Jason Traeger: I am Jason Traeger. I am here. It is, what is the date today? Sunday, March 12. I am in Portland, Oregon speaking with Michelle Noel, who is in Olympia Washington. That is-

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Michelle Noel: Hello, Jason. 

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Jason Traeger: Hello. Hello, Michelle. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? 

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Michelle Noel: I was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. 

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Jason Traeger: What year were you born? 

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Michelle Noel: 1971 at Tacoma General Hospital. [laughs] 

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Jason Traeger: What was your life like growing up? What was the situation with your family? 

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Michelle Noel: I'm the oldest of three kids. I come from a working-class background. My dad worked at the lumber mill, the shipyard, the chlorine plant, the fuel plant. My mom is deaf and blind. She has something called Usher Syndrome. We lived in a neighborhood that was not of our social class because we bought my grandma's house for $20,000 in the north end of Tacoma, near the Narrows Bridge. I wasn't very popular, [laughs] was one of those kids that was picked last for sports teams. I was usually second to last, third or fourth to last on a great day.  I was just a weirdo from the start. I have ADHD, which I didn't know until I was about 40 years old. So that had and has many challenges. Yeah. 

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Jason Traeger: What kind of music did you like growing up? 

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Michelle Noel: I loved music from a young age. I remember when Grease came out and there was Sha Na Na and there was all this like '50s revival type of stuff, and '60s. I was really into that. I remember getting lots of cassettes from the Swasey Library and going out into my parents' car and just listening to music. [I] specifically remember Sgt Pepper's, listening to that a lot. Also, The Clash. 

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Jason Traeger: Was The Clash the first band you'd call a punk band that you listened to or heard about? 

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Michelle Noel: Ramones. MTV was new [in 1981]. I had a best friend who had MTV and I went to her house after school. And this movie came on and we were just watching and it was Rock 'n' Roll High School.  And it blew my mind. I was 10 years old. ‘That girl is so cool, Riff Randell, this is the best music I ever heard. That shower scene is really hot, even though I'm 10.’ [laughs] I don't know. 

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Jason Traeger: A 10-year-old, did you distinguish this as punk rock? Or was that in your consciousness? 

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Michelle Noel: I think so. Yeah, because my best friend [Shelley Harrison] had an older sister and she was like one of the first punks at Truman Junior High. She was into Adam Ant. I don't know. It was just a thing that we talked about. [The two sisters] made up a song called "Punked Out on Vitamin C” that we would sing.  [laughs] 

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[Noel writes: “Now I remember that I first heard the Ramones in 1979/80 at their house on the great K-Tel records compilation “Rock 80” so I was 9.”]  

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Jason Traeger: Did you play music at that time? Were you a musician? 

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Michelle Noel: I played the clarinet terribly. Yeah. And also "American Bandstand." I remember around the same time seeing The Go-Go's after the morning cartoons and just feeling really excited about them and really like- I don't have the words for how it changed me, but it changed me. 

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[Noel writes: “Dick Clark interviewed them and they talked about being an all girl band. Jane Weidlen said they were excited that they had a lot of female fans and that there would soon start being more women in bands because now they had other women to look up to. I was totally in awe of them and felt it in my whole body. Also “I love Rock & Roll” by Joan Jett came out around then.  And Blondie! All this new music felt so vital in my little 10 year old world.”] 

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Jason Traeger: Did you know other people that identified as punks besides your friend's sister? 

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Michelle Noel: No. No. 

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Jason Traeger: When did you become aware that there was an active vital punk scene? 

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Michelle Noel: Sometime in junior high because we would start seeing flyers. My friends and I, would talk about going to shows, then we would tell stories about how scary it was. You know, hearsay about like, how you can't go unless you know all the bands and you dressed punk enough or else you're a poser and you'll get your ass kicked. Stuff like that. And then we made up fake bands, like The Twitching Butt Muscles and drew their logos on our Pee-Chees. Tried to like, start thrift shopping and getting clothes that we felt like we could wear if we ever were brave enough to go to a show. My friend [Kevin Topolski] got these skull pants. I had like a cool army jacket. Yeah, junior high. 

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[Noel writes: “Kevin and this other cool skater kid from Truman Jr High named Brooke McNally gave me my first punk mixed tapes.”] 

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Jason Traeger: When did you move to Olympia and what brought you there? 

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Michelle Noel: I moved to Olympia when I was 18 to go to Evergreen. But I first became aware of Olympia, as a place where music was happening and like an interesting place that I wanted to know more about because I was going to shows at the Community World Theater on 56th and M all the time. Like every show I could go to. And there was a show’, it was like Doris [Tobi Vail’s band] - I don't know, all these Olympia people came and they were wearing [wild colorful] Hawaiian dresses. They just looked very different and acted very different than the Community World crowd that was like you know, leather and anger and drugs and that kind of thing. I just saw them dancing and looking very like “I don't give a fuck,” but in like a happy way. There was something very appealing to me about that. They just looked free and they were dancing really cool. Like, there were a lot of girls, women. I guess we were all girls then. Yeah, I think Candice [Pedersen] and Nikki [McClure] were there, and Tobi. People I didn't know.

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I remember also, another thing that drew me to Olympia was at the (Community World) theater they had a cassette display from K [Records] that was handmade out of like, light blue vinyl and cut with pinking shears around the edges with little clear pouches for each tape. It was that kind of classic K style. They had all their tapes in for sale hanging on the wall. And I was like, that's neat. That's really cool. It's way better than this fucking crossover metal nonsense that's going on that I'm pretending to like. [laughs]

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Jason Traeger: Did you meet any of those Olympia people at that show? 

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Michelle Noel: No, but Aaron Stauffer [who played under the name Spook & the Zombies at the time] was a friend of mine, kind of. He brought me to Olympia a couple times and he marched me around town. He was on a [mission.] We went to K records and we went to Candice's apartment and we went to the Urban Onion. He was just marching me around with great intention. It's funny to think about, but that was my introduction to what the town was like.

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[Noel writes: “It was probably spring or summer of 1989.”] 

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And then we also went to see a show at a grange hall [with another Tacoma kid, Kyle Ermatinger, later drummer for Bangs] out in the woods or something. 

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[Noel writes: “I thought it was Fugazi but I might have memories mixed together.”]

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I still didn't know the Olympia people but I was there and it was fun. I don't know.

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Jason Traeger: That grange hall [Chambers Prairie Grange Hall] is now a Starbucks. 

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Michelle Noel: It wasn’t that one. 

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Jason Traeger: Not that one? 

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Michelle Noel: I don't think so.

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Jason Traeger: The one out towards Yelm? 

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Michelle Noel: No. I don't have the sense that it was that grange hall. I went to a lot of shows at Chambers Prairie Grange Hall. 

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[Noel writes: “I think it was Rignall Hall on Steamboat Island.”]  

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Jason Traeger: Oh, yeah. Okay, maybe I'm mistaken. So, what year would that have been that you were paraded around Olympia by Aaron Stauffer of Seaweed? 

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Michelle Noel: '88/'89. 

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[Noel writes: “Probably spring or summer '89.”] 

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Jason Traeger: Did that seal the deal on you wanting to move there? Or had you already set your intention on that? Or was that even a thought at that point?

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Michelle Noel: What sealed the deal was [The Evergreen State College] recruiters coming to Stadium [High School] and hearing about their interdisciplinary studies. They were talking about a class about Nicaragua and traveling there, and political science, which was way over my head, but I was trying to understand [politics] via reading Maximum RocknRoll, and I still don't understand it. [laughs] I was like, oh, there's something I'm supposed to know about Nicaragua. It's something that the punks care about. So, I applied to Evergreen and my best friend and I both got in there fall of '89/'90 school year. 

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Jason Traeger: Did you live on campus or in the town? 

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Michelle Noel: I lived in K-108. I put on my first punk show there.

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Jason Traeger: Who played?

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Michelle Noel: [It] was Seaweed and The Treepeople and it was fun. And I met my best friend Julie [Lary] sometime that September. We became a pair and we went to all the shows together, eventually lived together and all of that. One time we were riding the bus, the 41 bus, the Evergreen bus, and Bradley Sweek was riding the bus. He was in the backseat and he was like, "Hey, you punks. I've seen you guys at shows. You want to hang up some flyers for a show?" And we were like “yeah,” because we were wanting to be involved. I was involved at Community World a little bit, you know. I would work at the counter and stuff and I always wanted to be a part of what was going on, so that was our little entryway into feeling like a part of this sleepy little town that Olympia was at the time Yeah. 

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Jason Traeger: Were you going to shows downtown? 

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Michelle Noel: Mm hmm. 

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Jason Traeger: Or were you seeing shows and who was playing?

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Michelle Noel:  The first show that I went to in Olympia [after moving here] was at the Washington Center for Performing Arts, The Black Box Theater. Girl Trouble played and that was the first time where I got forced into dancing, not like circle pit style. Yeah, because they would do that thing where they make you line up in two lines and then you have to one-by-one go through the center and do some little dance. I was horrified, but the peer pressure to do it was more than the peer pressure to not do it, so I did it. I think after that I kind of started dancing a little bit more and more, so that was cool. And then the other shows were at the Reko Muse which was a collectively run space, but I wasn't aware of that at the time. Yeah, a collective artist space run by punks and I went to a lot of shows there. Nation of Ulysses, that was a favorite one. Danger Mouse with Donna playing. I can't really remember. Those are the ones I mostly remember.

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Jason Traeger: Who did you become friends with at this time? Besides Julie [Lary], who were your people?  Your friend association group? 

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Michelle Noel: I probably first met Cristina Calle and Aaron Olson at Community World, I think. So I knew them and I knew- Oh, how did this happen? Okay. Corin Tucker came to Evergreen a year after I did [1990] and we became fast friends. And she would always talk about, "My best friend Tracy [Sawyer, who was still in Eugene, OR]. “We're going to make a band and we're going to be famous," but she'd never been in a band. Then I met all the Bremerton girls, Angie Hart and Wendy [Albro] and Misty [Farrell]. And Natalie wasn't from Bremerton, but she was part of that crew. Natalie Cox. And I met them, well, me and Angie and Natalie had all dated this one guy. [laughs]

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Jason Traeger: Do you want to share his name? 

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Michelle Noel: Lenny Wolford. I don't know. I tend to like, if I have jealous feelings just do the opposite thing of like, okay, I'm going to make friends with this person. I remember having Tobi's fanzine Jigsaw, the one where she's talking about Yoko Ono, maybe Number Two I don't know. And being at a show at the North Shore Surf Club and me and Angie were in the bathroom at the same time, and I gave her the fanzine and I talked to her a little bit. Then we started being pen pals I think, and we would see each other at all the shows and started being friends. Then all those girls moved to Olympia pretty soon after that. 

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There was also Dan Hansen aka Counter Commons. He was part of our crew. And James Bertram and Stewart..  And another college student friend, Dani Sharkey. We were in a political science class “Problems without Solutions?” together, and she became part of that crew. These are kind of riot grrrl girls, definitely the first Olympia riot grrrl girls. People who actually, like we started the meetings together. Yeah. I think I met Allison [Wolfe] probably through [Aaron] Stauffer. And Molly [Neuman], I think I first met them at [Chambers Prairie] grange hall and I think Girl Trouble was playing again. I remember Margaret Doherty wearing like a sparkling gold motorcycle helmet and being like a go-go dancer or something. Yeah, I think I met her there. And then Molly eventually somehow through Allison. 

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And also, oh, I remember this slumber party. I don't remember how I met “The Tumwater Boys” but it was like Brent Turner, Adam [McCully], Justin [Trosper], Supertanker [Adam and Justin’s band], and Brandt Sandeno. [And Vern Rumsey]. I got invited to a POTA party, which entailed watching all the  "Planet of the Apes" movies back to back in somebody's parents' basement. Those guys were young. They were probably 18 and I was probably 19 or 20 or something. They might have been 17, I don't know. But we were all invited, and Allison [Wolfe and Julie Lary too]. And so we did that. We ate lots of candy and it was really fun. And Allison was talking about this band Bratmobile that she was in. And Julie was supposed to be in it but then Julie had some health problems, so she couldn't. So later they asked me to play bass. And I would go down to Eugene, and hang out with Allison and Molly [Neuman] and have a couple band practices. I’d help assemble their fanzine [Girl Germs] and just like, learn about all the things that they were learning about in their feminist studies classes. They were cool. I learned lots from them. And I looked up to them and I enjoyed their company. And I got to be in their band for a minute, but I was too insecure. [laughs] 

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Jason Traeger: What were the early riot grrrl meetings like that you were part of? 

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Michelle Noel: The first one was in like, I think it's called the Ray Apartments there above Pizza Time [off of 4th Ave]. There were a lot of people there who didn't end up participating, some older women from Evergreen who were feminists and artists. I remember people being like, "Girl? I don't know about that. I'm a woman." [laughs] So those of us who continued, I don't remember if [there] were other meetings in other places, but we started meeting regularly at Evergreen in the CAB in the fishbowl area, if you know where that is or was. I don't know if it's there anymore. It's like, right by where KAOS radio was, just like a weird sunken-in spot with tables and couches that you could kind of sit in a circle. 

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Jason Traeger: What was the structure of the meetings? Was there somebody leading them? 

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Michelle Noel: Oh, no. 

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Jason Traeger: Just to get to them. Yeah.

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Michelle Noel: I mean, natural leaders happen. I can't exactly remember, but there were definitely like, stronger personalities. 

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[Noel writes: “But it was freeform.  We may have started making Meeting Agendas at some point.”]

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Jason Traeger: And what did you do? I mean, were you making zines together? What were you- 

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Michelle Noel: I mean, we were talking about sexual abuse histories and patriarchy and ways it affected us. We made zines. We put a lot of intention into trying to be inclusive and inviting people in, but it was really sloppy because we were 19 and stupid. [laughs] Yeah, we made zines. 

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[Noel writes: “We organized punk shows with mostly female bands and make flyers for the shows.”] 

We talked about the media blackout because at a certain point we were getting contacted by the media constantly and it wasn't going well when we participated. We weren't happy with how we were being represented. 

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Jason Traeger: So at this point, the larger culture had clued into the idea of riot grrrl, the name? 

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Michelle Noel: Well, there was that- We were on a cover of, I don't know, was it LA Weekly? Some photographer came and we posed in the alley at the Martin Apartments. [laughs] They wrote an article probably mostly interviewing Allison and Molly. I don't remember. I haven't read this stuff in years, but that started the recognition. There was a lot of banter in Maximum Rocknroll and legit punk fanzines and stuff too, usually very negative attention. 

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Jason Traeger: [Is] that what led to the media blackout? 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah. I don't remember. We planned shows. We put on shows. 

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Jason Traeger: What was the first show or some of the shows that you put on?

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Michelle Noel: I can't remember right now. 

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[Noel writes: “I can find this info if needed”]

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Jason Traeger: Yeah. It's okay. 

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Michelle Noel: But I think they were mostly at this other collective space that I became part of. 

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[Noel writes: “One show was at TESC in the top floor of the library building.”]  

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All this stuff happened so quickly. Like, bam, bam, bam. There's so much I'm leaving out too. [It was] called the Uncola, which was in the same alley of the Capitol Theatre Backstage. It was just really like a storage garage and we built a stage in there and I ended up putting on a lot of shows. We would have weekly collective meetings and a bunch of people would show up and people would just be like, "I have this show I want to put on." Okay, and then filled up the calendar. But I had the bright idea of getting in Book Your Own Fucking Life and then my phone never stopped ringing. [laughs]

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Jason Traeger: Tell us what is Book Your Own Fucking Life. 

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Michelle Noel: It was a guide produced by Maximum Rocknroll pre-internet for people who were in bands to be able to go on tour. It had contacts from all over the US and probably other places too for contacts of people who would book shows, and maybe other stuff. I don't really remember but my phone just rang like crazy. I stopped answering it. [laughs] I got so many shitty demo tapes too. [Also great ones.]

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Jason Traeger: I remember seeing an interview with then-presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke talking about Book Your Own Fucking Life and how that was his awakening, was looking at that and realizing that you could do things yourself. And you did not have to be somebody.

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Michelle Noel: Wow.

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Jason Traeger: Which was kind of interesting, the idea that if this guy became president, he would be deeply influenced by Book Your Own Fucking Life from Maximum Rocknroll. 

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Michelle Noel: That's insane. 

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Jason Traeger: So it was a very influential and very useful thing in the pre-internet. 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah. Oh, God, I didn't even- So another super important thing that happened at that time was we were at the [North Shore] Surf Club shows that were every [Thursday], and they were great shows. I'm trying to think of any of them right now and I'm blanking out. But like, every week it was just relentless. Calvin [Johnson] was putting on those shows. I was working at K. I don't think I ever made money. I think I just like stuffed records and then got records and I took a lot of extended coffee breaks [at the Smithfield Cafe]. I was terrible. But that's what everybody did. [laughs] And they were also planning the International Pop Underground Convention during that time, so there was just a lot of things stirring. Maybe those shows [Surf Club] shows were after IPU?. [Or before and after?] I don't remember, the timeline is really hazy, but there was a lot going on. 

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Margaret Doherty wanted to put on- I think maybe Maggie and Margaret wanted to put on this Girl Day event because there was a history of stuff like that happening here already. 

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Jason Traeger: Is this Maggie Vail? 

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Michelle Noel: Huh?

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Jason Traeger: Was this Maggie Vail? 

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Michelle Noel: No, Maggie Murphy. 

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Jason Traeger: Maggie Murphy. Right. Okay. 

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N; Yeah. I think they were the two people that were originally behind it. They wanted to have Girl Day for the IPU. We all met at the gazebo in Sylvester Park and started planning it and we talked to Candice and Calvin and got the okay to have this first event of IPU. It was like the opening event. And then we had to find bands and that was super fun. A lot of people made bands just for it. That's how Heavens to Betsy started. Apparently, I don't remember this, but I heard Corin say that I said, "Okay, well you have to play at this." And then they were [motivated to actually make] their band. A band that they had talked about a lot for a long time, but I was like, "Okay, you have to do it now." And there was like this high school band called Ice Cream Truck with [Beth Grover]. Did Plain Jane play? I don't remember. There were high school girls that played. Mecca Normal played. [Kreviss also from BC played.] I don't know. It was amazing. It was kind of like a jumping-off point for something. And again, I don't remember the chronological order of most of this stuff. I just remember it all happened and they were all connected. 

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What else? I remember being at a show at the Surf Club. The North Shore Surf Club, and Kathleen [Hannah] and Kathi [Wilcox] and Tobi [Vail] were going around to every woman who was at the show asking, "Do you play guitar? Do you want to be in a band?" And I was so bummed that I couldn't say yes, I play guitar. So I remember that. Somehow I became friends with Tobi and ended up getting her radio show because she was leaving town, her radio show at KAOS, because I had had a show with Julie [Lary] just briefly in the summertime at KUPS called “the Frick and Frack Show”. Where am I going with this? I'm jumping all over the place. 

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Jason Traeger: That's fine. 

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Michelle Noel: Well, Bikini Kill started. They were mind-blowing. All these people that I've mentioned were all hanging out. There's this whole other scene of people who were really not into us. [laughs] And Sub Pop Explosion was happening too. Those people hated us. 

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Jason Traeger: By us, you mean like riot grrrl? Or Olympia?

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Michelle Noel: Kind of like riot grrrl and people who weren't just like straight up, dude grunge. I don't know. Um, what am I saying? Can you direct me? 

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Jason Traeger: So what were your impressions of IPU? And what else did you do? How else were you involved in it besides the Girl Day? 

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Michelle Noel: I went to every show. I was subletting somebody's apartment in the Martin with Allison [Wolfe]. It was really cool because you could be up there and look out the window and see all the people hanging out on the street. It was directly across from the Surf Club, which the daytime shows were at, and then you could kind of see the Capitol Theater too which the bigger shows were at. So it just felt like the center of the universe kind of. And Nation of Ulysses was staying there and Fugazi was walking around. I don't know. It just blew my mind. It was so positive and so much energy. There would be dance parties after the shows at the Surf Club and we would just dance to like 3 or 4 in the morning. I remember one night going out to the rock quarry in Tenino or someplace like that with a bunch of kids including L7 and Nation of Ulysses and everybody went skinny dipping in this rock quarry after dark and it just being like, wild. I was really shy. I was there with Julie but I wasn't talking to people or being cool or anything. [laughs] But it was cool. 

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What else? Impressions of IPU. I remember Nirvana was supposed to play but then they got signed and then they couldn't play anymore because they were on a major label and it wasn't about that. That's kind of like what the culture was like at that time. There was like a hard line [about independent music and punk bands versus bands who signed to major labels]. Everybody still loved Nirvana. It wasn't like, I don't know- But they didn't play and that kind of made an impression on me I guess. 

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Jason Traeger: What was the impression it made? 

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Michelle Noel: “Sell out, get the hell out”. I don't know, just that independent music was very important. I guess also I was learning about that by being at KAOS as well. Olympia already had this strong value for independent music and all ages shows and inclusivity and I loved it. 

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Jason Traeger: Were you still at Evergreen at this point or had you graduated? 

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Michelle Noel:   Oh, God.  I graduated 10 years after I started.

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Jason Traeger:  Oh, I see.

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37:28

Michelle Noel: Because I had undiagnosed ADHD, I just was like, not succeeding. And then there were all these shows and all this excitement going on. I dropped out after two quarters. Julie and I moved back to Tacoma and lived by Stadium [high school] and we would come back to Olympia every week for shows. And what was your question?

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Jason Traeger: I was trying to get the timeline for you deciding to stay in Olympia. I was thinking maybe you would graduate and then decide whether or not to stay or to leave, but it sounds like you just were staying. 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah, I mean, I was in love with Olympia from the first time that I rolled into town in my own car to move into my dorm. Just seeing the trees and the [Capitol] dome as you pull off the exit, I would just have this feeling of like, I'm home. You know, every time. And the only reason that we moved back to Tacoma is that I still had a job there and Julie got a job at the same place. We had to move out of our dorms so we just did that for a while. And then we missed Olympia too much and we came back. 

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Jason Traeger: When did you move back? 

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Michelle Noel: Oh, I don't know. Maybe six months later? Not sure. 

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Jason Traeger: Where did you work in Olympia for money? 

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Michelle Noel: Well, I first worked at Fabricland and that was terrible. Then Allison was going on tour I think, or going out of town or something, moving to Eugene? I don't know. But she worked at Time after Time, which was Maggie Murphy and Margaret Doherty's cool vintage shop. I was like, I want to work there! Can I work there? Allison introduced me to them and so I got her job. And that place was really formative because those ladies were super cool and had been here for a few years, or maybe a lot of years, I don't know, being involved in the arts and music and feminism and stuff here. They just really had vision. They were visionaries. They always played really cool mixtapes in the shop. Girl Trouble, yeah. Margaret dated what's his name [Kahuna] from Girl Trouble so he was around a lot. And I just heard a lot of like garage rock like Thee Headcoats and Girl Trouble and Russ Meyeres Soundtracks and stuff that I really liked, stuff that I was influenced by. What other jobs? I worked at Movie House Video [on 4th Ave]. Later, probably starting in '96 or so I got a job at Rainy Day [Records] because the movie buyer was moving away to San Francisco and I had been working in a video store. I knew nothing about film, but I had been working in a video store. People recommended me. Like Sadie [Julte Shaw] worked there and her radio show was right after mine. [She was from San Diego] and we both like Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt and all those [San Diego] bands. She thought I was alright, so she recommended that I be hired and somebody else did too. So I got to work there and be the movie buyer knowing nothing about movies, but I learned a lot about film there. And that was amazing. 

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At the same time I went back to Evergreen and I got an internship as Music Director at KAOS. My Co-Music Director was Shannon Weberg who's like a soul music [encyclopedia]. And so I was at the record store and at KAOS, just learning all this stuff all the time about music, music, music. It was just like all the time in my mind and it was amazing, all the people I got to work with and be around and learn from. I kept having more connections from talking to people who were promoting their records in terms of being a contact person for putting on shows in Olympia. I don't know the timeline, but I started getting to put on some bigger shows like Dischord-related stuff. Things that I was pretty excited about.

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Jason Traeger: Any bands you can think of? 

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Michelle Noel: What?

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Jason Traeger: Any bands that come to mind? 

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Michelle Noel: Somehow I got to put on Jawbreaker shows and that's cool. They're still friends. 

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Jason Traeger: Where were these shows at?

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Michelle Noel: A lot of those were at the Backstage of the Capitol Theater. I also put on shows at The Midnight Sun. It was a small venue that was mostly used for theater. I don't know, small plays and whatnot but also shows. And the Uncola Collective. The second show that I put on was this house that I lived in, The Puget House. I live there with John Quittner. I put on a few shows there in the basement. The first one I did there was Treepeople. They were like my favorite. And Heavens to Betsy. And Undertow, a straight edge band, which is my other thing I was into. [laughs] I would go to shows in Seattle a lot, to all ages shows at what's it called? 

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Jason Traeger: Velvet Elvis? 

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Michelle Noel: Velvet Elvis, that was later. There was another place called The Party Hall that was in the Central District. It was mostly a lot of hardcore shows there. Julie and I would go up and we did not fit in as straight edgers, but we're just like,”Fuck you, we're gonna put purple X's on our hands and wear our stupid flower dresses. And you can't tell us that we don't belong because we do.” 

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Jason Traeger: Have you always been straight edge and had that always been a thing for you? 

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Michelle Noel: No. I grew up around a lot of alcoholism and I have alcoholism. But at that time the obsession with alcohol was manifesting as like, “Fuck that shit!”. [laughs] But before, in high school, I drank to blackout regularly. Or, you know, when I drank, I usually blacked out and I drank whenever the opportunity presented itself. Then I had a chunk of time from like, the time when I woke up in somebody's closet at Evergreen the week before school started and went like, “Oooh, that's not good. Lucky that was a nice person”. I think I stopped drinking around then till I was about 23. And I really identified as straight edge until I wasn't. [laughs] Yeah. 

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Jason Traeger: What other houses did you live in, in Olympia? What was your living situation? Were you living in group houses primarily? 

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Michelle Noel: No, I lived in The Martin for 20 years. I got to do that sublet during IPU and then Bikini Kill moved to DC for a while early on and I sublet Tobi's apartment. And then I just got to stay there and I stayed there for 20 years. 

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Jason Traeger: What did The Martin mean to you and to the community? 

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Michelle Noel: Well, there was a lot of nepotism. Like you would get an apartment by having a friend that lived there and they would say, "Hey, Jack, this person wants my apartment," or, "This person is going to sublet my apartment." He was this funny old man who was the manager. It was pretty much all music people. Film people, but mostly music people. And there's all these flyers hanging up. You could hear people practicing in their apartments. It felt pretty cool to live there. There was a lot going on. I don't know. It had this certain smell.

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Jason Traeger: Very distinctive. 

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Michelle Noel: Spices and probably from the old wood and the old wallpaper and then like Radiance Herbs from downstairs or something. I don't know what it was.

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Jason Traeger: It's one of the first things I think about think of The Martin is the smell. That spicy smell like an Indian restaurant or something? 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah, amazing.

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Jason Traeger: Unique, a very unique like no other smell. 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah.

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Jason Traeger: Not bad, a good smell. 

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Michelle Noel: Very good smell. I wonder if it still smells like that. I haven't been up there in a long time. I can't afford it now. [laughs] 

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Jason Traeger: How much does an apartment in The Martin cost now? 

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Michelle Noel: I'm guessing like probably $1200-$1300. 

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Jason Traeger: How much did it cost when you moved in? 

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Michelle Noel: One [hundred and] something. 

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Jason Traeger: How much do you think the cost of living impacted the scene that you were so attracted to in the early '90s/ late-'80s. 

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Michelle Noel: A lot. People had a lot of free time, especially if you lived in a group house and you're paying $50, $100 rent, getting food stamps. There was a lot of free time. And because it was small, everybody knew each other. Everybody was hanging out and collaborating all the time. There were shows all the time, like basement shows. You could go to a show almost every night of the week if you could find out where they were. Luckily, I had access to that. I mean, there were flyers, but there was also just like, "There's a party at blah, blah, blah." And I remember hearing people who would move here saying, "Well, how would I know that? I don't even know where that is. It's so elitist," and all that stuff. I didn't really get it at the time because luckily, just all of that was coming to me. 

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51:13

Jason Traeger: What other factors do you think made that scene at that particular time what it is? What comes to mind? 

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Michelle Noel: The population of Olympia was like 20,000 people. It was really small. It was like a sleepy logging town with hippies [from The Evergreen State College]. It rains a lot so people are inside. Evergreen, had a lot to do with it, even though a lot of my friends were from here also. I don't know. What do you think? [laughs]

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Jason Traeger: I would have to say the same things, yeah. And also being on the I-5 corridor between these major cities, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah, and being the capital. 

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Jason Traeger: Being the capital. 

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Michelle Noel: There's a lot of protests and things here that might have been happening in Tacoma, but probably not as much. [The Gulf War was happening]. And there was a lot of radical, at the time, ideas going around here. 

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Jason Traeger: What were the challenges of living in Olympia at that time? Can you think of anything that was challenging about it in particular? 

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Michelle Noel: I mean, people would complain about gossip. People would complain about exclusivity. My own challenges were just my insecurities and what was going on in my head and my nervous system. I don't even know. I mean, at a certain point heroin was happening again in our scene, and really heavy drinking. Yeah, that happens everywhere but you'd really see it up close when you're around each other all the time. And a lot of those people are dead. 

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Jason Traeger: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. When people think of Olympia, they think of such an idyllic kind of place. And in some ways it was, but how many people are dead from that scene? You know, it really speaks to the darker side of it too it seems like. 

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Michelle Noel: Yeah.

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Jason Traeger: You've lived in Olympia continuously since the '90s?

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Michelle Noel: Except for that brief stint going back to Tacoma. Yeah. [Since Fall of 1989].

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Jason Traeger: Do you see there being a specific era that we're talking about that you can kind of place as having an ending or something like that? Is there anything like that? 

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Michelle Noel: I don't know. I mean, I think there's still like, a vibrant something happening here. It never felt like it did at that time, where it kind of just felt like the center of the universe. I mean, I know that wasn't true, but that's how it felt. It was very exciting. I don't know, there were just different chunks of time. Different people always moving here. 

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Jason Traeger: Do you think the fact that the time we're talking about was all before the internet, what impact that would have had in terms of changing? 

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55:25

Michelle Noel: Well, yeah. Well there was more of a desire to, for me anyway- I was invited by my friend, Pat Maley, because I was putting on lots of shows and he thought I knew what was going on in punk, which I guess I kind of did. He invited me to put on this music festival for his record label, Yoyo Recordings. We did several of those '94, '97, '99, 2001 I think. But for me, at the time, it was like, all these bands come through on tour and you meet these cool kids and they hang out for a few days and maybe you go to their town. But let's have this thing where we all are together again, which I guess is the same thing that the International Pop Underground was, but the only other way to be in touch was like, we would write letters. There was a lot of letter writing back then, which is precious. I still have all those. [laughs] It's just a time for all the weirdos to get together and be weirdos together and have fun. And if the internet was happening, which it was on some tiny weird scale, that probably wouldn't have happened. I don't know.

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Jason Traeger: Your involvement in Yoyo a Gogo, what did you do to make the first Yoyo a Gogo happen? 

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Michelle Noel: What did we do? We brainstormed the bands, called the bands, bands called us. Weird things that were so foreign to me like getting insurance, because I was just putting on these little punk shows and that just seemed like, "I don't want to do that. That's stupid." Pat was the rational adult and he was like ,"Well, we have to. The theater requires us to do it." Promoting it via going to radio stations in Seattle, doing little interviews. What else did it entail? Lots of notebooks. [laughs] Everything was by hand.  

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[Noel writes: “We did it collectively and non-heirarchically. After the 1994 festival we had other people join the collective and put on the festivals together.  Pat Castaldo, Kento Oiwa and Ed Varga were the other organizers.”]

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Jason Traeger: Were you involved in the Film Society more generally? 

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Michelle Noel: I don't remember at what point, but for sure I worked the ticket booth and went to lots of movies. Yeah, I think I went to All Freakin' Night, the first one. Maybe with Brent Turner or something.

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Jason Traeger: Tell us what All Freakin' Night is. 

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59:12

Michelle Noel: All Freakin' Night is just the same ideas like the "Planet of the Apes" party where they'd just play all these weird movies. Often horror movies or just weird cult movies or movies that should be cult movies. You just stay up all freakin' night [starting at midnight] and going until like 11 A.M. the next day and you go crazy. You eat snacks. Yeah, we weren't drinking or anything then. We were just eating lots of sugar and freaking out. I don't know. But the Film Society and the [Olympia Food Co-op] and KAOS radio, they're all these institutions that were very much about community and doing things together, the arts, making lots of connections with each other, making this vibrant place. I was all about all those things. I loved it. Yeah, I volunteered there a little bit and I definitely went to movies all the time. The film festival is still one of my favorite things when it happens. I always take a film festival vacation and just [watch movies] and eat popcorn and Junior Mints for a week or two. 

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Jason Traeger: Sounds pretty good. If you had to say what you've learned or what has impacted you, I mean- It's hard almost to say it, how Olympia has affected you considering you've lived there so long, but looking back at the era we're talking about, say in the '90s, what values and things that you've learned and were exposed to then that have stuck with you for your whole life? 

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Michelle Noel: Non-hierarchy. In theory anyway. Sometimes that doesn't work out because of personalities, but when you're really intentional about it, it can work out.

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Jason Traeger: What do you mean by non-hierarchy? 

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Michelle Noel: No boss. No, like, figurehead. I mean, people will always invent a figurehead, but the group knows that there's not actually a figurehead. [Doing things cooperatively]. Yeah, equality, social justice. Trying to make things inclusive and accessible, even though you fuck up, but you keep trying and growing. The energy from Evergreen and all the communities of punks and weirdos and all that stuff just continues to educate me and make me want to continue growing as a person and being open to challenging ideas and people and [social] justice. I don't know. And just the do-it-yourself, empowerment kind of vibe. 

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Jason Traeger: Yeah. That sounds good. I like that. 

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Michelle Noel: I mean, I was getting some of that in Tacoma too, from the Community World and what was going on there. And then what Jimmy May, the person who ran that place tried to convey, he tried to draw everybody in and get everybody involved. Super cool. So it goes back farther than here but yeah. Punk. 

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Jason Traeger: Punk. That seems like a good place to wrap it up. Thank you so much for speaking with me, Michelle. 

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Michelle Noel: Thank you, Jason.

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