Kill Rock Stars - punk rock record label

Progressive, The, Oct, 1996 by Livia Gershon

Olympia, Washington

People who make music just to try to get famous or rich are dumb, and the people who put out records for those same reasons are pretty silly, too. Good rock and roll is a conspiracy, not just something nice made by crafty businessmen."

So says Slim Moon, who owns Kill Rock Stars, a punk record label. He says the company looks for performances that "the major labels are too profit-driven to have ever considered putting out." Kill Rock Stars works with artists the label considers challenging--musically and lyrically. That means performers express radical views on politics, social structures, personal relationships, and just about everything else. It also means that many Kill Rock Stars artists are angry and on the offensive.

"Punk stands against the status quo in a lot of ways," says Moon. "It's anti-complacency, anti-big business, anti-powers-that-be."

Moon's punkers express themselves not with calm, rational discussion but with rage. "Your world, not mine/Your world, not ours," screams Bikini Kill, probably the most famous band Kill Rock Stars produces. "I'll resist with every inch and every breath/I'll resist this psychic death."

The anger of many punk performers doesn't prevent them from exploring ideas in subtle and linguistically interesting ways. Moon started the label in 1991 to produce "wordcore," intense spoken-word performances. Today, Kill Rock Stars puts out more rock than spoken word, but what the artists say remains as important to the label as how they say it.

The majority of the label's artists are women, and the feminist, queer-positive music and poetry most of them perform would drive the Jesse and Tipper crowd to new heights of outrage. Heavens to Betsy threatens to kill a potential rapist, Bratmobile sings a love song about a dominatrix named Panik, and Bikini Kill yells, "I can sell my body if I wanna/God knows you already sold your mind."

Kill Rock Stars artists attack mainstream concepts of gender and other social norms. One album from the English group Huggy Bear, for example, includes liner notes with messages like "Punkqueercorps . . . hears nothing distracting in the voice of church or state, only that retarded antiluv Mantra of marry marry procreate (but be careful with pleasure)."

For Moon, it is important that the artists get the chance to communicate their ideas to people who feel isolated. He argues that punk culture provides a feeling of community and connection to people who are considered outsiders, yet avoids forcing them to conform to any single model. "Punk is a club for people who are suspicious of clubs," he says.