Pagan Babies were a short-lived American rock band formed by
Kat Bjelland
Katherine Lynne Bjelland (born December 9, 1963) is an American musician. She rose to prominence as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the alternative rock band Babes in Toyland, which she formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1987. ...
and
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as t ...
in 1985. Love had initially conceived the band in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
with Bjelland under the name Sugar Babydoll, and the group was joined by bassist
Jennifer Finch
Jennifer Finch (born August 5, 1966) is an American musician, designer, and photographer most notable for being the primary bass player of the punk rock band L7. Active in L7 from 1986 to 1996, Finch also wrote music and performed with her band ...
upon their relocation to San Francisco. The group would go through several lineup and name changes before recording a four-track demo under the Pagan Babies name with drummer Deidre Schletter and bassist
Janis Tanaka
Janis Tanaka (born January 9, 1963) is an American bassist who has worked as a session musician and on tour with a number of well-known artists including Pink, Fireball Ministry, Hammers of Misfortune, Stone Fox, and L7. She was also a member o ...
.
History
Establishment as Sugar Babydoll
Courtney Love had originally come up with the name and idea for the band in the early 1980s when she was a teenager in Portland, but aborted the project and moved to San Francisco in 1982 where she had a brief stint as a singer for
Faith No More
Faith No More is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1979. Before settling on the current name in July 1983, the band performed under the names Sharp Young Men and later Faith No Man. Bassist Billy Gould, keyboardist/r ...
. Upon returning to Portland in 1983, Love met Kat Bjelland at the
Satyricon nightclub
Satyricon was a nightclub in the Old Town neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States that operated from 1984 to 2010. It was the longest-running punk venue in the western United States, and has been referred to by some journalists and histo ...
.
Both Love and Bjelland were frequent visitors to the rock club, known in the 1980s as a hub for
punk rock shows and rock musicians.
According to Bjelland, after the two had met, Love, who was looking to form an all-female rock group, "fell to her knees" and begged "please, please be my guitarist."
In June 1985, Bjelland and Love were joined by Suzanne Ramsey and bassist
Jennifer Finch
Jennifer Finch (born August 5, 1966) is an American musician, designer, and photographer most notable for being the primary bass player of the punk rock band L7. Active in L7 from 1986 to 1996, Finch also wrote music and performed with her band ...
in San Francisco, and the group went by the name Sugar Babydoll'', a variation on a prior idea, Sugar Babylon. "We were going to make the most obnoxious music in the world," Love said in 1998. "However, I had a doctor who gave me a hundred sedatives a week. So we ended up making this faux
Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins was a Scottish rock band active from 1979 to 1997. They were formed in Grangemouth by Robin Guthrie (guitars, drum machine) and Will Heggie (bass), adding Elizabeth Fraser (vocals) in 1981 and replacing Heggie with multi-instrum ...
music, but I didn't really have the voice, and I was singing in a register that was way too high for me."
Bjelland recalled her time in the band in a 1994 interview, commenting: "I'd quit the Venarays by this time and me and Courtney were trying to get a band together. We needed a bass player, so when we found Jennifer we formed Sugar Babydoll, Sugar Babylon, Sugar Bunny Farm or whatever it was called. We went through a few names, and we only played a couple of shows. It was the smallest thing I've ever done musically."
Renaming and demo
After the departure of bassist Finch, Bjelland and Love recruited
Janis Tanaka
Janis Tanaka (born January 9, 1963) is an American bassist who has worked as a session musician and on tour with a number of well-known artists including Pink, Fireball Ministry, Hammers of Misfortune, Stone Fox, and L7. She was also a member o ...
to play bass, and through Tanaka found a drummer/
pianist
A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
, Deidre Schletter. The band soon began rehearsing in friends' bedrooms, and played numerous covers and some originals during their
jam session
A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without exte ...
s. During this time, the group went by the name Pagan Babies.
Love and Bjelland's shared apartment in San Francisco became the Pagan Babies' rehearsal space. It was here that they recorded a demo tape in December 1985. Aside from the band's four main songs, "I See Nothing," "Colder than Me," "My Angels" and "All Roads Lead To" were also written, though only may have been embryonic lyrics written by Love.
The band performed live twice before splitting up, first in a friend's bedroom, where they played electric versions of their songs, and second in a friend's living room with acoustic guitars. Both shows and rehearsals were later described as just about "getting together and screwing off". During their post-show period, Bjelland began writing songs inspired by punk band
Frightwig
Frightwig is an all-female punk rock band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1982 by Deanna Ashley and Mia Levin. After many line-up changes, Frightwig retired in 1994.
Frightwig reformed in 2012 with Rebecca Sevrin and Rachel Thoele. Fr ...
— some of which would later become Babes in Toyland songs — a band introduced to Bjelland by Tanaka's boyfriend at the time. Love, determined to conserve the band's new wave and
dream pop
Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such as ...
-inspired sound, was not impressed with the new material and subsequently, an internal feud developed within the band, leading to Love being ousted. The night Love left the band, she was noted as saying "you're never going to get anywhere playing that punk rock noise."
After Love's departure, the band disbanded and the remaining members became the short-lived Italian Whorenuns. In retrospect, Love referred to Pagan Babies as one of her "pretend bands" that never manifested.
The band recorded a demo tape on one of the member's
4-track cassette deck in December 1985 prior to their splitting up.
The demo tape was rumored to have been broadcast on local radio. The tape contained four songs:
*"Cold Shoulders" (written by Love and Bjelland)
*"Bernadine" (written by Love)
*"Best Sunday Dress" (written by Love and Bjelland)
*"Quiet Room" (written by Love and Bjelland)
Aftermath
"Best Sunday Dress" would later be rearranged by Love's band,
Hole
A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in many fields of en ...
, in 1998. Though performed frequently throughout the band's 1994–1995 tour dates, a studio version of the song was only recorded in 1997 and appeared as a
b-side
The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...
on the band's most notable single, "
Celebrity Skin
''Celebrity Skin'' is the third studio album by American alternative rock band Hole, released on September 8, 1998, in the United States on DGC Records and internationally on Geffen Records. It was the last album released by the band before the ...
." A clip from the master tape of the demo would also appear on the Hole track "Starbelly," which was released on the band's debut album ''
Pretty on the Inside
''Pretty on the Inside'' is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band Hole, released on September 17, 1991, in the United States on Caroline Records. Produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, and Gumball frontman Don Fleming, the al ...
'' in September 1991. "Quiet Room" would later be redone by Bjelland's band,
Babes in Toyland, on their 1991
EP ''
To Mother'' and again on the band's 1992
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
''
Fontanelle
A fontanelle (or fontanel) (colloquially, soft spot) is an anatomical feature of the infant human skull comprising soft membranous gaps ( sutures) between the cranial bones that make up the calvaria of a fetus or an infant. Fontanelles allow f ...
''. The track "Quiet Room" was inspired by Love's stay at Hillcrest school in her teen years according to her book ''
Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love'', where it features some old records from the school and lyrics to the song, however, the accuracy of whether Love really wrote the song is questioned due to Love's stating differently at several different times. Furthermore, the melody of "Quiet Room" resembles that of
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
's "King Volcano"; Love previously admitted to copying the riff from Bauhaus's "Dark Entries" on the track "Mrs. Jones" off of Hole's ''
Pretty on the Inside
''Pretty on the Inside'' is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band Hole, released on September 17, 1991, in the United States on Caroline Records. Produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, and Gumball frontman Don Fleming, the al ...
''.
[Love, Courtney (September 1, 1994). "The Hole Story". ''MTV Networks''(Interview). Interviewed by Loder, Kurt. ]A lot of the songs are complete Bauhaus rip-offs.
In 2004, the complete demo tape circulated amongst trading circles online. The songs were transferred to
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
format from a copy of Janis Tanaka's friend's cassette. It was also rumoured in 2006 that
Sympathy for the Record Industry
Sympathy for the Record Industry (also known as Sympathy Records or Sympathy 4 the R.I.) is a mainly independent garage rock and punk label formed in 1988 by Long Gone John. The first Sympathy release was the Lazy Cowgirls' ''Radio Cowgirl'' LP ...
, Hole's one-time label, were planning to release at least one song from the Pagan Babies demos in a compilation, but the idea was later dropped. However, "Quiet Room" saw release on Babes in Toyland's 2004 compilation, ''
The Best of Babes In Toyland and Kat Bjelland''.
Members
*
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as t ...
lead vocals
*
Kat Bjelland
Katherine Lynne Bjelland (born December 9, 1963) is an American musician. She rose to prominence as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the alternative rock band Babes in Toyland, which she formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1987. ...
lead guitar, backing vocals
*
Janis Tanaka
Janis Tanaka (born January 9, 1963) is an American bassist who has worked as a session musician and on tour with a number of well-known artists including Pink, Fireball Ministry, Hammers of Misfortune, Stone Fox, and L7. She was also a member o ...
bass
* Deidre Schletterdrums, piano
*
Jennifer Finch
Jennifer Finch (born August 5, 1966) is an American musician, designer, and photographer most notable for being the primary bass player of the punk rock band L7. Active in L7 from 1986 to 1996, Finch also wrote music and performed with her band ...
bass
*Jane Weems-- drums
Notes
References
Works cited
*
*
*
*
External links
Holelive.com's recording information
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pagan Babies
1984 establishments in Oregon
1985 establishments in California
All-female bands
Alternative rock groups from California
Dream pop musical groups
Musical groups established in 1985
Musical groups disestablished in 1986
Musical groups from Portland, Oregon
Musical groups from San Francisco
Courtney Love