“Lucky”, Kicking Giant

This way: Lucky

Carns' first band was Kicking Giant with fellow Cooper Union student Tae Won Yu, with whom she played drums and sang from 1990–1995. Their first show was in the storefront window of a Brooklyn junk shop; Carns stood up and played just one drum, a floor tom. Kicking Giant played around New York City and the northeast with bands like Codeine, Uncle Wiggly, and fellow "love-rockers" Sleepyhead; Carns continued to expand her stand-up kit, building around the central floor tom, anchor to Yu's whirling guitar and bedrock of their unique sound. Live, their largely improvised mash of punk, free jazz, sugar-candy pop, and pure poetry meant that Kicking Giant never played the same set, or even the same song, twice. Photographer Robert Frank filmed some live Kicking Giant shows; Carns later appeared in his film Last Supper (1992) along with Taylor Mead, Zohra Lampert, and Chemical Imbalance magazine's Mike McGonigal.[citation needed] While in New York, Kicking Giant recorded songs on Yu's 4-track and released a number of homemade cassettes (including songs recorded with Kramer); circulating bootlegs soon garnered the band a fierce cult following, particularly in England and Japan. Through the underground fanzine network, Yu became penpals with Liz Phair and members of Bratmobile, trading tapes and letters and zines and introducing the band to Riot Grrrl, a movement that merged Do It Yourself culture and feminism. In the summer of 1991 Kicking Giant played the International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia with bands like Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, Fugazi, L7, Unwound, and Jad Fair. The energy of the northwest punk scene was infectious, and both members were ready to leave New York; the duo parted ways temporarily in 1992 when Yu moved to Olympia and Carns to Washington, D.C. 

[Spotify] Lucky