9. ESGESG
I heard them when I was touring with Bikini Kill and had started hanging out in New York. They’re from the Bronx and I was learning about the sampling of their song ‘Moody’, one of the most sampled songs to date. With them it’s again the sound that made me go, "Wow!" The production was really interesting, that you could make this very sparse dance music; it’s just a bassline and drums. I can’t really remember who introduced me to ESG, probably my boyfriend at the time. It might also have been Adam Horovitz from the Beastie Boys who now I’m married to. Or maybe Tobi Vail gave me a tape before that. I saw their reunion show in NY, it was one of their first reunion shows, and two of their daughters were on stage. Then we got to tour with them. We were really nervous around them. I love how the singer’s voice can sound so sweet and angry at the same time, like, "I’m just a regular woman, a regular gal." I always wanted to be just a woman in band; I just didn’t know I was going to have to work so hard to make it okay for me to be that. Now in my 40s I finally don’t have to make every single song about, "Go women go!" For me, one of the biggest achievements of my life has been having this experimental band from 2005 telling me, "Oh we just felt we didn’t have to sing about feminism because you already did that." They just got to sing about whatever they wanted and try these really interesting melodic and dissonant things.
