Women Who Rock Wednesday: Civet!

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday, the day I highlight the gals that rock my world because of their amazing music, books, art, etc. Last week, I paid tribute to one of the women who has influenced me most in my life, Mia Zapata of The Gits. Since Mia's life was tragically cut short, I couldn't interview her personally, but her bandmate Steve Moriarty wrote a beautiful tribute to her. Steve also agreed to send out a copy of my personal favorite Git's album, Frenching the Bully, (which I believe he is gonna sign) to a lucky winner and that person, chosen via random number generator from all the comments is Liviania! Liv, please send an email to stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com with your address so I can pass it on to Steve.

This week I'm thrilled to feature the mindblowingly awesome band: Civet and give away their amazing new CD Hell Hath No Fury!

There are only a handful of bands that I have gotten me as excited and revved up about music as Civet has (Nirvana, Hole, Social Distortion, Rancid, Sleater-Kinney, The Distillers, and Against Me!) and only two of those bands (The Distillers and Against Me!) came out after I graduated high school. I don't know if if I'm getting old and jaded or if there just aren't as many good bands as there used to be, but it takes a lot more to impress me lately.

I discovered Civet via a contest that Melissa Marr and I did on her livejournal. I was giving out early copies of IWBYJR to five people who listed the best girl power anthems. A girl named Kate posted a link to Civet's myspace page and told me to listen to the song "Son of A Bitch." I listened to it five times in a row. It was still a week before I'd choose winners, but I knew already that Kate would be one of them. Where was this song four years ago when I was going through my last terrible break-up? Where was this band when I was in high school and I needed more kick-ass punk girls to growl along with? And why why why was I going to have to wait all the way to September (it was June then) to get my hands on their album Hell Hath No Fury, which was coming out on my favorite punk label, Hellcat?

I spent the summer listening to the songs on Civet's myspace and telling everyone who listened that I thought they were the best band out there. They filled the void that Hole and The Distillers left for me when they broke up and what was even better, is unlike those bands this quartet is made up of all girls. Beautiful tattooed punk girls who could totally kick your ass and who IMHO are rocking way harder than most of the boys out there. Femme Fatale Punk Rock is what they label their music

Of course I worried a little bit that I'd spent the summer revering this band and then when I heard Hell Hath No Fury I'd be disappointed (funny to say this because I know so many of the book bloggers who said this about my book), but that concern was totally unfounded. I got HHNF a week ago and I haven't listened to anything else since. I'm addicted the same way I was to Nirvana, Hole, and Rancid albums in high school where I literally just cannot stop listening. Like I said, this is really, really rare for me now.

Hell Hath No Fury is going to make my top albums of all-time list because not only is it some of the best punk rock I've heard in awhile, it's music that empowers women and girls and there has been a lack of that since the original riot grrrls. I could go into detail about why I love every track on the album because I do and there is not one I skip over while listening to it (again, that's a rare thing for me these days it seems), but there are a few in particular that stick out to me right now.

"Son of A Bitch" is still my favorite song. There are a lot of songs on this album that would have gotten me through bad breakups in the past and I will certainly be buying this CD for any of my friends going through heartache because it doesn't just help you get out the rage, it empowers you and encourages you to be true to yourself. Like the song "Brooklyn," which reminds us, "Don't ever let someone get in the way of what you love/I'm gonna stay true/I'm gonna stay gold." Then there is the last part of the song "You Don't Know Me" that I can just imagine me and my best girlfriends in high school chanting along to with Civet girls: "We got something that you can't touch/We got something that you can't touch/You can try really hard, but you can't beat us."

And I told my best friend that our new anthem is "All I Want," which is a song co-written with Tim Armstrong of Rancid because it's all about the importance of tight friendships between girls ("All I want is you to stand by my side/We've been through everything/We'll be sisters to the end/What's broken we will mend/Boys will come and boys will go just like street cars"). I really admire this song because I think there needs to be more celebration the importance of sisterhood instead of being women pitted against each other... Well, you know my feelings on saluting your sisters, that's why I do this blog.

Anyway so that is my big ol' salute to the femme fatale punk rock foursome, Civet. And I had really, really hoped to post an interview from them today, but they are busy ladies with this album just coming out. However, I couldn't wait any longer to post this feature on them because I am too excited about them and want to give them a big push right now when the album is fresh. When I do have the interview, I will post it, but in the meantime, I thought it would be cool to share these "Rock Journal" episodes that vimby.com is doing on the band. It really gives us the behind-the-scenes of being in a band, which fascinates the hell out of me.

VIMBY - Rock Journal - Civet: Episode 1

VIMBY - Rock Journal - Civet: Episode 2

VIMBY - Rock Journal - Civet: Episode 3

Also a few days ago, I shared the video for "Son of a Bitch" on my blog, well now Yahoo is doing this Who's Next thing where if you vote for Civet, they bring them into the studio for a performance. That would be rad as hell, so click here to vote for these fabulous ladies.



As always I'm doing a giveaway for my WWRW guests, so leave a comment to be entered to win a sweet promo copy of Hell Hath No Fury, this is a collectors item, not found in stores! I will choose the winner next Wednesday when one of my newfound favorite female authors, Cecil Castellucci, comes to visit us!

Last but not least, I have a big event tomorrow at the Oak Park Library, so if you are in the Chicago area, come out, hear me read, ask me a million questions and lets talk books and punk and women who rock!