During the 1980s, the DIY independent music scene flourished and grew around the UK. Many of the home-grown bands featured females in their ranks. Two of these women, Alexandra Taylor and Margarita Vazquez Ponte, featured in more bands than most. Based in Edinburgh, Alex and Margarita were, either individually or both, a part of Rote Kapelle, Shop Assistants, Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes, The Fizzbombs and The Motorcycle Boy.

Here, we find out more about these women, these bands and the independent scene that surrounded them in Scotland’s capital city, and elsewhere in the UK. Along the way, we discover their aspirations and their struggles as they navigated their way through the shifting cultural representations of indie music – from shambling, to anorak, to cutie, to blonde and beyond…

Alex Taylor passed away on Sunday 19th June 2005, but her death was not reported publicly until 17th June 2020. Now, twenty years on from her passing, this book attempts to tell the singer / songwriter’s story via her bandmates, contemporaries, and the media interviews that she participated in.

Although never performing in a band alongside Alex, Margarita Vazquez Ponte played music with the same people, sometimes in different guises. Both young women shared similar experiences, yet their musical lives took different directions due to ambitions and circumstance. This book examines those experiences and explores how cultural representation fed into them.

Researched and related by Saskia Holling. Saskia plays in bands for fun and used to write fanzines in the age of Riot Grrrl. She now seeks to tell the stories of women in music before they are either forgotten or written out of musical history.