kim gordon

She will be donating her proceeds from the sale to The Downtown Women’s Center.

In the 1990s, a pro-choice benefit album Choice: The Freedom Remix was set to feature an all-star cast. Years later, the album still hasn’t been fully released, but is as relevant as ever.

In 1991, Anita Hill testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee about being the target of sexual harassment from African-American judge Clarence Thomas at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. The hearings were televised, and Hill’s lurid testimony sent bolts of shock and disgust across an America yet to become completely tabloidized. When this all-white, all-male committee […]

September 1963: A young R&B combo called the Rolling Stones are rehearsing, preparing for a recording session. Their manager, former Beatles publicist Andrew Loog Oldham, was tearing his hair out. They were about to record their second single, a follow-up to their modestly successful remake of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.” But they had one problem: […]

Among all the music that the ‘90s brought us, there’s one common denominator—kick-ass women vocalists. From the emergence of grunge to the golden age of hip-hop settling in its place, the ‘90s proved to be a decade where artists expressed the exasperations of womanhood with all of their might. As women lead singers began to […]

Kathleen Hanna led the charge of the riot grrrl movement and helmed pioneering bands, including Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and the Julie Ruin. Aside from being a trailblazer in the music community, she has also been a formidable political activist for over 30 years, taking a strident public stance against sexism, homophobia, transphobia and white […]

When searching a bookstore for music memoirs, it’s likely that the shelves are packed with men such as Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash and Keith Richards. While it may seem that there are fewer books written by or about women musicians, they are growing in numbers. Women in the music industry refuse to be silenced, and, […]

We may be taught not to judge books by their covers, but are we always so kind to albums? In a sea of iconic cover art designed by prolific artists, the importance of release presentation can’t be understated. So, naturally, when we see musicians taking on the daunting task of designing the artwork themselves, we […]

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

At this point, Dr. Martens—Docs, DMs, whatever you want to call them—have been around for 74 years. And, for almost all of that time, in one way or another, they’ve been inextricably entwined with alternative music—and, of course, the subcultures which that music has spawned. Transcending their origins as factory-safe work boots, over the course […]

As some of our favorite pop-punk bands continue to show us, we have a lot to thank 1990s alternative music for. Not only did the mainstream explosion set the foundations for the genre collective as we know it, but it put quite a number of women on the forefront. While the gender distribution across the alternative genre […]

As the longest-running animated television show in history, The Simpsons has been around for the rise and fall of grunge, the emergence of pop punk and countless other shifts in the music world. Throughout the past 31 years, The Simpsons has landed some of music’s most successful artists as guest stars. While the fan-proclaimed “golden […]

These 10 albums represent SST Records’ greatest achievements. Greg Ginn began Solid State Tuners at age 12 as a mail-order electronics business still thriving in his early adulthood. In 1978, when pioneering California indie label Bomp! Records dragged its heels releasing Nervous Breakdown, the debut EP from his punk band Black Flag, Ginn figured he […]

There was a time when the “supergroup” was super obvious. When the world saw legendary axman Ted Nugent making his guitar squeal with the guy from Night Ranger to his right and a guy from Styx to his left, we all knew there was something special afoot. (Classic-rock lovers will recognize this ’80s band to […]

Since the inception of the alternative music scene, men have been at the forefront. Historically, they have determined who can participate and are allowed in their spaces, creating a “by men, for men” mentality. As a result, the “boys’ club” of the indie, punk and the alternative underground emerged. Since then, women have had to […]