Raised Fist Review: Punk Music

Who among us who #1 goes to see bands, and #2 has the physical ability, has never raised a fist at any show ever? Rock. The. Fuck. On. Right??!! These raised fists show up in punk flyers from the 90’s and GUESS WHAT: the 90’s are back, y’all.

20140609_positiveforcePositive Force | http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/51

Positive Force was a punk organizing group in DC in the 1990s. They put on all-ages shows, made educational zines and pamphlets about reproductive rights, pro-choice issues, feminist concerns, and , and they put on or worked on:

  • Resist the Supreme Court, July 25, 1992 or 1993; featuring punk bands Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and Egg & Dudley
  • Women’s Festival 1993; featuring punk bands Lois, Slant 6, Tiger Trap, Tribe 8, WOD and BurmaJam.
  • “Fight For Your Right to Choose Before It’s Too Late,” featuring punk bands Fugazi, Scrawl, and Bikini Kill on April 3-4, 1993 and a March for Women’s Lives April 5, 1993. Put on with Rock for Choice and Gussound.

[Thanks to the Interference Archive for collecting these flyers].

 

tribe8Assimilate My Fist, Tribe8 Flyer | http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/52

This image says “Assimilate My Fist” and has the classic mirror-of-Venus raised fist wielding a guitar. The guitar reads Tribe8, a rather notorious dyke punk band out of San Francisco in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In the show poster which also featuers this image, the other bands named  are Cheesecake and Sunspring. Further text is: Tools Collective presents A benefit for the Asian Task Force on Domestic Violence. Tools Collective and this event were in Boston in the early 1990s. The show itself is at Washburn Hall on Sunday June 13.

This poster has re-emerged thanks to Astria Suparak’s Alien She, a superb curatorial riot grrrl punksplosion. I encountered it on display on the flyer wall as part of that show [http://millergallery.cfa.cmu.edu/exhibitions/alienshe/], at CMU in the Fall of 2013.

Zinecore-metadataxxZINECORExx Metadata logo | http://www.raisedfist.femmetech.org/admin/items/show/50

This image was created by Milo of QZAP, the queer zine archive project.

The most notable visual element of this project’s icon is it’s combination of a raised fist with the Hardcore/Straightedge “X”, which contains letters on the four segments of negative space created by the letter X. This is spelled out as a/k/a hxc or sxe or xhardcorex, etc., and xxZINECORExx follows suit. According to Vief C. “some people will surround anything with x’s to signify its straight-edge-ness,” [http://viefcakes.com/about/words-and-names/] which is as clear a definition of where this originated as I can find.

This image is part of a large project to create a standardized metadata schema for the cataloging and archiving of zines. It’s a project that comes out of a collaboration between Milo Miller of QZAP, Jenna Freedman of the Barnard Zine Library, Eric Goldhagen of Openflows, and others in the Zine Libraries Interest Group. [http://zinelibraries.info/2012/07/28/xzinecorex-union-catalog-update].

For some visual background on the hxc See React Records: http://www.howsyouredge.com/features/2007_11_01_archive.php

Or just peep the general NYHC New York Hardcore symbol.

Gee Vaucher , “Your Country Needs You.” | http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/49

Punk/political artist Gee Vaucher’s “Your Country Needs You.” was originally released with the uncensored re-issue of The Crass’s album “The Feeding of the 5,000.”

Crush and Create logo

http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/54

Crush and Create is a queer hardcore label out of Stockholm, Sweden.

www.crushandcreate.se

Party Wizard Zero Skills Takin It Back event flyer

http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/53

Handcrafted from the finest paper cutouts in 2014, found on the Facebook of the Lost Well bar in Austin, TX. No more known.

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