Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

I started making my way out of the suburbs and into Seattle on the weekends. Some of the shows we saw were at big venues, like the Moore or the Paramount Theatre: the Church, the Ramones, Sonic Youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain. But most of the time, we’d go to smaller places like the Party Hall or the OK Hotel, and we’d see Northwest-based bands like Treepeople, Kill Sybil, Hammerbox, Engine Kid, Aspirin Feast, Galleons Lap, Christ on a Crutch, and Positive Greed. Here I could get close to the players themselves. I could see how the drums worked with the guitars and bass, I could watch fingers move along the frets and feet stomp down on effects pedals, I saw the set lists taped to the floor, and sometimes I was close enough to see the amp or pickup settings. I observed the nature of the bands, their internal interactions, their relationships to one another, as much as I listened. It seems obvious, but it was the first time I realized that music was playable, not just performable—that it had a process and a seed, a beginning, middle, and end.