Olympia, Wash. · 1991–1997 · Loud & Loaded Records · All ages
Collection copy · Not for trade
Safety's off. Always.
p. 2
Typed in 1991. Retyped for the archive. Nothing added.
Machine Gun Kitty formed in Olympia, Washington, in the winter of 1991, in the kitchen of a rented house on the west side. Pip Delacroix had moved to Olympia from Detroit the year before. She played guitar and had a notebook of songs. June Okafor played bass and had a notebook of addresses. Beth Lindqvist played drums and had a kit, which settled the question of where rehearsals would be held.
The first rehearsal was on a Tuesday. They wrote two songs. One of them was "Fire At Will." Both are still in the set lists the archive holds.
They played their first show eleven weeks later, in a basement, to forty people. They released an EP that summer and sold every copy out of a van. They made two more records. They stopped in 1997, when Beth went to law school. Nobody involved has described this as a breakup. It is recorded here as one because the band stopped.
Safety's off. Always.
Hand-lettered on the inside of the Fire At Will EP sleeve, 1991
p. 3
Three players. Listed in the order they appear on the Fire At Will sleeve. Nobody was in charge. See p. 7.
Pip plays rhythm guitar with the amplifier set past the point of comfort and a right hand that does not stop between verses. She sings the verses low and the choruses at full volume, on pitch. Her eyeliner was applied before every show and did not survive any of them.
“We were not angry. We were specific.”
Now Lives in Olympia. Teaches guitar on weekday afternoons. Has been asked to play again more than once. Has said no each time, politely.
June plays bass with a pick, close to the bridge, at tempos the songs did not always want, and holds them there. She wrote most of the bass lines before the guitar parts existed. She also ran the zine and cassette table at every show, which is why she was always the last one loaded into the van.
“Pip wrote the words. I wrote the address on the back.”
Now Librarian. Manages a public library's zine collection in Portland, Oregon. The collection holds every issue the band ever printed. She did not donate them. She bought them back.
Beth plays a four-piece kit with two cymbals and does not drop a beat. She counts every song in out loud, in a voice that carries to the back of a basement. People in the South Sound who agreed about nothing else agreed that she was the best drummer in town.
“I kept time. Someone had to.”
Now Admitted to law school in 1997. Graduated. Family court judge.
p. 4
The archive holds more than one band with a Delacroix at the microphone. They are sisters.
Delacroix
Family record, as established
Learned where to stand at a microphone from the side of her sister's stage, Detroit, 1984 onward.
Also filed under Kittens.
Stompin' Kittens
Appears in the archive.
stompinkittens.com →Incarcerated Kittens
Appears in the archive.
incarceratedkittens.com →p. 5
Three records on Loud & Loaded, 1991–1995. Each one was sold first from a table, then from a van, then from shops.
Loud & Loaded Records · 1991
Five songs. Three thousand copies, sold out of a van. The van is still running.
7-inch EP · cassette · 5 tracks · 10:51
Loud & Loaded Records · 1993
The important one. Twelve songs, recorded in four days in a converted garage in Olympia.
LP · cassette · 12 tracks · 29:45
Loud & Loaded Records · 1995
Named after a letter they received. Ten songs. The letter is reproduced on the inner sleeve.
LP · CD · cassette · 10 tracks · 25:33
p. 6
Four chapters. Typed.
01
The house on the west side had a kitchen large enough for a drum kit if nobody used the oven. Nobody used the oven. Machine Gun Kitty rehearsed there three nights a week for most of 1991. A cat that belonged to the house, not to any of the tenants, sat on the counter for most rehearsals and left during the loud ones.
The Fire At Will EP was recorded in two days that summer. Loud & Loaded Records pressed it. The band drove it around Washington and Oregon in a van June had bought for four hundred dollars. They sold all three thousand copies from the back of it.
02
Suppressing Fire was recorded in four days in a converted garage in Olympia in the spring of 1993. The band had played the songs for a year before they recorded them. It shows. The record is twelve songs and thirty minutes, and none of it is loose.
It is the record people mean when they talk about Machine Gun Kitty. It is the record that people who were sixteen in 1993 still have. Several of them have written to the archive to say so.
03
In the autumn of 1994 a letter arrived at June's post office box. It was on the letterhead of a law office. It asked the band to cease and desist. It did not say from what. It was addressed "Dear Sirs."
The band answered it. They read it aloud at shows for a year. In 1995 they named their third record after it and printed it on the inner sleeve. No second letter arrived.
04
Beth Lindqvist had been studying at night since 1995. She applied to law school in the autumn of 1996 and told the other two the same week. She was admitted in the spring of 1997. Machine Gun Kitty played its last show in Olympia that June, in the basement where it had played its first.
Beth graduated from law school. She is a family court judge. Pip and June attended the swearing-in. They sat in the second row.
The van
Maroon. Four hundred dollars. Three thousand EPs. Two transmissions. No radio. Still running.
The cardigan
June wore the same oversized cardigan at most shows between 1992 and 1996. It was gray. She has said it was warm. The archive accepts this.
The count-in
Beth counted in every song out loud, at full voice, including songs that began with the guitar. The band did not start until she had counted.
The table
Every show had a table. On it: the records, cassettes dubbed in June's kitchen, and whatever zines people had brought to trade. Nothing on the table cost more than five dollars.
Two sisters, two cities
Pip Delacroix is the younger sister of Roxanne "Razor" Delacroix of Blackmarket Kittens (Detroit, 1984–1992). Pip saw her sister's band from the side of the stage from the age of thirteen. She has said that is where she learned to stand at a microphone.
p. 7
Incidents on file, and the letter. The letter is reproduced from the inner sleeve of Cease and Desist.
Law Offices ████████████
Spokane, Washington
October 11, 1994
Machine Gun Kitty, P.O. Box, Olympia, Washington
Re: Cease and desist
Dear Sirs:
This office represents a client in connection with the activities of your group.
We hereby demand that you cease and desist from all such activities immediately.
Please confirm in writing within fourteen (14) days that you have complied with this demand.
Very truly yours,
███████████
Which activities? — J.O.
1991
Olympia, Washington, and most of the I-5 corridor
June Okafor bought the van in May 1991 from a neighbor who was moving to Alaska. It cost four hundred dollars. It was maroon on the outside and tan on the inside and it did not have a working radio. Between 1991 and 1997 it carried the band to every show they played outside Olympia and sold every copy of the Fire At Will EP from its back doors. It is still running. It is registered to June. It has had two new transmissions and no new radio.
1993
A hall in Tacoma, Washington
At a show in Tacoma in February 1993, the house sound engineer walked up to the stage during load-in and asked who was in charge here. Pip said she was. June said she was. Beth said she was. He waited for one of them to correct the others. None of them did. He set the levels with all three. The song was written that week and opens Suppressing Fire.
1994
A post office box in Olympia, Washington
The letter arrived in October 1994. It was one page, on cream letterhead, from a law office in Spokane writing on behalf of a client it did not name. It asked the band to cease and desist immediately. It did not specify the activity. It was addressed "Dear Sirs." June wrote back to ask what, specifically, the band was to cease. No reply was received. The letter was printed on the inner sleeve of Cease and Desist in 1995. The original is in June's files.
June wrote back. No reply was received.
p. 8
The Suppressing Fire Tour, 1993. Ten shows. The van went out from Olympia and came back to Olympia. Flyers from the archive's collection.
Machine Gun Kitty
Olympia
WA · 1993
Record release. Basement.
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Tacoma
WA · 1993
The hall from the song.
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Bellingham
WA · 1993
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Vashon Island
WA · 1993
By ferry.
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Portland
OR · 1993
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Eugene
OR · 1993
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Arcata
CA · 1993
Van needed a new transmission.
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Boise
ID · 1993
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Spokane
WA · 1993
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
Machine Gun Kitty
Olympia
WA · 1993
Home.
All ages · $5 · Nobody turned away
If they ask: Speak Up
Taped to the floor, Olympia, 1993. In Pip's hand.
Wet Season (fanzine), Olympia · Issue 6, Spring 1993
A kitchen, a van and the new record
We talked to Machine Gun Kitty in the kitchen where they practice. There is a cat. The cat does not belong to them. The new record is called Suppressing Fire and it is twelve songs long and every one of them is the best one.
WE ASKED: Who writes the songs?
PIP: I write the words. We all write the songs.
JUNE: The bass lines come first.
BETH: Then I tell everyone how fast.
WE ASKED: What do you want people to take from a show?
PIP: A flyer. A tape. A reason to start a band.
They play the grange hall on Saturday. All ages. Five dollars. Nobody turned away.
Northwest Noise Ledger · November 1995
Record review
The third Machine Gun Kitty record takes its title from a letter the band received from a law office last year. The letter is printed on the inner sleeve. It is the only thing on the record that does not know what it wants.
Everything else does. Beth Lindqvist's drumming is exact. June Okafor's bass carries the melody more often than the guitar does. Pip Delacroix sings like someone reading a statement into the record. "Safety's Off" closes the album at three and a half minutes and it is the longest song the band has recorded. It is not long enough.
Received and filed without amendment.
I was sixteen. I bought Suppressing Fire from the table and a bass from a pawn shop the following week. I still play both.
R. Halvorsen, Bellingham, WA
Beth Lindqvist counted in every song so loudly I could hear it in the parking lot. I have never heard a drummer since without waiting for it.
T. Moreno, Eugene, OR
My daughter has my copy of the Fire At Will EP now. She asked where the van is. I told her it is still running.
D. Achterberg, Tacoma, WA
Back page
Records, shirts and printed matter for Machine Gun Kitty are issued through the Sideband Label store, along with the list for anything the archive files next.
The list is used for new records and merchandise. It is not shared, traded or photocopied.
MachineGunKitty
Safety's off. Always.
Olympia, WA · 1991–1997 · All ages