Only Jennifer Herrema can pull off wearing a massive fur pelt made of frisky minx tails, while coupling that with a tie-dye top, and still look like bona-fide rock royalty! Her fashion style, inimitable from way back in her days with Neil Hagerty as Royal Trux, has always been an androgynous mix of thrift store trash and burnt out rock god gems. I’ll never forget seeing the band play at Lounge Ax in Chicago, I think it was around 1993 or so, as the pair was touring for Cats and Dogs, and Herrema performed that night, mostly oblivious to the audience, wearing a giant black Raiders Starter jacket, with matching knit sock cap, which held her thick nest of long, dirty blonde hair in place directly over her face. It was a pretty impressive “fuck-you” to everything “fashion” was supposed to be, especially for a punk rock lady who was probably expected to look provocative in some Lydia Lunch sorta way. Instead, Herrema took that garish staple of urban cool, Starter wear, knowing intuitively with her unique fashion sense that one day we would refer to it as “vintage”, while shelling out $500 on eBay just to own some; and on that night she decided that it would be a good idea to wear Raiders’ football gear in the thick of Bear country, (never a good idea), really rounding out an outfit that could only, rightfully, be called performance art! Oh yeah, Jennifer’s newer incarnation, Black Bananas, released their Electric Brick Wall LP today via Drag City, and the video “Powder 8 Eeeeeeeeight“, directed by Amanda Milius, promises to be the first in a series of “video synth performances” by the band…
