RockBitch: Rock ‘N’ Roll Oddity In Retrospect
Written by Jason Daniel Baker
Saturday, 11 January 2014 03:30
RockBitch (1995-2003) members and their fans have long argued in the decade-plus since their demise that the defunct (Re-formed as ‘MT-TV’) punk outfit was a target of a concerted campaign of state censorship related to prudery and sexist double-standards of a male-dominated music industry (which somehow never got around to repressing literally hundreds of great all-female acts).
The band’s critics – who are legion, would argue that RockBitch was actually an irritation to the gag reflexes of the general public. In reality they were a bunch of amateur musicians who eventually became passable performers some time after they had been written off as a publicity gimmick/sideshow that played mostly covers. They made themselves victims of their own hype. Potential fans tuned them out before hearing the sound they were eventually able to craft.
The formula for the six piece group (initially called ‘Red Abyss’) included the jazz-influenced bass-line of founder Amanda Smith-Skinner with a raw heavy rock guitar licks of Tony ‘The Beast’ Skinner, synth and rough-edged singing of lewd and vulgar lyrics by Julie Worland punctuated by Nikki on keyboards and drums by Joanne Heeley. The band members, influenced as they were by widely different varieties, and governed by their own caprices often sounded like they were each playing a different song.
Their first studio album ‘Motor Driven Bimbo’ – a raw, wild, highly-experimental and unique musical statement that rocks in many places (whilst eliciting complete vexation in others) resides firmly in the shadow of the band’s disgusting antics and subsequent legal difficulties which eventually led them to disband after years of frustration.
The elaborate excesses of the RockBitch stage show served to completely upstage the one thing they had that was worth sharing and the one thing true professionals in the music industry place at the forefront – the original music they composed. This very much included their best song, ‘Nympho’ – a solid and inventive rock track .
The mostly lesbian act performed fully or partially nude (sometimes crowd-surfing completely naked) incorporating sex acts (toys included), bondage, occult rituals, urination into their shows which concluded with the tossing of a golden condom into the audience. Whoever caught it – male or female was awarded sex with their designated ‘Stage Slut’ Lucy – who played rhythmic axe. At one point or another one female band member would urinate into another’s mouth who would then spit it out onto the audience.
Self-described ‘sex-evangelists’ spreading ‘cunt consciousness’ they were the product of a lesbian arts commune of English women that took up residence in a vacant, rundown old monastery in France. The band’s repugnant, snivelling, semi-coherent message – a mixture of adolescent hang-ups, rage at imagined insults and daddy issues its members laughably characterised as feminism was evidently their raison d’etre. The sole redeeming quality of it was that it moved them to create ‘Motor Driven Bimbo’.
Touring of course proved to be a problem. Controversy erupted in Canada when they attempted to perform live. Dubbed ‘porno-punk’ by members of the Canadian media, RockBitch’s two gigs at Backstreet Underground in Montreal, Canada in November 1997 were scuttled which saw them avoid arrest and deportation under the Quebec government’s infamous Order 34 – an unduly strict bit of legislation endowing authorities with censorship power seemingly nebulous in its scope.
Their Toronto show, which was to be held at The Warehouse (now known as Kool Haus) on Queen’s Quay East also got cancelled due to a lack of work-permits which some Toronto airport officials alleged was due to pressure from our federal government. The notion that the feds would take an active interest in keeping a foreign band of exhibitionist perverts from performing in public is not far-fetched. It is a privilege reserved for our many domestic perverts.
Various gigs elsewhere in Europe were shutdown too. The band took its familiar place in media cycles each time unleashing their familiar rhetoric of blanket statements, bizarre conclusions and paranoid accusations which by then they had rehearsed as much if not more than their music.
By the end of 2002 ‘RockBitch’ dissolved then re-formed as MT-TV – a band which employed less outrageous theatrics and adopted a more focused approach to music in general. Whilst more technically proficient their sounds lacks the energy it once had. This eccentric bunch made their statement a long time ago.
http://www.rockbitch.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/58799892
[Photos by Al Treacher]