Allison Wolfe Interviewed by John Davis Los Angeles, California June 15, 2017 0:00:00 to 0:38:33
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Allison Wolfe Interviewed by John Davis Los Angeles, California June 15, 2017 0:00:00 to 0:38:33 ________________________________________________________________________ 0:00:00 Davis: Today is June 15th, 2017. My name is John Davis. I’m the performing arts metadata archivist at the University of Maryland, speaking to Allison Wolfe. Wolfe: Are you sure it’s the 15th? Davis: Isn’t it? Yes, confirmed. Wolfe: What!? Davis: June 15th… Wolfe: OK. Davis: 2017. Wolfe: Here I am… Davis: Your plans for the rest of the day might have changed. Wolfe: [laugh] Davis: I’m doing research on fanzines, particularly D.C. fanzines. When I think of you and your connection to fanzines, I think of Girl Germs, which as far as I understand, you worked on before you moved to D.C. Is that correct? Wolfe: Yeah. I think the way I started doing fanzines was when I was living in Oregon—in Eugene, Oregon—that’s where I went to undergrad, at least for the first two years. So I went off there like 1989-’90. And I was there also the year ’90-’91. Something like that. For two years. And I met Molly Neuman in the dorms. She was my neighbor. And we later formed the band Bratmobile. But before we really had a band going, we actually started doing a fanzine. And even though I think we named the band Bratmobile as one of our earliest things, it just was a band in theory for a long time first. But we wanted to start being expressive about our opinions and having more of a voice for girls in music, or women in music, for ourselves, but also just for things that we were into. I grew up in Olympia, Washington, so I knew about this kind of K Records scene that was super DIY, and there were some people doing fanzines. Like Donna Dresch did this zine, Chainsaw. Tobi Vail did a zine—I think she was already doing it then—called Jigsaw, that was kind of coming off of Donna’s Chainsaw. They were friends and stuff. And so at some point when we started kind of agitating and doing stuff in Eugene, we would go up to Olympia a lot on weekends and stuff, and we would get together with Bikini Kill. Even though I don’t know if they were actually Bikini Kill yet. But anyways, with Tobi and Kathi and stuff, and hang out at the Martin Apartments. And Tobi really encouraged us to start doing a fanzine. So I think that was kind of our first mode of alternative expression. So we started this fanzine, Girl Germs. So it was really in Eugene, Oregon, that we started it. And each issue, we would have a different feature interview. And we had five issues total, I believe. So probably we did like two a year or something like that. Not many. [laugh] But anyways, whatever, it seemed like a lot to us. So I think in our first issue, we had an interview with Calamity Jane, which was an all-girl band from Olympia that went to Evergreen. 0:03:00 I don’t know. So we were doing that before going back to D.C. Now Molly grew up in Washington D.C. I grew up in Olympia. But I started spending spring breaks and sometimes Christmas and summers in D.C. And then in 1994, I actually moved to D.C. full- time, and I lived there until like 2007 or 2008. Davis: When you were first getting into punk, did fanzines play much of a role in that, or was it more of like the way punk came through the mainstream? How did it work for you? Did zines matter at the beginning? Wolfe: I don’t know, because I started going to punk shows in the mid- eighties, and I don’t remember seeing a lot of zines then. But I do remember I got The Rocket, which was the weekly Seattle city paper. And then one of my mom’s friends, or maybe my mom, got me a subscription to Rolling Stone. 2 And even though I was sort of like, “Eh, it’s kind of mainstream,” but I still—I remember I would clip from these magazines, and the weekly paper—The Rocket—constantly. So I would just find images and things I thought were cool, and I’d clip out the picture and sometimes the words, and I would tape it to my bedroom wall. And that was through high school. And it was insane. I wish I had taken better photos of it, because every single inch of my walls, my bedroom walls, in high school, was covered with an image that came from either Rolling Stone magazine or The Rocket, or maybe something else. Posters, flyers, things like that. And so it was pretty insane. And I remember people would come over sometimes and just study my walls for hours. Davis: [laugh] Wolfe: Stare at them. So I guess I kind of was really into this kind of clipping and collaging thing already, but just on my wall. And I guess also I was fortunate that I had bands like the Melvins playing, and Nirvana actually playing, when I was still in high school. And they were playing very small shows and house parties, things like that. There were also a lot of other fun kind of local bands. Like there was The Go Team and Beat Happening and there was a band called Lush, which wasn’t the British Lush, but Slim Moon from Kill Rock Stars was in this band, Lush. Anyways, whatever. So I really got into it more through the house parties and then seeing bands and stuff. But I was really into that clipping and collaging. Davis: So was it something like Chainsaw or Jigsaw that sort of made you think, “Well, let’s do this too,” or there wasn’t really much before that, that zine-wise was motivating for you? Wolfe: It did make me feel like I could do it too. I definitely would read Chainsaw and think about it. And Tobi, again, was really encouraging of us as girls to have a voice and to make a fanzine. So she was just like, “You guys should do it!” 0:06:00 We didn’t know how to do it, but we were like, “Well, we like to clip and cut and paste, and do things.” So yeah. So I think it was just mostly that. It wasn’t by seeing a whole lot of other zines. It was mostly, yeah, like Donna, Tobi, Chainsaw. Also I think K Records had this like—really it was their catalog, but it looked more like a fanzine, kind of. Davis: Hmm! 3 Wolfe: It was like an 8.5 x 11 shape, kind of, and it was folded anyways, from a bigger thing. It could fold out into a poster, I guess. I don’t know. So I’d kind of look at that and stuff, too. But yeah, I think really at first it was the easiest form of expression, because we didn’t know how to play instruments yet. But we knew how to cut and paste and draw and write and stuff like that. [laugh] Davis: What was the layout process like, when you had never done that before? What was that like to have to plan a magazine and how you wanted to organize your thoughts and all those things? Did it even matter? Were you just kind of going with it? Wolfe: Well, looking back on that issue, it looks like it didn’t matter too much. [laugh] It was pretty sloppy. But yeah, I don’t know. It was really fun. I mean, it’s just fun to do, and it’s so exciting when you photocopy it and cut them and staple them, and you have this product, you know? This thing that you can touch. Davis: Yeah, yeah. Wolfe: So yeah, I don’t know. I think we were just having fun with it, and we weren’t—I guess it was cool to be sloppy and that was punk and whatever. So we didn’t think too much about making it neat and nice. Of course there’s things you have to try to remember later that are like, “OK, don’t put things too close to the edges, because it’ll get cut off in the photocopy machine.” But I know that Molly did most of our Xeroxing, because her dad worked for a congressman and—or she actually worked for a congressman. She had been an intern, actually. And her dad was a PR guy for Democrats, just around in D.C., so he had an office. So whenever she would go home to visit, she would run off a bunch of zines and stuff like that for us. Davis: That feels like a very common D.C. story, of someone who had a parent who had some sort of political connection, and they would go in and use those copy machines [laugh] to make the early issues of their fanzines. That’s not the first time I’ve heard of that. Wolfe: Really? [laugh] Davis: How many copies would you normally make when you would do an issue? Wolfe: Oh, gosh. Probably 100 at first or something. Because also you don’t want to use the machine too much, because you don’t want to make it look like you were there, [laugh] or something, or wear out the ink toner or whatever.