The Slits//Heard It Through the Grapevine

When I first heard The Slits, my mind was blown. Ali played me some tracks of Cut and I was like, “WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE!!?” This was during the time when we were all making dozens and dozens of different AOL screen names (oh, early college). Most of them were “Heathers”-themed, but I immediately went out and claimed “ariupisgod.” I probably still have it…if only I could remember the password.

So who are The Slits? Let me tell you! The Slits really laid the groundwork for the riotgrrl movement. They were formed in 1976 as an all-girl punk/post-punk outfit in the UK (one of their members, Palmolive, later joined The Raincoats; other members went on to form The New Age Steppers). They supported punk-classic The Clash on tour, had their very own Peel Session and successfully mixed punk sounds with reggae/dub undertones, avant-garde sensibilities and feminism(!) to form a sound all their own. The have an AWESOME song called Typical Girls which is a pretty sweet third wave diatribe and also calls out my favorite East Coast salesman (and yours?), Crazy Eddie.

In 2005, the group had a reunion (sort of). I heard it wasn’t very good, but I’m still really sad I missed it. They just signed a new record deal, so we’ll see what comes of that.

You probably know this song already (in fact, I'm sure you do), but unless you have (a) a strong interest in post punk, (b) a strong interest in riotgrrl/proto-riotgrrl (c) a strong interest in rare vinyl and mp3s, you probably haven’t heard it like this before. Although you are reading a music blog written by a queer feminist-tinged nerdgirl, so maybe this isn’t new to you? And two covers in one week...what is OSS coming to!? Regardless, enjoy.



I Heard It Through the Grapevine.mp3

A little trivia: Did you know that the grapevine actually refered to a clandestine telegraph system used in the late 1800s? Ok. I really don’t think you knew that one. More here.