Saturday, May 3, 2008

Hand Grenade

Someone from tweegrrrlshare offered to trade Teams Dresch's first 7", Hand Grenade, with me, which I'm ecstatic about. Team Dresch are one of my favorites- completely infectious and essential pop-punky queercore.

The line-up on Hand Grenade was Donna Dresch, Kaia Wilson, Jody Bleyle, and Scott Plouf. Donna played with acts like Dinosaur Jr. and Lois and is probably best known for founding the awesome Chainsaw Records (named after her earlier zine). Kaia Wilson absolutely kills me- her lyrics, her vocals, her politics, everything. She was in Adickdid (another personal favorite) before Team Dresch, and then went on to do solo stuff and be in the Butchies. She also started the now defunct Mr. Lady label with girlfriend Tammy Rae Carland. Jody Bleyle was in the rad Portland-based Subpop band Hazel. Scott Plouf was in the Spinanes and went on to be in Built to Spill; he was later replaced by Marci Martinez and then Melissa York on drums.

The A side of Hand Grenade is "Hand Grenade" and "Endtime Relay," and the B side is "Molasses in January."



Even the album art sort of declares Team Dresch's agenda- they referred to themselves as lesbionic punk for a reason. It also reminds me a lot of awesome comics with the Adickdid LP.

Here's a snippet of something Kaia wrote in Girl Germs of the same vain:



I felt a bit of personal internet glory/fame when someone on the VLV '90s sendspace forum posted my link to this 7".

Anyway, after Hand Grenade, Team Dresch put out two albums- Personal Best (one of my favorites) and the more political Captain My Captain. They've played a few shows in the past couple years and are supposedly releasing a new album this year. From their website:
"Team Dresch is writing new songs for a new record, to be released in 2008, and we’ll be touring sporadically to try and get those new songs TIGHT.
SO come see us!!! We are better at playing the old songs than we were back in the day, and we’ll be playing new songs and feeling the love. OH SHIT and almost forgot, TEAM DRESCH are all straight now….KIDDING!!!! we R all goldstars still, unless someone is a liar."


Team Dresch- Hand Grenade

3 comments:

blend77 said...

hi, this is a great page you have here. I was looking for mp3s of Brainsworms new split with Dynamite Arrows. I saw them yesterday at ABC No Rio and picked up the record, but I never get good rips with my turntable set up.

Regardless, I found your page this way and noticed that your radio show seems awesome. I really wish I could hear it down my way.

Then I noticed you have Zen and The Art of Face Punching linked, and that made me happy. I'll link you over my way too. Keep up all the great work!

tim

Catherine said...

Thanks a lot.
That split is really good. I'm working on figuring out how to rip vinyl stuff- I'll let you know if I get that one up.
You can stream on whrb.org from anywhere! My show is done for the semester, but it'll be back in the fall.
I love your blog- been reading it for a while, since before I started blogging. I loved your post on Rodan a little while ago. I'm going to do some special programming on Tara Jane O'Neil in about a week (about 9 hours of her music straight). I'll do a post about it with the details soon.

Lenora said...

I would feel really weird if it would be true that they are all straight. I mean, they wrote so much stuff about being gay and everything so it'S hard to think that all this stuff would be gone... but they'Re KIDDING!