Writer/Video Star: Gogo Germaine | Publisher: Greg Gerding, University of Hell | Agent: Nat Kimber, the Rights Factory | Video Editing: i.design.nyc | Photography/Videography: Gisele Assink-Barnes and my two anonymous angels of benign destruction
A more rock and roll coven of teenage girls you’ve never met than Gogo Germaine and her gang. They were apt to gutter themselves up in jail tats, start the party by opening beer bottles with their teeth, and giddily haunt the infrastructure of debauchery that is Fort Collins in the ‘90s: liquor stores who regularly sold to minors, smoke-friendly coffee shops, and cool parents who looked the other way. Gogo and Co. performed a vivid spectrum of misbehavior in a quest to feel everything: the plunge from the high dive into a pitch-black pool, the rush of valiantly holding up their end of the battle in Reagan’s War on Drugs. If asked, they’d say they don’t owe it anyone to explain what’s cool about subsisting on malt liquor, smashy guitars and the writings of Lester Bangs. Even if you’re a thirteen year old girl.
And yet, even the most raucous rock and rock songs can strike an emotional chord. It’s from modern day motherhood that Gogo explores the origins of trouble, from being a differently-wired girl to trying to make the world a better place, whether that’s by ditching class or recalling teen stories awash in glory guitars. Gogo’s world–replete with wastoid punks and sexual nihilism–is the perfect lens from which to explore how rape culture thrives. It’s this dichotomy that Glory Guitars straddles like it’s a live rocket, with prose often joyful, explosive, visceral, manic and gut-punchingly heartbreaking.
Glory Guitars: Memoir of a `90s Teenage Punk Rock Girl will be published by University of Hell in Spring of 2022.
Erin K. Barnes 