RIP Jennifer Finch

It’s not so much that I forgot to post on Saturday, it’s that I forgot it was Saturday. We had an open campus weekend at work (when high school students visit and we all become sales people, charming them and their parents to ensure we still have jobs for the next four years) and it hit 39 degrees on Friday. Fun. Brain no work.

So for the first time five years, I missed a Saturday morning post. I apologise to those of you who a) noticed and b) weren’t secretly pleased that you didn’t get a notification at some ungodly hour that coincides with 9am in Japan.

I was going to post some blether about editing and writing but as I was taking a break from lying talking to teenagers about their future, I got the news that Jennifer Finch died.

For those that don’t know, Jennifer Finch was the bass player and one of the songwriters of L7. For those that don’t know L7, don’t worry, there will be links and videos at the end of this post.

Less than a week ago, those close to Finch let it be known that she’d been diagnosed with brain cancer. Obviously, we know now that the prognosis was bad and that post was preparing the ground for today’s news.

L7 were a hugely important band for me. Jason and I have spoken a few times on the podcast about being men growing up listening mainly to male bands until the women in our lives pointed out our blind spot. In particular, I remember Kirstin Innes (a wonderful author and friend, check out her books if you’re looking for something to read) berating me that the only female artists I listened to were either beautiful (Tori Amos) or male bands with a female front person (Garbage, Skunk Anansie, Sleeper etc) and usually both. It was a fair cop, and made me rethink my attitude.

Grunge was and is my music, and L7, Babes in Toyland, The Gits, those bands were more grunge than Pearl Jam, Nirvana or Soundgarden ever were. Grunge is, as Kurt put it, Black Sabbath being molested by Black Flag, and by Christ that’s what L7 sounded like. It took their poppier song “Pretend We’re Dead” to break through, but listen to debut album L7 (1988) and 1990’s Smell the Magic. That is grunge.

I remember driving from Aberdeen to Cornwall for a holiday with my mum and my sister when “Andres” came out (1994), buying the cassette single and playing it non-stop in the car and on my walkman, strutting up and down the beaches of St Ives and Penzance in a blue carpet jacket, ripped jeans, and more thread bracelets than is permissible on one human.

I remember watching the Kathleen Turner movie Serial Mom purely because L7 played a band in it, with some stunning costume accessories.

I remember learning to play “Pretend We’re Dead” and making the opening line—What’s up with what’s going down?—the quote on my MySpace page.

I remember hearing “Shitlist” in Natural Born Killers and going berserk.

Wargasm. Shitlist. Shove. Fuel My Fire. Freak Magnet. Andres. Riding With a Movie Star. Pretend We’re Dead.

L7, more than any band, taught me what punk is—musical punk and social punk, as Mike Watt put it—and made me realise that what Jason calls “the squalor” was hugely attractive to me. Maybe not enough to devote my life to it, but to at least romanticise it and dabble in it.

They also taught me, before anyone else, that the idea that rock is a “male” space is fucking bullshit. I wouldn’t be who I am today without the women in my life taking the time to metaphorically (and sometimes literally) smack me in the head, but I definitely wouldn’t be who I am today as a man or as a musician without having been exposed to L7—Donita Spark, Suzi Gardner, Dee Plakas, and Jennifer Finch—at an impressionable moment in my life.

For which, Jennifer Finch, much thanks. This is a tiny part of the legacy you leave behind, but it is the part that matters most to me.