fuck yeah, kathleen hanna!

KATHLEEN HANNA:  You know I haven’t seen much more of it than you’ve seen. I saw the same thing that they used on Kickstarter pretty much. The thing that I was most shocked about was what Kathi from Bikini Kill (and now The Julie Ruin band) said, this really sweet thing: she’s a perfect front person. I never knew she thought that. That’s not the kind of thing you say to somebody’s face. The whole way she said it was just so nonchalant. I was like, wow! That is really sweet. I don’t think of myself as the prefect front person. She just said it like, oh yeah it’s totally obvious and who wouldn’t want to be in a band with her. I was like, whoa! That was probably the most shocking thing to me.

Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

(Source: fuckyeahkathleenhanna)

KATHLEEN HANNA: I think talking about why I haven’t performed in so long was really difficult. Singing is my life and I haven’t done it publically for a really long time. While that has been something that I have needed to have a break from it’s also something that I have missed quite a bit. It’s really hard. I really touch on some personal stuff in it that I have never talked about publicly that was just difficult. In the same way that you were saying about interviews and being honest and not just towing the line of I’m going to say the thing about my record … I just felt like I needed to open up because somebody, even just one person, might relate to a little part of my story and feel like they’re not alone. I tried to be as honest as I possibly could. As you know, I cried sometimes in it. Sini [Anderson] who is filming it is a really close dear friend so it’s really easy for her to make me cry [laughs].

Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

(Source: fuckyeahkathleenhanna)

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh I didn’t know about that. Oh that is so scary! I’m not going to look at that but … you’re obviously going to tell me [laughs].

INTERVIEWER: Some of the ideas people had about the meaning of the song were: it’s your alter egos battling; it’s a song about two people looking at the same thing differently; it’s a response to the ‘Kill Rock Stars’ song Nofx wrote…

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh, I have definitely never written anything in relation to that band [laughs]. The people that said it was about two sides of myself were in a way totally right, a lot of it is about battling addiction. You can make a choice whether to be in “the dark bar getting wasted” or to be “enjoying the moon in Texas at night” you can make that choice. It’s a lot harder if you have addiction in your life. At the same time it was directed towards the part of myself that can be a real addict. It was also directed at the fact that I was living in Olympia at the time and there was a lot of heroin and people were dying. I was really frustrated with it. I really wanted to be the one to help people; I really wanted to be somebody that helped people get rehab. In that song I am angry, I was a little bit fucking sick of it. I was singing like, look at me! I’m having this great fucking life because I’m not doing heroin and look at you, you’re stuck in this bummer situation because you’re getting wasted all of the time and you’re ruining your life and all of your friends are watching you ruin your life. That’s what it is about to me but really it’s about what anyone thinks it’s about to them. I can’t even believe that anybody listened to that song.

Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

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The Punk Singer: link

KATHLEEN HANNA: That’s a good question. I mean I want to lie really bad right now [laughs]. I want to say that I never think about things like that and that I always live in the present but, I just donated all of my archival stuff to the Riot Grrrl collection at NYU so I would be a complete liar if I said, no I didn’t want to leave my mark. For me, the kind of mark that I want to leave, I really desperately want to be a part of the feminist continuum. I really want to make sure that what my peers have done and will continue to do doesn’t get erased. It took me a long time, in the pre-internet world of the 80s, to find out about feminism and to find out about feminist art. It was a difficult process and something that I did on my own. More than making my mark I want to make sure that I leave something behind that is a part of feminist history, for better or for worse, that people can build on. That part is really, really important to me.

Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

(Source: fuckyeahkathleenhanna)