The Chicago garage rockers broke up in obscurity more than 30 years ago, but a German label is giving them a second chance at the audience they deserve. | jen_b_larson
might’ve vanished like dust in the wind. Like so many underground garage-rock bands, this Chicago group played live constantly but didn’t pay as much attention to releasing recordings—during their lifetime, from 1986 till 1991, they put out one self-titled, self-released seven-inch and a few DIY cassettes that they dubbed by hand to sell at gigs and by mail. Barbie Army could attract crowds, but they had a hard time building momentum.
ThirstyCraig had paired the audio with a black-and-white photo of three girls piled on top of one another, sassily rolling their tongues. At the time, I was grieving the breakup of my own garage-rock band Swimsuit Addition. I related to the Barbies, not just because they were a troupe of troublemaking women from Chicago, but also because we had similar styles—a penchant for poppy songs that flirted with chaos—and I felt connected to their lyrics.I couldn’t stop singing “Don’t Wait.
No Plan label owner Dario “Adam” Adamic also heard Barbie Army for the first time through ThirstyCraig’s channel, but at that point he’d already heard of them. In fact, he’d had their name in the back of his mind for 30 years: in 1990, a year after he moved from Croatia to Italy, he’d discovered a back issue ofthat included a 1987 interview with the band. He made a mental note of their name, but he didn’t encounter it again till he was browsing YouTube at the beginning of the pandemic.
“[They] cornered me on the back steps and were like, ‘You’re gonna play in our band!’” Tina says. “I was 16 at the time. I was running in older-kid circles.”Tina’s first influence had been a heavy metal band in her neighborhood. She began playing drums when she was 11, learning from another local metal drummer, who charged $5 per hour. Eventually, she convinced her mom that she needed a kit of her own. “She found a way,” Tina says.
Once, before Jean and Mary formed Barbie Army, they attended the U. of C.’s notorious Lascivious Costume Ball wearing dresses made of tampon “chain mail,” while Mary’s boyfriend wore a tampon box as a hat. Another time, a guy came up to Jean because he thought she had a rabbit’s foot. “No, it’s a tampon,” she replied, and he instantly recoiled. “It was a man repeller,” she says.
In 1986 and 1987, Barbie Army were mainstays at north-side establishments such as Phyllis’ Musical Inn, Weeds, and Batteries Not Included. On the south side, they regularly played at the Mexican Patriotic Club. They did small tours of the midwest—Wisconsin and Indiana—and they took two short southern tours with their friends in Spongetunnel and Paul Anderson’s Gram Parsons tribute band, Burning Rain.
“There were information wars. We were in an all-girl band. It was this assumption that if you’re an all-female band, you’re a pro-abortion band,” Mary says. “It’s like being called a communist because you’re teaching English to the poor.” “I just remember the emcee would continuously forget our name,” says Liz Tate, who played bass for the band in 1990. “He would just say, ‘Let’s hear it for the queens!’”
“I remember a 16-year-old Hispanic girl that played a show with them at China Club,” Ron says. “She was backstage doing her homework before the show.” That bassist was Christine Garcia, but the band called her “Christine Sixteen.”
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