The Flash Girls are a now defunct

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

duo based out of

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

. The duo consisted of

Emma Bull Emma Bull (born December 13, 1954) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Her novels include the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated '' Bone Dance'' and the urban fantasy '' War for the Oaks''. She is also known for a series of anthologies ...

, a noted

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

author, and

Lorraine Garland Lorraine Garland (born 15 February 1963) is a folk musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She sang and played fiddle with science fiction author Emma Bull Emma Bull (born December 13, 1954) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He ...

, also known as "The Fabulous Lorraine". Garland is also notable as Neil Gaiman's personal assistant; the group formed at a

Guy Fawkes Day Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the e ...

party at Gaiman's home. The connections that both Bull and Garland had with the science fiction and fantasy communities allowed them to have an unusually notable group of people writing songs for and with them, including

Jane Yolen Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She is the author or editor of more than 350 books, of which the best known is ''The Devil's Arithmetic'', a Holocaust novella. He ...

Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including '' Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', '' The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and '' From He ...

, and Neil Gaiman. These songs are mixed in with their own original works, traditional songs such as Star of the County Down and Lily of the West, as well as poems put to music, including works by

Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...

and A.A. Milne. The group has three albums, ''The Return of Pansy Smith and Violet Jones'' (1993), ''Maurice and I'' (1994), and ''Play Each Morning Wild Queen'' (2001). Following their second album, the pair split up due to Bull moving to

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

to pursue screenwriting. Since then, Garland joined the band Folk UnderGround. During their time apart between "Maurice and I" and "Wild Queen," the duo continued to write material, and in early 2001 Bull flew back to

for an intense two-weeks of recording sessions. They intended to perform a concert with the new material, but while the band was setting up for the concert Bull fell and broke both her arms. The Flash Girls did manage to do a few performances in 2001 with a session musician covering Bull's

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

parts, but apparently have performed together infrequently since. One recent appearance was at ConFusion 2005, ak
31 Flavors of ConFusion
where Bull with

Will Shetterly Will Shetterly (born 1955) is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction best known for his novel '' Dogland'' (1997). The novel is inspired by his childhood at the tourist attraction Dog Land owned by his parents. He won the Minnesota Bo ...

were Author Guests of Honor. ConFusion is held in the Metro Detroit area every January. Garland and Bull performed together, per Steven Brust, ConFusion's Toastmaster that year. Bull and Garland somehow landed their third-ever gig as the opening band for

Warren Zevon Warren William Zevon (; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003) was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician. Zevon's most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", " Lawyers, Guns and Money", and " Roland the Headless Th ...

to a packed crowd at Minneapolis' First Avenue Club. They were both extremely nervous, having been together for only a month. Garland said that if they screwed up in front of such a huge crowd, she was going to change her name to Pansy Smith and move into Gaiman's basement; in his blog, Gaiman says this was his suggestion. Bull agreed and said she'd join Garland and change her name to Violet Jones. Although the concert went off without a hitch, the pair adopted these names as their alter egos and made up a fictional history of a female Irish folk duo in the 1920s and used it as a theme for their first record, "The Return of Pansy Smith and Violet Jones." Pansy Smith and Violet Jones became characters in the

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

series '' Sovereign Seven'', where they run a coffee shop. The group's name came from the old

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...

term "flash," which means well-dressed and of dubious reputation, or "knowing more than is socially acceptable." A number of folk songs mention "flash girls," most notably the one attributed by Bull's husband

as being the source for the group's name, "House-husband's Lament (Rocking the Cradle)." The line in question goes, "Come all you young men with a notion to marry/Oh, pray, won't you leave those flash girls alone." Both The Flash Girls and Bull's former group,

Cats Laughing Cats Laughing is a folk rock band, founded in the late 1980s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and revived in 2015. Several of its members, including Emma Bull and best-selling author Steven Brust, are better known as writers of fantasy and science fict ...

, have been mentioned in Shetterly's stories for the fantasy fiction

shared universe A shared universe or shared world is a fictional universe from a set of creative works where more than one writer (or other artist) independently contributes a work that can stand alone but fits into the joint development of the storyline, chara ...

Borderland.

Notes

External links

Emma Bull and Will Shetterly's Flash Girls site

The oldest reference to 'flash girls'

A history of Violet Jones and Pansy Smith

* ttp://www.greenmanreview.com/flash_girls.html The Green Man Review of "Maurice and I"
The Green Man Review of "Play Each Morning Wild Queen"

31 Flavors of ConFusion
Flash Girls, The Flash Girls, The American musical duos Female musical duos Folk music duos Filkers {{DEFAULTSORT:Flash Girls