(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . IVH (Pride Edition): Team Dresch // Personal Best [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-15 Continuing the Pride Month theme, tonight’s selections from Olympia’s Team Dresch. Mostly from their debut album, 1995’s Personal Best. Derogatory labels represent expressions of prejudice that elicit negative evaluations, dehumanization, and discrimination of the target group and its members. As socially-constructed terms, derogatory labels are malleable and their meanings are context-dependent. This implies that derogatory labels used by a majority group to highlight their power and marginalize minority group members, can change meaning and be used to deconstruct power-relationships. Linguistic reclamation is the process of taking possession of a derogatory label – usually introduced by a dominant group – by stigmatized group members. This process implies that the stigmatized group members consciously use it to label themselves, thereby turning a hurtful term into a badge of pride. — From Derogation to Reclamation: How Does Language Change (In-Mind) People who talk about Team Dresch’s music say it saved them. It’s not an exaggeration. The feminist queercore band was active for only about five years, leaving behind two albums and a collection of singles, but the records’ knowing intimacies made them pre-Tumblr beacons of community for isolated queers in their darkest moments. A life is shaped by minute experiences; when a great punk song captures the emotional specificity of those moments, it wins our lifelong devotion. Team Dresch mirrored the experiences of people who weren’t used to having their lives reflected back to them. In doing so, their work shattered isolation. In the early 1990s, Donna Dresch lived in the Martin apartments in Olympia, Washington alongside many members of the rising riot grrrl movement, worked for K Records, published the queercore fanzine Chainsaw, and played in bands such as Dinosaur Jr. and Screaming Trees. When Jody Bleyle, then drumming in the Portland band Hazel, met Dresch after a show, she expressed a longing to play in “an all-d*** band.” Her desire would materialize in spring of 1994, when the two were joined by Marcéo Martinez (of Calamity Jane) and Kaia Wilson (of Adickted), who herself had once written long letters to Dresch as a lonely gay teenager living in conservative rural Oregon. — Pitchfork . Your Hands My Pockets . Olympia in the ’90s was a bastion of the Pacific Northwest DIY scene, where the four original members of Team Dresch—Donna Dresch, Jody Bleyle, Kaia Wilson and Marcéo Martinez—came up playing in various other bands, publishing zines and running record labels. The spark they discovered among the four of them coalesced into tumultuous musical chemistry on Personal Best, a 10-song burst of anger and angst that barely stretches past 24 minutes. It’s a political record, in the sense that the personal was necessarily political for the band members: queer musicians who refused to hide who they were at a time when fewer than half of Americans said they knew someone who was gay, lesbian or bisexual, and two decades before the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry. So of course Team Dresch were feeling raw and exposed. They vented their displeasure in slashing musical screeds about love and rejection, refracted through the lens of all the bullshit they faced by not conforming to the gender-binary, heteronormative world around them. With buzzing guitar riffs and battering-ram drums on Personal Best, the foursome takes unsparing aim at religious bigotry on “Hate the Christian Right!” and “Growing Up in Springfield,” where a teen love interest suggests that God can help with that lesbian demonic-possession problem. There’s plenty about unrequited love, and about finding the grit to ditch small-minded small towns, which was a standard ’90s punk trope, all delivered with fury and, at times, a sly, lacerating wit. — Paste . She's Crushing My Mind . Unlike mainstream rock musicians who’ve crept out of the closet timidly, delivering platitudes about why one’s sexual orientation is really no big deal, the Northwest’s raucously sexy Team Dresch says it loud — and frequently — they’re d***s and they’re proud. From the debut album’s title and cover art (both borrowed from the lesbian coming-of-age film) to biographical advisories noting that “none of [the band’s] members have ever had a boyfriend,” the Portland/Olympia quartet (which for a time included drummer Scott Plouf of the Spinanes) is anything but coy about its sexual subtext. Fortunately, Team Dresch — named for bassist (and riot-scene godmother) Donna Dresch — realizes that bands can’t live by frankness alone and takes the time to thread two-minute punk-pop outbursts like “She’s Crushing My Mind” and “Hate the Christian Right!” with sharp, memorable hooks that pierce the pleasure center just as surely as the lyrics get that grey matter to stewing. There’s no denying the seriousness of the underlying message delivered by singer/guitarists Kaia Kangaroo (Wilson, formerly of Adickdid) and Jody Coyote (Bleyle, who also holds down the drum slot in Hazel), but the joy with which they deliver it proves even riot grrrls wanna have fun. — Trouser Press . #1 Chance Pirate TV . I’ve always found it formidable how Team Dresch had time for humour, even if they do enter as interjections rather than the entire basis of a song. They also had time for infectious cowpunk, if ‘Freewheel’ is anything to go by. I don’t think anybody could blame them if their album completely gravitated around songs like ‘Hate the Christian Right!’, which is totally unhinged; tidying away the desolate with singing somehow both cleanly whimpered and hysterically screamed. Every line gouges at those nearby – “I’d trade pennies to grow wings and eight more eyes”. These wraths, these hurricanes of guitar, will often – if not always – back up Team Dresch’s most valuable messages. They greet the chorus of ‘She’s Amazing’ to help out the band’s oath of inspiration, singing about their LGBTQ influences what many would likewise sing about Team Dresch – “she’s amazing, her words save me”. These sweet thoughts occur while sat next to a steamed-up window, revisited by the introverted middle-to-end of ‘#1 Chance Pirate TV’; a tear-jerked moment appropriately sparked by the phrase “dry it off”, as guitars fizzle away from anger, more-so towards the empathy that bonds us all. [...] The commitment displayed on ‘Personal Best’ engages me; even if I didn’t already feel a close, personal connection, I would still find myself attracted through the resonance of their conviction. I’ll never get tired of the band’s ability to never appear tired; they must be exhausted as hell from the globe-like loads they’re forced to carry, but energy survives the crucifixion. — Ben Malkin . She’s Amazing x YouTube Video . 48 HILLS What’s it like returning to the songs today as listeners, as the songwriters and performing them? KAIA WILSON It’s like riding the most amazing gay-ass bike. It’s an honor, it’s amazing, and it’s also so fun. We all love each other (we are family) and we have the most incredible people who like our music and come to our shows to feel the loud distorted celebration of queer love. JODY BLEYLE Playing the songs feels even better than it used to because we’re better players and we love each other more. It’s so fun to be loud and sweaty together. Listening to the songs can be more complicated because it’s just me alone with my ears and thoughts, but every time I listen I appreciate more what great musicians my bandmates are. 48H Songs like “Hate the Christian Right,“ “I’m Illegal” and “To the Enemies of Political Rock” feel very applicable to the present moment. How does it feel to be reemerging in and engaging with the music industry and overall political climate right now? KW It’s weird, sad, but not totally surprising that so many of our more directly political songs are as relevant today as they were 25 years ago. I think our band has this lovely musical/activism chemistry, and that it would be such a waste for us not to step up to the plate right now during Trump fucker years, and take our swing at this horror show of the political Right; even if we are swinging our bat of love, for queers, for all marginalized folks, because love and creating a space to feel alive, connected and empowered is as important as when we say fuck you. But also, we are gonna make sure to say fuck you and keep fighting. — 48 Hills . Fake Fight . WHO’S TALKING TO WHO? Jimmy Kimmel: George Clooney, Snoop Dogg, Coldplay (R 1/26/23) Jimmy Fallon: Aaron Judge, Josh Duhamel, Freddie Gibbs featuring Anderson .Paak (R 1/23/23) Stephen Colbert: Heidi Klum, Ibram X. 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