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Bratmobile have returned after more than two decades away, recently playing their first show in over 20 years. As one of the riot grrrl originators reignites, the band’s frontwoman, Allison Wolfe, recalls one of the groups that drew her to music in the first place: Bow Wow Wow.
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As a teenager, Wolfe was drawn to bands led by powerful, magnetic women. She found herself mesmerized by the raw energy of the 12 short, sharp songs that made up Bow Wow Wow’s second album, When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going. The newly-launched MTV left her in awe of singer Annabella Lwin’s commanding stage presence and distinctive style, which proved a huge source of inspiration in Wolfe’s own work as a musician.
“The girliness or the silliness of these things that almost seem like teen girl bedroom culture, or they’ll call it bubblegum pop or whatever, these men don’t take seriously,” she explains on the latest episode of The Spark Parade. “I think [Bow Wow Wow] should be and have been re-examined in more modern times by people with a more feminist lens. So, that’s what I was thinking. I was like, hey, this stuff is important and it actually inspired a lot of women in music.”
Listen to Alison Wolfe of Bratmobile chat about Bow Wow Wow’s When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going and more in this episode of The Spark Parade. Please also take the time to like, review, and subscribe to The Spark Parade wherever you get your podcasts, and keep up to date with all our series by following the Consequence Podcast Network.
Host Adam Unze (The Opus) explores creativity in all its forms on The Spark Parade by asking musicians, artists, comedians, and other creators to share the single cultural work that has most inspired them. Whether it comes from the world of music, film, comedy, visual art, or literature, we all have something that sparks our own creative desires. On The Spark Parade, guests reveal the single piece of art that ignites within them to fire of creation.
