Jenny Woolworth’s Women in Punk Blog

When I’m not busy meeting rock stars and convincing them to answer my questions, I like to party with artists. One of my most favorite creative agitators in the entire world is Andrea Thal. She runs Les Complices*, an artist led off-space gallery in Zürich, Switzerland as well as spearheading projects and exhibitions across Europe. In her spare time she is a graffiti artist (kinda), master chef and avid record collector.

In October 2004 Andrea embarked on a project bringing together women, music and public performance that has since been commissioned and presented in five editions. The core idea involves choosing a song from a female-led band of the early punk era and recruiting a contemporary female performer/band to cover the song. Usually the project is commissioned as part of a larger exhibition and the cover band performs the chosen song live in a one-off performance on opening night. The ephemeral live show is twinned with a free-to-take newspaper featuring interviews, commentary and images from the participants. So far the series has included the following pairings:
X-Ray Spex & Kunst - “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”
Unknown Gender & Mosh-Mosh - “Girls Have Rhythm”
Delta 5 & mate - “Mind Your Own Business”
Bush Tetras & Namusoke - “Das Ah Riot”
Mother’s Ruin & G. Rizo - “Godzilla”

I’ve documented each stage of the project so far on a page of my website. Go there to download and compare the original songs to the covers and browse the pdf versions of the newspapers. As a preview, below are the mp3s of g.rizo performing the song “Godzilla” from the Zurich band Mother’s Ruin alongside the original.

Download: g.rizo - Godzilla
Download: Mother’s Ruin - Godzilla