THE TRASHWOMEN
The Trashwomen was an all-female American garage punk and surf punk trio from the San Francisco Bay Area signed to Estrus Records. (More from Wikipedia)
As the legend of the Trashmen grew over the years, it was perhaps inevitable that somebody would create a band called the Trashwomen. Whereas the Trashmen were clean-cut Midwestern teenagers, the Trashwomen were apparently conceived with the term “white trash” in mind: They are all big women who are often decked out in leopard-print costumes. Michael Lucas with the surf revival band the Phantom Surfers approached Tina Lucchesi and Dannielle Pimm with the idea of having an all-female band to perform Trashmen songs as the opening act for their band for a 1992 show. Once the two located a guitarist – Elka Zolot – the Trashwomen were born. Zolot was a talented musician, but that was not true of the other two: Pimm became the bass player because she happened to own a bass guitar, while Lucchesi became the drummer because she happened to be dating a drummer. They had only 4 weeks to learn how to play their instruments before the show.
The Trashwomen started off as a lark or even a joke, with mean-girl attitude, thrift-store outfits and over-the-top sleaze. But they turned in a great opening set, and the women started getting more requests for shows. The women began practicing weekly and writing their own songs; before long, they had a recording contract in hand. I have their debut album, Spend the Night with the Trashwomen, which came out on Estrus Records in 1993. They also released two other albums and two EP’s; the band broke up in 1996 while on tour in Japan. They reportedly reformed in 2008, though I don’t know of any further recordings. One curious fact about the Trashwomen: The Internet is littered with song lyrics on just about every singer and rock band you can think of, but I have not been able to find any lyrics out there of the songs by this band, for some reason.
Over the years, all three women have been in a variety of bands, both during and after the Trashwomen period. The three women along with Rusty Quan released a single under the name the Count Backwards; later, without Elka Zolot, the other three were members of the Bobbyteens. Dannielle Pimm was in another purportedly all-girl band called the Brentwoods, though there was actually a man in the band as well. Elka Zolot was in Bitch Fight before the formation of the Trashwomen and was later the guitarist for Eight Ball Scratch. Tina Lucchesi was probably the busiest of the three; besides running Lipstick Records, she was also in several other bands, including Top Ten, the Glamour Pussies, the Deadly Weapons, and AC/DShe.
Those are all just names in a list from what I know, but I do have an album by one of Tina Lucchesi’s bands – this time fronting an otherwise male group – called Tina and the Total Babes.
My Tina and the Total Babes album, She’s So Tuff was one of the first records that I cleaned up after the storm – it was among the first 19 that also included my album by the UARB for May 2010, the Not Quite – and I used to get funny looks when I mentioned the band name to friends as I was telling them about records that went through Hurricane Katrina that I was now playing. My Trashwomen album was also among the early ones; it was in the third group of 19.
(May 2012)
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Items: The Trashwomen
