Three Cheers for Indietracks!

A couple of weeks ago saw us host our very first (and hopefully not the last) Radical Cheerleading workshop!

We (sadly only Kandi as Casio had to stay in London to do important work things) took our pom poms and pep to Indietracks festival and it went down a treat.

We got a fair sized crowd that ranged from the young to the slightly old (we had a young Dutch girl and her mum, and despite the young girl not knowing any English, she loved it).

It started off with an introduction and a little about Radical Cheerleading, about how it isn't just cheering for someone else, but for things you believe in and most importantly, cheering for yourself!
we all said who we were and one thing we were awesome at.

Followed that up with a warm up (it was super warm at this point, but our knees needed to get bendy). I then taught everyone the importance (and how easy it is to) rhyme.

We learnt some of the staple moves in cheerleading which we then put to an Indietracks cheer.

I split the group in two and they had to write and perform their own cheers, which were both equally awesome!!

We of course ended with a guerrilla cheer performance, we ran out of the workshop tent and caught people on their way from band to band/ the toilet and cheered loud and proud!

I really loved cheering with others and over the course of the weekend quite a few people who atteneded the workshop wanted to know more about radical Cheerleading!

So yes watch this space, a cheerleading workshop might be coming to a town near you!!

Kandi/Seleena!

Our first review

Our first ever published review appeared in Wire magazine of all places!! Ok it was a review of the whole of Ladyfest London, but we got a glowing mention:

"Mixing live music with spoken word, poetry and performance art is a brave but often thankless strategy, formulated out of an institutional zeal to 'improve' people, whether or not there's a demand for it. On the night, audiences invariably want to rock not read, and for all the Ladyfest team's good intentions, the largely female spectators at the Garage were no different. Few performers inspired any interest in the rock crown until a Radical Cheerleading duo struck sparks with their miniskirt outfits, pom-poms and synchronised routines. Holly and Celina's act is a part of a rapidly spreading global trend of radical cheerleading. They fired up the masses with a series of constitutional cries "Resist! Resist! Fight the capitalist...Resist, resist, show them what they can kiss!", before turning around and slapping their posteriors to loud cheers."

Aside from the complete spelling of my name, I was pretty chuffed with that!

How it all started....

We spent a weekend in the summer of 2001 at Ladyfest Glasgow, and it's pretty safe to say it changed our lives. We were the youngest there which could be seen by bright wrist band we had to wear stating we were too young to drink (Scotland seem a lot stricter on these laws than England!).
We had the best time and it was here we picked up several copies of the awesome American zine Kitty Magik. It was in these pages we first heard about Radical Cheerleaders.
It's what inspired us to then form our own squad and perform a year later.....

Squad set? You bet!

Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Radical cheers are here, lets go!

It's 10 years ago to the day since the Radical Cheerleaders of the north made our debut at Ladyfest London 2002. We were the first UK radical cheerleaders, performing bratty cheers with pom poms and dance routines.Having attended Ladyfest Glasgow the year before we were so damned inspired and pepped up to our eyeballs. We knew we had to do something, ANYTHING, but we couldn't play instruments and had absolutely no desire to learn. We read about a movement of radical cheerleaders in the USA from zines like Kitty Magik and knew that we could do it too.

Seleena and I were penpals. We wrote letters to each other and talked on the phone and dreamed up our masterplan to form the first ever UK squad of radical cheerleaders. And we were gonna play ladyfest! 

The first letter Seleena ever wrote me!

We wrote cheers over the phone and in letters to each other. We bought pom poms from our local dance shop. And we had our first and only practice in the woods by my house about a week before we were due to perform at Ladyfest London. Unlike the radical cheerleaders in the states we hadn't thought to ask anyone else to join us. For a start we didn't really know anyone else. Secondly we formed as a failed band. Secretly we wanetd to be in Valerie or Skinned Teen but couldn't master instruments. So we got our pom poms out and performed our lyrics without any musical backing.

Our application to play Ladyfest London in the form of a badly appropriated Ghost World postcard. I can't believe they let us play. 

Here's what I remember about that ladyfest weekend:

I remember calling Naz on the phone to work out how to get to the Garage (Naz was the offical Looker Afterer of the spoken word lot. I remember members of the band Angelica looking TERRIFIED as we followed them into the building. They didn't know we were amazing rockstars playing on the same bill as them yet, instead they knew us  better as the official Angelica stalkers as we attended every single Angelica gig in the north west and they were slightly intimidated by our constant awkward geeky presence. 

I remember being too scared to do a soundcheck and trying to ask if someone else could soundcheck for us instead.

I remember having a quiet argument with Seleena before we went on stage for the first time over which one of us was gonna do the stage talk. Having to introduce ourselves and talk in between the cheers hadn't occurred to me and we were both completely adamant that neither of us were gonna speak. It's hard enough trying to sell a pair of bratty teens dressed as cheerleaders shouting into a microphone for 20 minutes, let alone a pair of bratty cheerleaders that refuse to talk before, during, or after said cheers.

I remember that our friends from Manchester hadn't turned up yet by the time we were on stage. I remember that the girl I was severely crushing on was also nowhere to be seen and not only that but she was with my friend who had my camera to document us on stage. Nobody we knew was there. Nobody we knew could take pictures of us to document our debut for others that weren't there. We were on our own and performing for half a dozen strangers.  I remember the doors to the venue opening and being pushed on stage. I remember talking into the microphone. I remember being arrogant. I remember telling the crowd how utterly amazing we were. 

I remember feeling like I wanted to die once we got off stage.

I remember the next morning getting a phone call from Naz asking if we could go on again that day, this time supporting the headliners Electrelane. We said yes and we both felt sick as we spent the day watching our heroes Valerie and Blue Minkies play. This time our friends would be there and everyone we loved and respected. 

That afternoon we went onto the pavement outside the garage and had a quick run through of our moves and around 20 people stood and watched and took pix of us marking out our routines and learning our lyrics. We started to feel majorly sick.

We had played to maybe 20 people on the first night. This time the Garage was packed, all our best friends were on the front row. Somewhere in the room Lisa McCaffrey and Jo Dunning from Valerie were screaming 'you rule!' as we waited to go on. It was a complete role reversal as me and Seleena had spent the best part of the last 2 years standing in the audience at Valerie gigs screaming 'YOU RULE!' at them.

Ladyfest London 2002 action shot!

I don't remember much about being on stage. Except that we were amazing. And full of ourselves. Our bratty arrogance became our best feature. Andy from Linus screamed out that he loved us and we yelled back that we loved us too. We did our shoddy little cheers and our cartwheels and splits and all our best friends, heroes, and strangers cheered us on. 

We come off the stage and someone asked us if we could perform in the background while Electrelane were on but we ran outside to gawp at STS instead. My greatest compliment ever came from Jimmy from The Blue Minkies that night as he told us that he had always just thought of me and Seleena as these cute earnest kids who would come to their shows, but now he realised that we weren't just members of the audience anymore. I kind of got that myself when Jo from Valerie asked if she could have our setlist. 

Jo from Valerie with my set list

That weekend is such a blur to me now. Ladyfest Glasgow in 2001 changed our lives for REAL. I can't even imagine my life without it. Ditto for Ladyfest London but it in a different way. We were inspired and fired up but we also had chips on our shoulders. We wanted to be known as The Northern Radical Cheerleaders and we took down a batch of RC zines with us that we had produced as a love letter to northern riot grrrl diy activities. We felt that there was a world of culture, art, activism, music, and fun happening in the north that was largely invisible to the south. We made a lot of assumptions there, but we were 16 and bratty as hell and we had a point to prove. And did I mention we were awesome?I'm amazed at the balls we had and the bravery of our 16 year old selves is amazing. GO TEAM!

Radical Cheerleaders of the North

The officially archive of The Radical Cheerleaders of the North.