And everyone just kind of started being on Kill Rock Stars. But I think Slim finally asked us if we want to do an album. We managed to get the records made in one month, and start selling them on the second day of the convention.Īllison Wolfe (lead singer of Bratmobile): Bratmobile had a split seven inch on K Records and other split seven inches on small labels. There’s no way.” And he said, “Well, I’ll help you.” That day, I called a bunch of bands that I knew and asked if they would contribute to the album and Calvin called some bands that he knew. He said, so you’re going to do this compilation? I said, “No, it’s too late. But then Calvin ran into Justin from Unwound on the street and Justin told him the idea that I had. Then I went home and decided it was too late. And the reason I thought of it was because I saw Unwound’s first show and I just thought, “Maybe I will become a rock record label, because somebody needs to put out their records.” So, it was really late when I thought of this. And it was a month away from the convention. Slim Moon: I initially thought up a compilation that was going to be all Olympia bands to try to sell it at Calvin and ’s convention. Tinuviel Sampson is recovering from COVID and could not participate. To mark the 30th anniversary of this incident, Slim and many of the musicians who made up Kill Rock Stars’ history spoke to SPIN about everything that happened after that.

Partly due to their inclusion, the record sold well, enabling further releases. Nirvana was supposed to play the convention but couldn’t. It also fatefully included the Nirvana song “ Beeswax,” which later be included on the band’s 1992 compilation album Incesticide. Titled Kill Rock Stars, that compilation would feature bands such as Unwound, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy, who became mainstays on the fledgling label. With a nudge from K founder, Calvin Johnson, Slim ended up following through on an idea to put out a compilation.

An hour north in Seattle, Nirvana was about to release “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” K was preparing to hold the International Pop Underground Convention, a one-off music festival that would make Olympia a player in the Pacific Northwest music scene, which was about to get very hot. Today, Kill Rock Stars is based in Nashville and continues to release music, but, backtracking to the summer of 1991, Slim, a performance poet and occasional punk rock frontman in a band called Witchy Poo with Sampson, started the label to put out spoken-word recordings. In the process, it helped establish the template for much independent music that would come later.Īlso Read Listen to an Unreleased Live Version of Elliott Smith’s “Pictures of Me” from Either/Or: Expanded Edition In addition to fostering Riot Grrrl bands like those already named, the small label founded by Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson in Olympia, Washington in 1991, minted one unconventional icon after another, helping launch Miranda July, Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists and both Gossip and its frontwoman Beth Ditto into something like mainstream stardom. NOFX did have one valid point: The label’s name soon became ironic. The feminist punk (or punk feminist) movement has been idealized, criticized, relitigated, historicized and fictionalized, only to resurface again in the new Gen Z incarnation on TikTok, which is to say it mattered and still does. The label is best known for important releases from Riot Grrrl bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy. The 24 years since the song was included on the pop-punk band’s 1997 album So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes have not been kind.īoth Bikini Kill and Kill Rock Stars’ roster over its 30-year history have, in fact, changed the world. In NOFX’s song “Kill Rock Stars,” Fat Mike calls out Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna with the lyric, “‘Kill the rockstars’ how ironic, Kathleen/You’ve been crowned the newest queen,” and opines, “You can’t change the world by blaming men.” The song title not subtly references Kill Rock Stars, Bikini Kill’s label at the time.

Kill rock stars label