America 250 Rocktober Song #6: "Cool Schmool" by Bratmobile

We've dabbled in the South, the Northeast, and the Midwest, but I haven't yet featured a band or artist from the West Coast.  The State of Washington has given us many great bands and artists over the years, including Jimi Hendrix, The Sonics, Heart, and many many grunge bands.  

But grunge wasn't the only genre to come out of the state in the early '90s.  A little more than an hour down I-5 from Seattle is the state capital, Olympia and Evergreen State College, a bastion of liberal thinking and creativity.  Out of Olympia came the riot grrrl scene, a DIY feminist punk genre spearheaded by bands like Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, Excuse 17, and Sleater-Kinney.

I've already featured songs by Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney in prior Rocktobers, so I'm going with Bratmobile, who I just saw put on a great show at Riot Fest a few weeks ago.  While two of the band's founding members, Allison Wolfe (who is from Olympia) and Molly Neuman met as students at the University of Oregon, the band played their first gig and recorded their first songs in Olympia.  They also played at the now-legendary International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia in August 1991.

Between 1993 and 1994, the band released a full-length album, an EP, and a live album, but then broke up on stage at a show in New York in May 1994.  They reunited just before the dawn of the new millennium and released two more albums, one in 2000 and another in 2002, before going their separate ways again.  But they reunited again a few years ago, which means a new generation (or Gen Xers who didn't really know about them the first time around) get a chance to see them.

Anyway, I'm going with "Cool Schmool," off of the band's debut album, 1993's Pottymouth.  It's a frantic, surf-rock-tinged punk song mostly about not being concerned about being cool, but also partly about hating dogs and loving cats.  So they got that part wrong.