Share Your Bikini Kill Story

Bikini Kill has set up an official archive online

We are collecting stories of how people got into the band/shows they saw/memories/testimonials etc.

It would be awesome if you wanted to contribute. It doesn’t have to be fancy or well-worded, we’d just like you to leave a record of your experience and get an idea of what Bikini Kill means to you. Maybe it’s your reaction to a song we wrote, something weird that happened at one of our shows, a personal anecdote or just WHATEVER. Send yr story to bkillarchive@gmail.com and we will post it or just leave a comment somewhere on the site. You can also send us images to post.

Please help us spread the word. To document the history (or herstory) of the band it is necessary to include an oral history from “the fans”. We say fans for lack of a better word—a more expansive term would be inclusive of friends, peers, comrades, co-conspirators and imply participation rather than an audience separate from the band—which is what we hope to achieve with this interactive approach.

Also, if you have video/film footage of the band, please contact us, Thanks!

Read this Bikini Kill story by M'Lady's own Brett Lyman:

I saw Bikini Kill on October 13, 1994, in Dayton, Ohio. I didn’t live there, and was in fact about six hours away in Detroit, but because of a fairly disastrous previous engagement in Detroit they seemed destined never to return, and Dayton was close as they were gonna get on that particular tour. I was 17 and constantly in trouble, teenage runaway style, no fixed address, and shame-facedly back at my parents’ house for that month, all strings attached. I was not allowed to go to punk shows when I was younger (nice reverse psychology, Mom and Dad) and had to run away every time I wanted to. This show was no exception. I hitched a ride with my friends Jef, Becky, and Carrie, in Jef’s incredibly fucked up 1980s Detroit behemoth car, and he insisted on listening to Shellac on repeat, and only dining at Denny’s.

The show was at this dump ironically called the “Palace Club”. It was in a strip mall, next to like a dry cleaners or something, I forget. There were four bands on the bill: BK, Team Dresch, and two incredibly shitty emo hardcore extremely damaged groups that I forget, though I vividly remember wanting to throw up while they were playing. Then Team Dresch came on, presented a “Free to Fight” self-defense course (most of which is a blur, though I do recall one of the scenarios featuring an assailant that was screaming “I’ll teach you to love Jesus!”), then threw down with a ferocity that I’d never seen before. BK then played, and I’ll spare you a bunch of florid nonsense and just say that they were and are the best group I’ve ever seen in concert, and it was worth every bit of hassle I had to go through when I got home and found out the cops were looking for me and I was no longer welcome in my parents’ home. I remember that they played a lotta songs from “Pussy Whipped” they were wearing these matching red jackets before the show, ‘cept for Bill who was wearing like a trench coat maybe? I always wondered what it was like to see the Misfits or Minor Threat or the Pretty Things in 1964 but I think that actually it was probably that good, you know? I went back to Michigan, stayed in trouble, and never ever forgot what that feeling was like. The end.