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“We are all hard core anti-oppression, political artists who, whether covertly or overtly, subvert the dominant script about women and gender and sexuality, while rocking the party 1000+%.”
Chatting via email from the Vancouver headquarters in the West of Canada Stink Mitt front people Jenni Craig and Betty Ford are as clear about their politics as they are about their music, that fits somewhere beyond the niche that in previous years was called electroclash.
“Electo-clash, no ,but we are hip-hop -g-funk punk party,” Jenni corrects.
“I think electroclash is a word like grunge, it is not relevant to describe a musical genre necessarily, like, grunge was/is rock, and electronic music is electronic” Betty agrees.
“We don't need to subdivide anymore. And like the term ‘grunge’, electroclash was the name of an electronic music festival and the media got hold of it and used it to hype up the next wave of underground electronic musicians, again like with grunge. And then Larry Tee got blamed for the media appropriation of the Electroclash festival but it wasn't his fault, again, it was the media doing their usual co-opting bullshit. blah blah blah,” she adds.
Analysing the media and the state of contemporary culture is something Betty’s amply qualified to discuss, not that she’s one to boast.
“I have an M.A. in Women's Studies, it cost me so much in student loans that I really just resent it,” she admits.
“People are always surprised when they hear about my academic side for some reason, when actually I am a huge nerd with 4 degrees in total. I was on my way to being a professor when Stinkmitt started, so my Ph.d is on hold but I do plan to finish it one day, and likely in the UK,” she says.
As well as her Stinkmitt name of Betti Ford, she’s also well known as Maren Hancunt, distinguished author of Lady Lazarus ‘the first in-depth analysis of Lydia Lunch’s impact on feminism, the implications of her art for feminism, and the implications of feminism for Lunch’s art’ as the book’s liner notes explain; as well as her choice of Hancunt for name.
“Maren Hancunt lives in Vancouver, BC, where she operates as a freelance writer, DJ, drama instructor, activist and performer. She also has a growing international reputation as an academic speaker,” the book explains.
“Maren altered her name to ‘Hancunt’ after she found out that the word ‘cunt’ is etymologically related to knowledge, sexuality, and creation.”
Bad language and degree talk aside, Stinkmitt’s raison d’etre remains their music and the pair recently toured Europe showcasing tracks from their debut album Scratch N Sniff as well as upcoming follow up The Red Album. Meeting up with Jonty Skrufff backstage at Trailer Trash they arranged to do a face to face, though circumstances meant email, on this occasion, worked out best.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Starting with the European tour, what’s been the highlight/ low light?
Jenni: “All's a go - the shows have been great and the fans have given us their ass, gas and grass; more than we can hope for.”
Betti: “Other highlights included our first night in York opening for East London's own Infadels. They are fucking fabulous, their single Jagger '67 on Wall of Sound/Sony is out and sounded dope in the club. They are such wonderful dudes and amazing live and after the show we went to this amazing chav bar and had, literally, ‘The Time of My(our) Lives’. And playing Madame JoJos with Mark Moore and Andy Bell, who are both as amazingly sweet as they are legendarily talented, was great too. Wow.
Low points include sleeping in a huge squat in Roma (Italy) and getting eaten alive by bugs, the usual missing flights and paying tons of money for new ones, and Ryan Air not letting you bring ‘hot drinks’ of your own onto their shitty airplanes. And not being able to score drugs of any kind, ever, in Sweden. And getting ripped off -ie. not paid - by a flakey promoter in Berlin. The usual tour glamour.”
Skrufff: I read that you stabbed yourself in the eye with your glasses recently, how did that happen?
Jenni: “That was Betti , it was an accident. It was bloody, lasted about a two weeks and kind of added to the show.”
Betti: “I am just type A personality and was putting on my glasses in the morning and my aim was off and I jabbed myself in the eye with the arm of the glasses’ frame. And it hurt but I didn't actually notice I had damaged it until late that night at work, when I was informed I had puss running out of my eye and it looked gross. And of course I’m up there DJing in front of 800 people when I’m told this; I tell you the glamour never ends. So I went to the staff room and looked in the mirror and my eyeball looked like it had a stab wound in it. We were supposed to tour the USA the next morning so I was shit scared that I would have to have eyeball surgery and postpone that tour. But it tuned out that I basically "bruised" it, only because it's an eyeball, wow, it looked insane. It looked incredible, actually. For a good 4 days all my eye was totally blood red. It was completely disturbing and didn't go away for good until about 12 days, basically when the tour was over. But yeah, as Jenni says, we all kind of liked it.”
Skrufff: on your site you say ‘Jenni needs weed- betti needs coke’: how much do you live out the rock & roll fantasy lifestyle when on the road? How about groupies: how do you decide which ones to take advantage of?
Jenni: “Jenni likes to scoop up the men after the show, Betti finds all the dealers, those are the only real fans we hang with. The fans with nothing to give are not as cool.”
Betti: Truth is, we always want weed after the show, once in a while we may want coke if you get us really drunk, so just remember to always have everything on hand to offer us just in case. For us, the road is not a rock & roll fantasy 'cause we're shit poor, usually if we get hammered it's because we need to be, in order to sleep on someone's floor later that night. I think we would drink and party less if touring were more comfortable for us, if we had hotel rooms and shit, which most of the time we don't. We're ghetto! I don't get it on with anyone on tour because I got steak at home in Vancouver, so why go out for shitty burgers on tour?”
Skrufff: How much of a plan/ agenda with Stink Mitt is there in general?
Jenni: “Big plans of course, world domination, and to unite the garbage heads.”
Betti: “That basically sums it up.”
Skrufff: Musically: who, if anyone, do you align yourself with?
Betti: “ We do have friends whose music we love and with whom we collaborate with and so that's kind of like a scene I guess. We are in love with Procon from Toronto, they are amazing: www.proconmusic.com. And Peaches of course. We got to play a small part in her live show in Toronto a few weeks ago, it was a total blast and we got a preview of her upcoming album which is going to be totally killer again of course. She is amazing. And everyone in the band, Jenni, Bigstuff and I have many other musical projects. Another one to check is www.mizkitty.ca, Stinkmitt was started upon her urging. We've also toured with Scream Club and love them of course: www.screamclub.com.
While all of the above are electronic based acts, we think our commonalities with them have more to do with attitude, politics, and maybe style than actual sound. We are all hardcore anti-oppression, political artists who, whether covertly or overtly, subvert the dominant script about women and gender and sexuality, while rocking the party 1000+%.
Skrufff: “I was most impressed by you becoming "official spokespeople for the Canadian national masturbation month': what responsibilities did that entail?
Jenni: “Picking up lots of free sex toys and jerking off all month, oh and having to look at fat dikes with ham shoved up their ass.”
Skrufff: What was the reaction of friends and family to the award?
Jenni: “Jealousy.”
Betti: we did get tons of free sex toys and people really were jealous, that's for sure! To read about what we said and did at the time go to:
http://www.chartattack.com/DAMN/2004/05/1704.cfm
Skrufff: Betti, you wrote a book called ‘Lady Lazarus, an in-depth look at Lydia Lunch's impact on feminism’, what’s been her impact?
Jenni: “Imagine going ten thousand miles an hour into a brick wall. That’s the impact.”
Betti: Thanks Jenni, maybe you could get your driver's license and test that theory one day.
Anyways, I wrote Lady Lazerous as my undergraduate thesis, and Questing Beast (who are located in Snowdonia, Wales), published it in 2000. It was a small print run and now it's sold out and out of print, so I don't think anyone can get their hands on it. Although it got good reviews, I wrote it when I was 22 and the writing makes me cringe, though I still think the ideas I had were original and stand up today. I was lucky in that Lydia gave me so much of her time, and so I got to know her quite well and even booked some shows in Canada with her and thus got to hang out w/ her quite a lot. To say that she is an incredible person would be an understatement.
Her impact on feminism? come on! It took me 122 pages to answer that one. She's had a big impact on feminism and we see it run through women's social/musical movements: punk, post-punk, riot grrrl, and right up until the current crop of electro-diva's (myself included).
Skrufff: pardon my ignorance/ naivety: what does stink mitt mean?
Jenni: “It’s a fat smelly cunt,”
Betti: “'nuff said.”
Stinkmitt’s upcoming LP "The Red Album" is due for completion in January and release in the spring.
http://www.stinkmitt.com
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/indie_women/35466
Interview by Jonty Skrufff (JontySkrufff.com)
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