about the Flash Girls
Emma sings and plays guitar; the Fabulous Lorraine sings and plays fiddle. Their albums feature their own music and songs by people like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Jane Yolen. Guest musicians include Todd Menton, Steven Brust, Lojo Russo, Adam Stemple and Robin Adnan Anders of Boiled in Lead.
Where did the Flash Girls get their name and what does it mean? by Will Shetterly
The oldest reference to Flash Girls by Cat Eldridge
In Re: Pansy Smith and Violet Jones by Neil Gaiman
the Flash Girls 
will shetterly said,
April 4, 2008 at 12:39 am
Comments from their previous web page:
Peter Evans said…
Every once in a while, a band comes along who have such an amazing grip on hooks, melodies, ideas and vocals that one is smashed to the floor as if by a sledge-hammer, or a small over-eager visiting cousin punching you in the danglies for jolilty’s sake.
That band were the hopelessly romantic, working class, UK Sheffield band Pulp, and they’ve probably toured the last time now. *Sniff* When that suspicion becomes to too much to bear, I turn to ‘The Flash Girls’.
They ARE fabulous you know. They were at the Inn at the World’s End, and Dream’s wake and everything. Not even the mighty ‘Flaming Lips’ can claim that. They’re perky, amusingly tragic, satirical, menacing and sometimes even savage. Predictably, I adore them, and frequently stare at the blank bit of wall where I imagine their non-existent poster sits. I love the way they conjure their own, and traditional, little folktales – thus leaving me wondering idly at the office as to whether they had tea with the Yeti after succesfully identifying him, or just how obsessive that bean sidhe was.
And then I’m tapped on the head and told to get back to work, and to stop trying to carve crude runes into my outmoded computer in an attempt to conjure up the dead spirits of Magaret Rutherfood and David Niven, attempting to complete the ultimate supernatural dinner party.
Yes, ‘The Flash Girls’ are fine indeed, though I have a hard time figuring out which one of them has the deeper voice in the songs. (If you could let me know I would be eternally grateful, well, I’d offer up a biscuit or something…) Their mastery of a range of genres is evident, from 60’s surf pop through haunting capella to jagged nursery rhyme funk. And they never fail to make me grin stupidly.
Thanks Emma Bull! Cheers Lorraine Garland! Say hi to the ghost of Dorothy Parker when you see her!
October 14, 2005 10:13 AM
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Dan Guy said…
Chris Claremont introduced me to Emma when she and Cats Laughing appeared in X-Men: Mojo Mayhem. I thought he’d made her up until I saw her name on the spine of a book in the library while aimlessly wandering the stacks one day.
I have all of the Flash Girls albums. ^_^
May 09, 2007 2:51 PM
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Emma Bull said…
Heh–thanks, Peter. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you at some of those gigs we played in the Next Universe Over…
Dan, Chris Claremont is responsible for people thinking all my bands aren’t real. Some people even think I’m not real. Which makes it that much more fun when they find a Cats Laughing album, or a Flash Girls album, or one of my books, and shriek, “You mean they EXIST?” Great stuff.
July 07, 2007 3:46 PM
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Jason Powell said…
That’s funny — when I read “Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem,” I thought that the lady therein described as Kitty’s favorite musician/writer was surely a real person. ‘Cause why make that up?
Although since that was the pre-Internet era, the idea of seeking out said band seemed like it would be really hard. I kind of forgot all about it.
Nine years later I discovered the Flash Girls when trying to find recordings of Alan Moore songs (”Life is a glorious cycle of song…”), and when I saw on their site that one of the Flash Girls, this “Emma Bull” person, was also a sci-fi writer, and that the Flash Girls appeared in Sovereign Seven, I knew instantly (without actually remembering the name), THIS was the same woman from Mojo Mayhem.
By the by: The Wikipedia entry on Cats Laughing mentions the band’s appearances in the Excalibur comics, but not in Chris Claremont’s “Debt of Honor” graphic novel — a Star Trek graphic novel in which we learn that that whale-lady from Star Trek IV is a Cats Laughing fan when she listens to something of theirs called “the Excalibur sessions.”
Oh, that Claremont — what a sneak.
August 23, 2007 9:12 AM