Prototype Issue
Fighting Words: The Bastard Fairies Mouth Off
By Phat X. Chiem
(page 1 of 1)Yellow Thunder Woman, the lead singer of indie-pop duo The Bastard Fairies, might be an Indian princess by birth, but she’s no dainty little thing. In fact, she’s downright profane—and damn proud of it.
When she and her bandmate, Robin Davey, played their first-ever gig, at the Viper Room on Sunset Blvd., she wound up flipping off her own audience. Then she got into a row with the bouncer. Yup, all in a good night’s work.
“They were a bunch of LA assholes who felt that we should be privileged that they came to see us,” says Yellow Thunder Woman, 25, a Yankton Sioux Indian and a direct descendant of Ponca Chief Standing Bear. “They should be privileged that I even got on stage, motherfuckers.”
“These people don’t go out to be inspired by bands,” adds Davey, 31, the former bass player for British blues-rock band The Hoax. “They go to compare haircuts.”
Obviously, the Fairies don’t mind getting in your face. Even if that face belongs to the fanatical wing of the Republican Party—Bill O’Reilly himself. The band members, who are also filmmakers, raised the ire of the conservative Fox News Channel pundit last fall when they produced a video featuring an 8-year-old girl spouting various social and political views, including the opinion that O’Reilly is “an idiot.”
Posted on YouTube, the video was a promotional stunt to debut the band. It worked. The broadcaster railed against the Fairies on his FNC show, even accusing the duo of “child abuse” for coaching the young girl. Of course, O’Reilly’s petty indignation only served to publicize the band and the video, which has been viewed 1.5 million times and is the all-time most-discussed video on YouTube.
“We just laughed because we got so many plays on YouTube,” Davey recalls. “Our reaction was not to do anything. We rose above his idiocracy.”
With their anti-establishment creds firmly minted, the duo released their debut effort, Memento Mori, in April. The album centers around the travails of a foul-mouthed young woman who cheats on her boyfriend, aggressively seduces men and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of it. Sound familiar?
“I’m just a little shit and it always shows,” says Yellow Thunder Woman, laughing.
Done mostly on a Mac with GarageBand software and using thrift-store instruments, the lo-fi album had an earlier life on the Internet when the Fairies allowed anyone to download most of it for free. More than 200,000 tracks from Memento Mori have been downloaded from the Fairies’ website. Best of all, the Fairies spent less than $1,000 to produce the album out of the San Fernando Valley home they share—an amount they recouped within weeks by licensing the music.
“That’s the great thing about the Internet,” Davey says. “Anybody can do it themselves and get it out there and not worry about someone distributing it. … The whole industry has to find a new way to make money and sell albums.”
“We’ve gotten loads of offers from major labels, but I have no fucking desire to get caught in that trap—it’s a waste of time,” adds Yellow Thunder Woman, who goes by Wakinyan (Wok-ee-ah) among friends.
When they’re not making music, the duo makes documentaries. Their first one, The Canary Effect, focuses on the harsh realities of life on Indian reservations and the effects of U.S. policies enacted against Native Americans. The film has been shown at several festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival.
For their next feature, the Fairies plan to take on organized religion—well, really, anything that smacks of religious fervor. True to form, they mean to offend and expect to get more death threats—apparently The Canary Effect ticked off a few viewers.
“They were a bunch of LA assholes who felt that we should be privileged that they came to see us. They should be privileged that I even got on stage, motherfuckers.”
“Religion has made it okay for [terrorist] extremists to do what they do,” says Yellow Thunder Woman. “I think religion and even what people consider spirituality as a whole is absolutely ridiculous.”
Another YouTube rant in the making?
For more information, check out www.thebastardfairies.com.
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