As I remember riot grrrl and grunge, it was all about DIY from music to media to image. There were very few examples of women playing in bands (and even after "The Year Punk Broke," females were often relegated to the role of dumb/sexualized bass player, one small step up from van groupie). Very rare indeed for women to control the band, write the songs, drive the bus.

It was exciting to see musicians in control of their own image: not in thrall to a producer or a record company (saying, in fact, f*ck you to the whole corporate music establishment). Total control. Wearing filthy thrift-store clothes or ironic t-shirts, if that's what they wanted to wear (because it's all they could afford).

When Bikini Kill said "Girls to the front!" at their concerts, they were inviting females to take back the traditionally wild/often violent mosh pit and jump in, without fear. And if a guy tried to assault or harass you, you called it out loud, ridiculed it, lampooned it, wrote wild songs about it.

I do not believe that it was ever supposed to be about luxuriating in a permanent state of gender victimhood and high-semiotic debates, but parts of it (like the part called Kathleen Hanna) apparently went that way.

And the rest went off the rails with the sad, druggy spectacle of Courtney Love, which put an end to the idea that a riot grrl was someone "in control" of her image, or of anything else. I think today, Courtney comes across more clearly as a person with mental health and substance abuse issues that became part of the zeitgeist, not a shrewd manager of her own image.

I read Patty Schemel's memoir, "Hit So Hard", last winter (a better title would have been "Live Through This," but I'm guessing THAT wasn't gonna get the Love seal of approval), and it was really a bleak tale. She was Kurt's drug connection during his last, long downward spiral, and ended up selling her ass to men on the streets of L.A. (though she is openly gay) to support her crack and heroin habit (I think she was technically still in Hole when this was going on).

RIP Riot Grrl.