Bratmobile - The Real Janelle & The Peel Session

In 1993, Ben Weasel of Screeching Weasel wrote a song sneering at a girl named Janelle. Bratmobile's Allison Wolfe heard it, decided the band could write something better, and wrote "The Real Janelle" more or less on the spot in the back of a van. That song, and the EP built around it, became one of the sharpest documents of riot grrrl's early years: a scrappy, funny, furious rebuttal that reclaimed a real friend's name from a punk scene that had turned her into a punchline.

The Real Janelle caught Bratmobile mid-transformation, more refined than their fuzzed-out debut Pottymouth but no less confrontational. "Brat Girl" takes direct aim at the Spur Posse, a group of Southern California teenagers who assaulted girls for points, throwing their violence back at them line for line. Weeks after recording it, the band left for England to tour with Huggy Bear and record a session for John Peel, arriving in the shadow of the murder of Mia Zapata of the Gits, a loss that still colors the session's nervous energy. That Peel session, on vinyl here for the first time, includes a cover of the Misfits' "Where Eagles Dare" with Kill Rock Stars co-founder Slim Moon on guest vocals, a snatch of Blur's "No Other Way," and rougher, louder remakes of "Bitch Theme" and "Panik" from Pottymouth.

Thirty years on, The Real Janelle sounds less like a period piece than a direct line to everything that came after it, from Bratmobile's riot grrrl contemporaries to the generation of bands, from the Linda Lindas to Big Joanie, who grew up on it. This reissue brings both recordings to vinyl together for the first time, pressed via Kill Rock Stars: essential, basement-recorded proof of why Bratmobile mattered before anyone smoothed out the edges.