SPITBOY: Smash It Fucking Dead!

To begin this series of articles about independence in music, and with respect to International Women's Day and the hell raised by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory garment workers, feminists, lesbians and agitators of the world, I wanted to use this space, on this day, to speak in detail about the effect that music has had on on my life. Originally, I wanted to post a link to a smattering of sites, dealing with records that I find genuinely engaging (Spitboy first among them) so you (the perpetually inquisitive reader of International Women's Day and independent music-related material) could read from a variety of sources and draw your own conclusions. I was disappointed to see that no one has commemorated Spitboy with any diligence. Just a few sad pages, recycling the same information and photos. Shame on you, the Internet, for having millions of pages, none worthy of mentioning. And shame on you, these United States, for not having the same good sense as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan in making International Women's Day an official holiday. And by holiday I mean something with substance, not some "0% APR! No Money Down!" bullshit. So rather than having the luxury of drawing your own, the conclusions I've drawn will have to suffice.

Spitboy was a hardcore punk band formed by four women in the California bay area: Karin Loraine Gembus (guitar, vocals), Adrienne Melanie Droogas (vocals), Todd Michelle Christine Gonzales (drums, vocals) and Paula Gembus (bass, vocals). Paula left the band in 1994, at which time Dominique Diana Davison joined (bass, vocals). The band was contemporaries of fellow Bay Area punk bands Green Day, Rancid, and Neurosis, among others. Between 1991 and 1995, the band released five records.

For the record completist collector, a discography with related notes: Spitboy (Lookout Records, 1992) 3 song 7-inch. Recorded at Sound and Vision (San Francisco) and Dancing Dog (Emeryville) by Kevin Army in November, 1991. "The Threat" "Sexism Impressed" "Ultimate Violations" True Self Revealed (Ebullition Records, 1993) 8 song 12-inch. Recorded at Olde West (San Francisco) by Kevin Army. "In Your Face" "Isolation Burns" "Right" "Moral Casualty" "In Tradition" "Violent Tongue" "Motivated By Fear" "True Self" Mi Cuerpo Es Mio (Allied Recordings, 1994) 3 song 7-inch (last record with Paula). Recorded at Sound & Vision (San Francisco) by Billy Anderson in January 1994. "Removal" "Word Problem" "Touch" Rasana (Ebullition Records, 1995) 3 song 7-inch (first record with Dominique). Recorded at Dancing Dog (Emeryville) by Billy Anderson in August 1994. "Unknown" "Blue" "All Grown Up" Split-LP with Los Crudos (Ebullition Records, 1995) 6-song split 12". First run was letterpress silver and black ink on chipboard cover with newspaper booklet. Recorded and mixed by Steve Albini on January 20, 1995. Todd's vocals recorded on January 28, 1995 in San Francisco by Bernd. "What Are Little Girls Are Made Of?" "Emaciation" "You And Me And The Art Of Being A Woman" "Fences" "Wizened" "6 Ft. Down"

For the onomastic-minded, the name Spitboy comes from the native Alaskan legend of Copper Woman:

She is alone, isolated, with no companions and no one to talk to on an island she has taken as her home. Her feelings of aloneness and loneliness are overwhelming and she begins to cry. Out of her comes tears, saliva, snot, mucus, sweats natural body fluids. Ashamed by what her body has produced and by her state of helplessness, she tries to hide these elements by burying them. She looks imploringly to her gods, who tell her not to be disgusted by the natural secretions of the body. They explain to her the innate beauty of her body's workings and that these fluids are part of her body and part of her existence. With the newfound power that comes out of a belief in her body's creations, she is no longer ashamed by what she alone has made. She proudly saves these elements and out of them life is created in the form of a boy. The boy that is formed is the Spitboy.

I first discovered Spitboy, of all places, on a CMJ New Music Monthly compilation. If you don't know, CMJ is an entertainment industry tastemaker company that specializes in jettisoning "nobody" bands into the spotlight, helping them to be "discovered." It was an odd inclusion, as Spitboy didn't strike me as a band looking to be "discovered" like the other tepid acts on the CD. (Dominique told me later that Spitboy was included against their wishes.) The song on the compilation, "Removal," was a forceful roar that set itself apart from the other twenty tracks. That one song was all it took to convince me that this was a band worthy of attention.

It wasn't long before I attended a Spitboy show and saw these four women bring furor to show-goers. Their music is similar in sound to many other hardcore bands: distorted guitars, screaming, fast tempi. What's different about Spitboy, what sets them apart from their hardcore compeers, is their agenda (or, should I say, the very fact that they have an agenda). By the time I heard of Spitboy, 1994, I had largely abandoned hardcore. The movement was overrun with meatheads who needed nothing more than to "get some fucking aggression out." Violence: a novelty in the hardcore scene, yet one that never seems to get old. At its origin, hardcore was a tempestuous reaction to everyday life (see Minor Threat, Crucifucks, The Minutemen, Dead Kennedy's, MDC, Discharge). A movement fighting against conventions; smart, free-thinking genuinely frustrated punks screaming for a change in politics, behavior, morals, practices, fighting to change the norm. This offshoot of punk was soon reduced to a formulaic (chunka-chunka RARRRR!) breeding ground for brutes that valued violence over substance.

Full disclosure (while I did play one season of high school basketball--I had the height, but lacked interest--I don't think I could be lumped into the lunkhead jock mentality so rampant in the hardcore scene. And while I am against the violence, I will admit to participating in it): I slamdanced for my first (and last) time in the late '80s at a Preachers That Lie show in some shitty little hall in the middle of nowhere. I went with a few older guys, and I had just bought a pair of steel-toed combat boots (that was really something back then!), so I was ripe for acting stupid. I ran around the pit behind my friends a few times, both catching and throwing punches, until I tripped over someone and smashed into a girl standing on the outskirts of the maelstrom. That was it; run around, push, shove, fall, repeat if necessary. I was flush with adrenalin and could hardly feel all the scrapes and lumps. As soon as the euphoria faded, I realized I liked slamdancing as much as I liked fighting. That is to say, not at all. And contrary to what that big guy in Another State of Mind told me, the "dance" wasn't about camaraderie where your buddy is there to pick you up. It was aggressively antagonistic--violence begets violence. There was nothing really punk rock about it.

The Spitboy oeuvre (c. 1991, "the year that punk broke") fell in the laps of the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" generation. Nirvana's Nevermind was a flashlight for the kids, a beacon revealing the underground...if only the "mosh" parts. As I've said, Spitboy was similar in sound to other hardcore bands, but that's where the similarities ended. To say they were a feminist or political band would be an over-simplification. The band was well-read, thoughtful, articulate, and determined. Their records, besides serving as medium to contain their sound, doubled as pamphlets for their messages, with each member discussing her personal politics and beliefs, with their lyrics--the focal point--translated into several languages. The band members were active in their community, their community of other women, of rape victims, of conscious consumers, of punk rockers, of political activists, of "minorities." Speaking generally, the hardcore scene, in its wisdom, greeted this sagacity with catcalls and jeers. The majority of the comments I heard about the band were either, 1) how cute they were or 2) what "man-haters" they were (as evidenced by the Internet today).

Spitboy was active during the same time, and working within a similar framework, as the Riot Grrrl movement (see Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Emily's Sassy Lime, Huggy Bear), yet the band didn't align themselves with Riot Grrrl. Perhaps having seen the media-driven misconceptions and subsequent aftermath of "Grunge" (and, subsequently, Riot Grrrl), Spitboy realized the importance of their individuality. There is something to be said for the subtle distinction between sharing similarities and avowing subscription. By not participating in the Rah! Rah!-ness of Riot Grrrl, bouncing around like Belinda Carlisle in their underwear (not that there's anything wrong with The Go-Go's, or bouncing around in your underwear, but you see how it becomes a thing, right?), Spitboy was largely missed by the focused girl power frenzy of the era--a planned tactic, I assume. It is my belief, and my belief alone (after all, it's Me writing this damn thing, since You didn't--or were too busy writing other shit--so My belief is gonna have to suffice) that Spitboy knew, intuitively, that such allegiance and behavior in accordance with other movements, while empowering, would ultimately dilute their own voice.

There is a knowledge, a kind of insider's insight, gained from watching an outsider's failure to describe a "movement" on paper, and this knowledge tells us the "movement" cannot be got at with understatement. Quite the opposite, in fact. Defining the "movement" has turned into its own industry, but it isn't producing very much (unless you're counting reams). Construct an understatement for the movement and it turns, it matures, into a lie. An artistic lie, maybe, and sometimes, even, a delicious lie, but a lie.

Seeing Spitboy perform live was often unsettling. As a band, their performances blazed fierce and bright--one in a million, like a fireworks show, never to be seen again. They made it clear that being women didn't interfere with fully kicking ass. There were songs when all (or most) of the band would sing together, or sing in call-and-response. Roaring, unintelligible at times, all-at-once ferociousness that made your insides riot. The temperature would literally climb during a song, and you wouldn't even notice you were dripping in sweat until it was over. They could really fucking play. During shows the band was not shy about discussing the subjects in their music, violence against women, equal rights, politics, globalization, independence, etc., and this is where it generally got unsettling.

Public response to Spitboy was often hot and never tepid. In general, audience members were divided into two, curiously restive camps: those who held that Spitboy were a bunch of insufferably "superior" femi-nazis, and those who held they were bona-fide goddesses. The latter would usually pump their fists, clap and cheer, and hang around the merchandise table after the show looking to support the band or give a hospitable hug. The former, it never failed, and usually of the aforementioned jock asshole variety, would have something terribly dimwitted to say during the between-song moments. Typically (predictably), it was "shut up, bitch!" The band response, the way they dealt with the spectacle, was to acknowledge.

I suppose, by reading a description of this rather than being there, it sounds like the Fugazi Treatment often blamed as the antithesis to a punk show. But Spitboy's issues were much uglier than "hey, don't dance like that." Their situation--a small "minority" force relative to the meathead contingency--as outsiders compartmentalized their subject matter, making them a women's issues band. Limiting, I suspect, but rather than bemoaning the limitation, they were explosive and engaging. Their music was a violent pandemonium that ran face-first into the Susan Faludi but had none of the Elizabeth Wurtzel. That is to say, rather than adopt the standard hardcore mentality ("You talkin' to me, motherfucker?"), they were extremely vulnerable in their violence. If only the rest of the hardcore scene could have been this way.

If a heckler interrupted the band, he would be invited on stage, or given a microphone, and asked to voice his complaint for the entire audience to hear. This simple strategy--one that no doubt made everyone uncomfortable, if even for just a second--revealed the vulnerability of the band. Seeing them perform, amidst the screaming and distortion, one didn't get a real sense of the risk involved. But once the show was stopped, and Mr. Angry was given a voice, what they were yelling about, all the commotion, "the point," was obvious, and it was up to you (the listener/audience member) to decide which side you were on.

Every time it happened, my initial reaction (hearing the heckler from the crowd) would be the want to hit him--knowing I wouldn't. By the time it was over (the onstage exchange sometimes went on well past the point of embarrassment), the whole place would be filled with this sinking disgust for him (or It? or Everything?). There it was, all out in the open. The fact that it only takes one lout to make everyone realize what's at stake is still true today. After being given the stage, a platform on which to make his case, the guy would usually be left mumbling, over-apologizing (in the most backhanded way), and uncomfortably slink off stage.

A few of my guy friends couldn't really get behind Spitboy. "It sounds like they hate me" was the customary explanation. I can't blame them, and I certainly couldn't submerge myself in a genre of this music, but it is exactly that feeling of hate that made me enjoy them so much: the violence, all of them screaming at once, the mayhem, the tension throughout the audience, the invitations to bring the hecklers on stage, and the resulting embarrassment (read: shame).

The between-song banter--which I should mention was often terribly personal--had the end effect of making my skin crawl. It could be hard to stand still at their shows. Not that I'd be motivated to dance, but that I'd be so uncomfortable. To stand packed in a sweaty warehouse amidst a hundred or so punkers you don't know while the woman on stage talks about being molested as some asshole is yelling "shut up bitch!" at her. Their music, and their shows, are unsettling, and they make me think about a lot of things; that, to me, is the greatest art.

While I don't really give a shit what people think of me and have no problem revealing uncomfortable truths about myself (being molested, and beaten, listening to Whitney Houston as a teenager, etc.), there is certainly no way I have the mettle to put myself against that impenetrable force of lunkheadedness. To stand, outnumbered, against a boy's club archetype, admitting to being a victim of its ugliest proponents, while he stands there leering at you. And if that's not dreadful enough, to share your spotlight and let yourself be publicly ridiculed by him. I liken Spitboy in the hardcore arena to a passed-out-drunk teenage girl at a frat party; there is no hope for her escaping unscarred. So perilous, this situation, yet she not only survives, but she manages to show you something you've never seen before. She opens in you some hidden chamber of compassion whose door was previously stuck. Spitboy, like the immortal Phoenix, emerges unfailingly from the ashes of sexist everyday distraction, rising defiantly on wings of vitriol and amber, putting to shame the musty compromises that provide the glue with which the existing misogyny adheres to so many passing thoughts. Dispelling the mirage of futility, traversing the mirror of fatality, she is resolved to stop at nothing. After being wounded by a foe, her tears, too, can have a healing effect.

Did Spitboy bring too much collegiate curricula to the punk club? Did they come off as priggish? Were they an "issues" band? Pretentious? Arguably. If so, I'll take their pretension over the lunkheadedness any day. I got more out of seeing a few young women hanging around the stage after a Spitboy show, nervously talking with the band members, than I ever did seeing two tough guys being pulled off one another after a fight at damn near every other hardcore show I ever attended.

Not to mention Spitboy was careful to explain themselves (perhaps forecasting the backlash) in their records. Reading their inserts, the band members, both individually and collectively, make it clear that 1) they don't hate men; 2) they support egalitarianism over separatism; 3) they're willing to listen to others; and 4) they're against violence. I admire a well-thought-out album, chock-full of information and ideas. Sure, it can be conspicuous, leaving little to the imagination, but there are plenty of thoughtless, unfocused, "who gives a shit" records to go around, which is part of what makes Spitboy so refreshing. And more than admiring their music, I can admire them as people.

I had the pleasure of briefly making acquaintance with Dominique and Todd, through my girlfriend at the time, and I can vouch that they were as dedicated in their personal lives as they were on record. Dominique was studying architecture with the intent to design low-income housing, while Todd was teaching kindergarten, determined to be a positive influence on the youth, to fight for the less fortunate in the face of the ugliness and its awesome power. When I think of what they have done for society compared to my own contributions, I am humbled.

Spitboy remained independent through their career, shunning the advances of the "industry" and its tastemakers, choosing to release their records on independent labels instead of going the way of so many of their contemporaries and getting "discovered." Their song "Fences" offers a succinct perspective on the time, not to mention a witty jab at Dave Markey's 1991: The Year Punk Broke.

By way of a useless aside (not as much a statement of my undying fandom--though a four thousand word "mention" of a band may lead one to believe otherwise--as a comment on my careless fashion sense--which is to say that I have no fashion sense; rather, a utilitarian view of comfortable clothes; when I find something that fits, I see no good reason to take it off): Throughout most of the mid-90s, I could be seen sporting a Spitboy shirt. A shirt that fit me so comfortably that I wore it more like a uniform (requirement) than a shirt (leisure), until it finally served more as an eyesore than a garment. The band had bought a bunch of second-hand shirts and silk-screened a trio of archetypal tough guys (Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, Death Wish-ing Charles Bronson and John Wayne aka "The Duke"), all with guns, along with the phrase: THESE ARE YOUR HEROES - THEY ARE NOT MINE. Whatever, it was a punk shirt. The funny part, after digging through the reclaimed thrift shirts at their merchandise table, the only shirt I found that could fit me (I am well over 6 feet) was some sponsored summer camp shirt for high school girls that said--in huge letters--on the front, "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A CHEERLEADER." The shirt often provoked random questions from folks I didn't know.

Spitboy disbanded, if I'm not mistaken, when Adrienne move to the east coast. The remaining women, Todd, Dominique and Karin, stayed together as Instant Girl, who released an 11-song album called Post-Coital in 1996. (Recorded in May of 1996 by Frank Francisco [aka Steve Albini] in Chicago. Allied Recordings #75). Instant Girl not only maintained the tenets of Spitboy, but improved on them, playing with as much force--if not more--as a trio than they did as a quartet.

Instant Girl disbanded, I believe, when Karin left to travel South America. [it's been a decade, please correct me if I'm wrong.] Dominique and Todd formed Hate Plate, an acoustic duo where Dominque played cello and Todd played guitar. I know Hate Plate recorded a few songs (because the recording was done by my roommate Rahsaan [from Sleeper Waves] in an abandoned house I was living in at the time), but I don't know if they were ever released. I attended a few memorable Hate Plate shows, one in a backyard in Oakland where they shared the bill with Bonfire Madigan. The other in a room of some random building in Oakland where they played with Kevin Army (it was great to see him perform after seeing him credited as an engineer on so many records I loved). Generally speaking, Hate Plate didn't suffer the same grotesque resistance that Spitboy and Instant Girl did. Due in large part to the fact that they played with other non-hardcore types, and what macho asshole wants to sit on a floor and listen to acoustic music? Seeing Hate Plate was more fun (if less unsettling) as it afforded a larger spectrum of punks to attend. Punks, like me, who may have abandoned the hardcore arena. You were likely to see a good deal of weirdos, butch dykes, writers, parents, comic book collectors as well as us quiet types at a Hate Plate show.

Dominique moved to the east coast, to attend graduate school (if I'm not mistaken), and so ended Hate Plate, as well as the reign these five women had on the independent music scene of the California Bay Area and beyond.

As a postscript, if you've enjoyed the songs in this article, may I recommend Threnody Ensemble, a chamber group that Dominique plays with. Adrienne has worked with Aus-Rotten as well as the Melvins (among others). Rahsaan informed me recently that he bumped into Todd at the grocery store, and she still lives in the Bay Area.

In short, Salut, Spitboy. Salut for being such a whirlwind of violence, the kind of violence that leaves no one hurt, but everyone changed. Vulnerable violence. For being something for young women to grab on to, embrace, and identify with. For offering those unfortunate young women--those who have been the victim of hate and violence--resources and a community. And for not making your movement exclusive of men like me, as I learned a lot from participating. Salut!

Never Underestimate The Power of A Cheerleader,
--Bambouche of the Vanguard Squad