Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

Fliers went up for Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, and Mecca Normal. The three bands were coming to play at the Showoff Gallery in downtown Bellingham. I had been listening to Heavens to Betsy every day. They had a six-song cassette that intrigued me in a way nothing before had. It was a combination of Corin Tucker’s voice and the lyrics. The beautiful parts were edged in disgrace and disgust; it bordered right on ugly the whole time. The singing was louder than it needed to be—did she even need a mic? The music was rudimentary, the drums like an uneven stagger, a determined but ungraceful late-night walk home, the guitar or bass playing just a pattern that repeated until it was an incision—but it was the voice that really cut through. The voice asked to be listened to but it did not beg or plead, it dared and challenged, it confronted but needed no reply from the listener. Any sadness was also defiant: it was not the wail of mourning but of murder. And there was so much I wanted to destroy.

An important person shows up here, is named for the first time in the book.