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Music Navigator |
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Ovarian Trolley's Buck Bito, Laurie Hall and Jennifer Hall: "We're still together and we still like each other." |
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Hazel, Ovarian Trolley, Heavy Johnson Trio, The Vegas Beat, The Lookers Hazel, Ovarian Trolley, The No-No's |
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Ovarian Trolley has appeared in three films: Mary Jane Is Not a Virgin Anymore, My Dubious Sex Drive and The Lisa Theory.
Ovarian Trolley toured the United States with Pond 2 1/2 years ago. |
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Gusto and Brains |
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BY ALYSSA ISENSTEIN, 243-2122 EXT. 329 Around 1990, women all over the world got pissed off at the male rock world and formed their own girl-friendly rock bands. In the Northwest, the riot grrrl phenomenon, as it grew to be known, came to a head with bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile pushing their in-your-face message of "we're grrrls and we like to rock." Sisters Laurie and Jennifer Hall grew up in Indiana, but despite their shared interest in music, the two didn't start playing music together until they moved to San Francisco in the mid-1980s. "Our creative souls didn't emerge until we moved to San Francisco," says Laurie Hall, Ovarian Trolley's bass player and vocalist. Ovarian Trolley formed in May 1990. "Jennifer and Buck [Bito, Ovarian Trolley guitarist] were lovers, and I was the sister," Hall says. "Jennifer and I were in a band called Glorious Clitorious, and that went on for a year until it fell apart, and then we decided it would be fun to play around together and see what happened. It was kind of a joke because we couldn't really play and sing at the same time. We would walk around and go, 'Yeah, we're in this new band. We're a power trio!' It took us a year of practicing, and finally it started happening and we could pull it off." Seven years later, Jennifer and Bito are just friends, and Ovarian Trolley is about to release its third full-length album, Ciao Meow, on Candy-Ass Records. The new album was still being manufactured at the time of this interview; I was given an advance tape. Both Candy-Ass and Ovarian Trolley warned me that the quality was sub par and that I should take it with a grain of salt. I didn't need to. Even on the advance, the nine songs on Ciao Meow hit hard with gusto and brains while still sounding gracious and full of foreboding. For the Hall sisters, being women and playing rock is a political act. But when they started out, they had no idea of the revolution that was happening up north. "We would be reviewed down here and they would say, 'oh, riot grrrl,' and I would go, 'what the hell is riot grrrl?'" Hall says. "I had no connection with them at all except for the fact that we were women playing music, and it was powerful music, and I guess that's why they were saying that. It's interesting now that we're on Candy-Ass and really hooked in with Jody [Bleyle, head of Candy-Ass Records and member of Team Dresch and Hazel]. It's just a big circle, it came all the way around and picked us up." Bleyle has long been a fan of Ovarian Trolley and, in fact, helped keep the band together after a European tour fell through. According to Hall, Bleyle said that if the band stayed together she'd put out its next record and help get it to Europe. Now, Ovarian Trolley has just returned from a six-week summer tour of Europe with Hazel. And in April, Candy-Ass released a split Ovarian Trolley/Hazel single. It's important to the members of Ovarian Trolley to have a life outside of rock as well; all three members hold down full-time jobs. "We're still working independently and on an independent label," Hall says. "I can have a child and we can have our lives here and we're not completely consumed by the rock world." "We've always really tried to stay true to a value system, and I think we've done it," she adds. "I think the reason I can say that is because we're still together and we still like each other and we can still play music together. We've never stagnated." |
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