awful meandering trying to find some music that worked. I’m talking practice after practice of just garbage, usually ending with someone walking out in disgust.” Star Pimp managed to wring three great records out of themselves this way before dissolving after a U.S. tour in 1997: the Treasure Trail EP (1992) and two full-length albums, Seraphim 280Z (1994) and Docudrama (1996). Flynn released the first two on his own label, Boner Records, and Docudrama came out on Kill Rock Stars.
Since the breakup of Star Pimp, Grotke has played in a Smiths cover band called the Nguyens and started an oddball electronic project called the Shit Matrix (among other things). At the time of Flynn’s 2001 interview, he’d gotten into filmmaking, and Poulos was teaching third grade. Flynn has also performed live with the regrouped Fang at least once in the past few years.
