HeyJared'I Know How To Live': The Life of Kristen Pfaff
Hear Kristen Pfaff's demos & read volume 1 of the biography of Kristen Pfaff (a Substack bestseller) drawing from her archive. Described by Jane Savidge as 'Mankowski’s brilliant retelling of the extraordinary life of Pfaff'
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 11, 2026
Latest issues
‘Kristen Pfaff sings, records over, sings again into the microphone, onto the malleable ribbon of magnetic tape...’ (opens the original)
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‘In a paradoxical way, this digital account offers a more authentic, more compelling, way of telling this multi-layered, multi-material story than a physical book could.’ <img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="801" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/f
Hole Re-releases... (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="1149" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JPoq!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bafc7fe-5744-40ac-a262-b249063c8eef_1600x1263.
‘Oceans of Angels’: The Absence of Kristen Pfaff on Hole’s Celebrity Skin (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="1285" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3Obm!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F614cf479-4d36-4829-9bdd-6035f9ee77c5_1280x1285.
Kristen Pfaff's First Band (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="682" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!36nr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F223adff1-c1a7-43ef-b61a-b58186169a6d_1070x682.jpe
Kristen Pfaff's four best pre-Hole bass lines (according to Vice) and the paper on her years as an activist I presented this week... (opens the original)
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It was cool to see a recent article in Vice describing Pfaff as ‘a key innovator of the Minneapolis sound of the 90s with her band Janitor Joe.’ They chose her best four basslines in Janitor Joe (my favourite, personally is ‘Boys In Blue’). You can listen to them and decide for yourself hereI presented a paper on Kristen’s activism years at the KISMIF conference, Porto, Portugal this week where I got to hang out with John Robb (journalist and broadcaster who coined the term
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