Rhythm King & Her Friends in Oslo.

We had been looking forward to meeting RKAHF for months that had turned into years. It had never worked out: we were always too late, or too early, or not there.... But this time, it was going to be possible, we were going to see our all-times favourite, our best radically-inspirational electroqueerfeminist band! The concert was great, although, the crowd was not a huge one at this first night of We Play Guitar club, at Garage, Oslo. It might have been because it was Sunday, or because Scream Club was playing the same night at OvaryAction's Sundays'r'Sindays (sorry that forces were not joined, it was not because we did not try) in the town's lesbian bar. Whatever the reason, their performance lived up to my high expectations, with Pauline jumping in the pit and Linda taking off in guitar anti-soli. They played most songs form their excellent I'm Disco and came back for more in an encore. This interview was not made then, though. We decided it would be wiser to do it via mail, considering the level of intoxication reached during the after-party. We talked a lot then, though, and I am sorry if we cannot share the integrality with you, but the questions we sent were probably influenced by what we talked about, so here it is, we hope you'll enjoy it as much as we did.

BabesInBoyland/OvaryAction: Can you tell us how the whole Rhythm King and Her Friends saga started?
Pauline: We met in Berlin. When I arrived there I had an idea to start a band and I was looking for some girls who would play with me. I bought a tape of a German band that I had never heard of: it was called miyax, they were from Bremen - I didn't know at all at the time where Bremen could be... I was riding a lot my bicycle, discovering the city and I very often listened to that tape which really caught my attention. It was punk rock but very funky and with unusual melodies and voice. at some point I had to write to them, which I usually never do - and some time later I went to a concert of them in Berlin with sara, that I already knew and was starting to play music with, and that’s were we met Linda for the first time who was in the band. We flirted... then became friends and one year later after miyax had broken up we started together, Linda Sara and I, rhythm king and her friends, it was 2000. what was very new to us 3 is that, as we all are queer, we really wanted our project to reflect our lives and politics, we were also tired of the whole punk rock grrl style, I mean not that it hadn’t been important to us, on the contrary, but I think at the end of the 90ies nothing very exiting was happening any more. We wanted to carry on some kind of spirit of it, for example playing explicitly for a feminine or queer audience, strengthen feminist networks, make visible our inspiration in feminist thinking and art etc, but we also wanted to make music that was electronic. somehow we were tired of going to dance to queer clubs that were playing only straight music, and of some stereotypes like lesbian music needs only guitars and club music is made by straight guys or maybe by gays. So we wanted to take back the dance floor and make music for the queer ladies & gentlemen.

BabesInBoyland/OvaryAction: How did you find that band name? "Rhythm King and Her Friends" sounds like a complex story...
Pauline: The name was not found in one day indeed... we had the idea looking at the cover of a Blondie album, on which the guitar player is wearing a very stylish pink jacket with "rhythm king" written in the back. We thought it was a lot of rhythm kings in the world and that it was about time they were not only men.... that's why we stole the rhythm king's jacket and added some friends, to strengthen this idea that we are not isolated, that we are working within a community, that we have many friends who inspire us, who organize things with us, or who work with us.

BabesInBoyland/OvaryAction: Do you look upon yourself as political band? As a band living their politics rather than explaining them?
Pauline: Yes, it is very important to us that our work within the band reflects our political ideals: whether it is in our texts, in the way we work with the band or in the way we present our work and ourselves to the outside. I don't think it's enough to just write political lyrics: we try to work as a feminist collective: to share our knowledge, tasks, and money in a collective way. It is very important to us to belong to a queer, leftist, anti-racist, feminist scene (to list once and for all the -ist words!) and to play at events within these scenes.

BabesInBoyland/OvaryAction: Do you feel like you are part of a queer community, of the evolution of drag king histories?(I mean both in a political AND a musical perspective). Do you have to fiercely defend your "boyish closet"?
Pauline: Yes, we are definitely part of a queer community in the broad sense of the term, since even in Berlin; we can't really say there is only one queer community: there are several. I think that, in a way, we defend our boyish closet on stage, where in the world of electronic music, the boyish closet belongs mainly to male musicians (nodding in front of their laptop, with shaved heads and glasses, if you see what I mean) I think that when we play in clubs specialized in electronic music, the audience is often a little bit shocked (sometimes people even thought we were men, by the way), or else some people are a bit puzzled and they ask each other: "do you think they are lesbians?" as if it was the very first time they saw some (we heard this from some friends of ours who were next to them in the crowd)

BabesInBoyland/OvaryAction: How did you write the tracks for this fabulous I'm Disco? Do you have a routine of more or less set rules/roles as far as writing is concerned? How do you choose the language you're going to use and who is going to sing?
Pauline: We do not have a specific method and we try to change roles all the time. It’s different every time. We try to all sing and also to exchange instruments. I believe this is part of a feminist approach, not to become expert in only one field, we often write the texts together. Of course, one of us comes up with some ideas, but then we work together to develop them. sometimes we have a text idea and we try to use sounds or melodies that are going to carry the same contents - like for the song „copy-moi je veux voyager" where we use a very obvious 80ies sound with the synthesizers and melodies: we were reflecting on this return of the 80ies hype, and remembering how the aesthetics of that time were so much marked by the cold war, and how much our own lifes had to do with that story. In this song we try to relate sound and text in a way that both carry the meaning.

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