Guns Don’t Kill People, Rotten Bananas Do

The Re-Discovery and Resurrection of Girls on Fire

Leslie Singer, 1985

It’s been seven months almost to the day since I received the first email of inquiry and re-introduction from the peerless and fearless artist and intrepid Electronic Cottage editor, Hal McGee.

​Hundreds of emails, questions and answers, photos, fanzines, flyers, 45’s, unearthed cassette tapes, books, cd’s, chicken pot pies and Big Macs (hold the cellulose milk shake, please) later, we now have a site/project that is an organism/artwork of its own.

Girls On Fire archival site

Like two composers working on a single score, Hal and I, to paraphrase John Cage from “A Composer’s Confessions”, experienced the pleasure of continual discovery; undiminished because the possibilities were/are endless.

The blurring of life and art was our inspiration. From an August 11 email from Hal, “When I do research on a subject I immerse myself in as many words, sights, sounds, tastes and smells associated with the subject matter as possible.  No joke. It’s the way my art is too. Immersion.” He wasn’t kidding! Along the way we deeply grooved on Erik Satie, William Burroughs, Vivienne Dick, The Contortions, Julee Cruise’s time in the B-52’s and of course, Allan Kaprow.

Leslie in Washington, DC, 1982

A true collaboration, embedded in the site/project is all of Hal’s numerous, contributive hyperlinks which further edify and add to a story of US history and culture as told through the journey of Girls on Fire. In the seven sections, from the recession and N-R-Gee (Crises Blues) of a ‘70’s teenage punk girl to the dawn of the Reagan ‘80’s prog-rock/post-punk of DC’s ultra Rip It Up and Start Again Pigpens, Psychodrama, to the discovery and safe packaging and delivery to Gainesville, Florida of a tape of Early Rarities featuring a song destined after 35 years to amazingly get played at least once on the radio, "I’m in Love and on KW", immersion and discovery were our words to live by.

With the five sections in one known as
​the Girls on Fire Cassettes,
(from the golden age of cassette music, 1983-1985)
Hal, inventively, came up with cool ways to illustrate the time and place of those songs
—such as using Google Map photos to find the still-existent laundromat of “I Wash and Dry My Clothes”,
​from I Think About Jackson Pollock
​and the site that sells mugs and t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Guns Don’t Kill People, Rotten Bananas Do” to illustrate the song, “Rotten Bananas” from In My Blood.

Thanks to Hal, I got back in touch with my ex-husband and cleared out a whole lot of old cobwebs with the Your Mom Too section.

Then we connected it all with my ‘80’s performance/cut up music videos collected in two compilations, Freud’s Snack Bar and Total Eclipse of the Sun.

It’s great to have all this audio and video work up on-line and available for streaming and downloading. The old is new again.

Leslie with her Fender Stratocaster, age 15

Along the way, it has been wonderful to renew contact and friendships with fellow travelers from the ‘80’s cassette days like Evan Cantor and Little Fyodor of Walls of Genius and Richard “Rick” Franecki of Vocokesh. I also want to thank
Al Margolis, Robin James, and Jerry Kranitz as well for all their contributions and support to this project. It has also been wonderful to meet and be inspired by the work of new listeners and supporters through the Electronic Cottage site. The sense of community that has truly transcended time and space is so life affirming and reminds me once again the positive power of music and art.

What’s next? As I mentioned to Hal in one of my emails during this process, for the past year I had felt something had been missing in my life but couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

​Right from the beginning of our work on the GOF site, I began to get the “itch” again to make sound pieces/songs.  I had been “woodshedding” since 2017 or so by listening to and reading the essays/interviews of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. 

My first return to audio was in June 2018 with a brief re-working of John Cage’s “Mesostic 2” that I recorded off the fly with my iPhone. It was a m4a file.

I sent it off to Hal and his response was very encouraging, patient and helpful with audio tips (record in WAV, not m4a) which is very Zen/Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji when I think about it now.

Since then I took his further advice and purchased one of those handy dandy ICD-PX470 digital recorders. The Girls on Fire loony tunes machine is fired up once again!

Stream and download Leslie's new Girls On Fire song, "Purple Tooth".

purple_tooth.mp3
File Size:	3431 kb
File Type:	mp3

Download File

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After a break of over 35 years, Girls on Fire is excited to be traveling to Gainesville, Florida and performing at the upcoming Apartment Music 32 and 33 shows (January 12-13, 2019).  I very much look forward to meeting and experiencing in-person the music of the great Floridian ECers.

"Florida" from Life is Too Funny — I Think I’ll $hoot Myself (1984)

To paraphrase John Cage, this time from his preface to his 1959 opus, Indeterminacy, “Then I said that I did not see that we were going to a goal, but that we were living in process, and that process is eternal.”

Editor's Note: Here are Leslie's notes on the song "Florida":

​My grandparents, Grandma Sylvia and my Grandpa Louie (my father's parents) moved down to St. Pete from Washington DC circa 1970.  I was very close to them and have a lot of good memories of both of them.  To this day, I still remember advice that both of them gave to me when I was a child and an adolescent.  When I was 11 and 12, I spent both of those summers with them in St. Pete.  I fished, played chess and read library books with Grandpa Louie and Grandma Sylvia taught me America style cooking.  My grandparents were hardcore bridge players and would take me with them to their games.  All kinds of people would be there playing bridge. I used to do small pencil sketches of their faces especially those of the younger hippie looking guys while sitting near my grandparents.  I think that one of them noticed me sketching his face and kind of dug it.  I think that I was supposed to be learning bridge but I could never get that interested in it.  I have fond memories of those summers.  When I first met John Hricko, he showed me photos of his two sisters who both lived in Tallahassee and how whenever he went there to visit, everyone played bridge so thereafter he and I would swap Florida stories.  I did that song for him.  As I recall he really enjoyed it.

Florida is a hot state
Florida, da, da is a long state
Florida is a hot state
Florida, da, da is a long state
Florida is a hot state
Florida is a long state
And Florida is very old to me
Florida is a hot state
Florida is a long state
And Florida is very old to me
Florida is a hot state
Florida is a long state
Florida is a hot state
Florida is a long state
And Florida is very old to me
Florida
Florida
Florida
Da, da, da, da