Carry on Beautiful!

I can’t believe I actually got to see Bikini Kill live! This isn’t a legit proper review, in case you’ve just stumbled across this expecting that. This is just my excited ramblings because I didn’t think I’d ever get to have this experience, and I don’t even have the words to describe what it meant to me. I managed to end up at the barrier, though I have no idea how because I just about got there as the doors were opening after about 7 hours on the coach.

The crowd was exactly what I expected and I ended up talking to loads of different people and having a fab time before the gig had even started. Bikini Kill fans are the cool bad ass friendly girls I always expected them to be and it made the whole thing beyond special.

Being completely pressed against the barrier screaming along to songs that have helped shape my view of the world and myself and other people with shit loads of other people while people were crowd surfing and crying and dancing was exactly what I wanted and it was genuinely fucking incredible.

Bikini Kill perform today with the same passion and careless confidence they’ve always had, if not even more. Getting to hear the women I look up to most talk about current happenings was so weird considering how used I am to watching live footage from the 90’s but I loved every second of it.

It felt like my brain was working over time to process what each of them were doing because I just couldn’t process that they were actually there in front of me,playing the songs I’ve listened to hundreds of times, in the same space as me. It was honestly mind boggling.

I feel like this was an honestly life changing gig, which is probably over dramatic but I’m just going with it anyway. Between having travelled all the way to London on my own (aka survived 7 hours there, 3 and a half hours for the gig immediately followed by the 7 hour coach home) and experienced seeing Bikini Kill live I feel like a new person or some such shit, I don’t know, I feel different okay!! It was incredible and amazing and I feel so good about the whole experience and I’m going to remember it as one of the absolute highlights of my life that few other things are ever going to compare to.

-Dana