My Earworms, For Your Listening Pleasure

Donna Lee Parsons isn’t particularly well-known in hardcore/punk circles, but she should be. She played a pivotal role in rock history. Before she transitioned, she founded Rat Cage Records, a record label that released the Beastie Boys’ first two EPs; she signed them at their very first show. Twenty years later, after Parsons came out as trans and the band’s meteoric rise to fame, the artists quietly paid for Parson’s gender affirmation surgery. According to member Adam Horovitz, since the men knew she wouldn’t accept the money if she saw it as a charitable act, they claimed they owed her royalties from their EP Polly Wog Stew.

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So if you’ve ever worn a ‘lightning bolt’ t-shirt or listened to Victim in Pain or found yourself fondly recalling a Beastie Boys show you went to, you have a transgender woman to thank for that. And we should know her story. If you call yourself a hardcore kid, Donna Lee Parsons touched your life.

Bad Brains

2+2, New York City, NY (1980)