Jen B. Larson exalts our punk mothers in the new book Hit Girls

I first heard about Jen B. Larson when she played in Swimsuit Addition, whose scrappy, pulse-quickening punk combined doo-wop vocals and surf-rock scuzz. They released music through local DIY labels—Midwest Action, Tall Pat, Impossible Colors—or just put it out themselves. In short, Swimsuit Addition were exactly the kind of band the Reader‘s music writers like to talk about, and we did. 

Swimsuit Addition got plenty of exposure elsewhere too, though they weren’t always entirely happy about it. In the introduction to her new book, Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA 1975-1983, Larson points out that Swimsuit Addition often attracted frustrating comparisons to bands with whom they had little in common—writers seemed to make connections for no other reason than both lineups included women. Perhaps most egregiously, when the Sun-Times ran a Jan Terri profile in 2012 to preview a show Terri was playing with Swimsuit Addition at Reggies Rock Club, it apparently mixed up Larson’s band with another all-woman Chicago group, Summer Girlfriends—the paper identified them as “Summer Addition.”

Larson has long sought refuge in music, but she’s had to work hard to learn about women making the kind of punk rock she wants to hear. It’s not that those musicians don’t exist, of course, but most versions of the punk-rock canon—especially the versions available when she was getting into punk in the early 2000s—barely include any women, except maybe Patti Smith and Cramps guitarist Poison Ivy. Making matters worse, when Larson started high school, “punk” tended to mean skinny white boys yelping about crushes they didn’t know on a Warped Tour stage at 2:30 PM. 

Larson’s love of punk women set her on a path to her 2019 book deal with Feral House, which published Hit Girls this month. In 2017 she began documenting her research into lesser-known or overlooked punk bands anchored by women with a Tumblr she called Punkette Respect. In September 2020, punk website Please Kill Me published Larson’s story about forgotten Seattle proto-grunge band Bam Bam and their Black front woman, Tina Bell, which prompted a tidal wave of interest in both and a reframing of grunge history. (In February 2022, I wrote about the saga of Bam Bam and the effort to preserve their legacy.) As Larson put the finishing touches on Hit Girls last year, she published her first Reader story, a deep dive on bygone local garage rockers Barbie Army.

“We must identify and define the truth about punk history,” Larson writes in the introduction to Hit Girls. “We must preserve it. We must exalt our punk mothers. We must tell their stories, make documentaries, spread the word of their deeds.” Hit Girls profiles 90 lesser-known American acts, organized by region. The book begins in the midwest, and among the Chicago artists it covers are hard-rock band Bitch and bassist and singer Kate Fagan, who made new wave, postpunk, and ska, most famously with Heavy Manners. Their sections are excerpted below. Next month, Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks will reissue Fagan’s 1980 single “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool,” expanded to album length with the addition of previously unreleased tracks. —Leor Galil

From Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA