On Saturday I went to the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp Showcase at the Bottom of the Hill. The camp ran all last week and was patterned after the original from Portland, which has had a movie made about it. The format of the showcase was 13 bands of girls ages 8-18, each formed earlier that week, playing one song each that they had written.

With a nice afternoon out in Potrero Hill going on outside, the audience was in a venue hot from the crowds of parents, grandparents, friends and the curious. People were packed in and sweating (and even drinking) while watching these mostly teenage girl bands performed songs they had written. It felt like a true rock show.

The style, topics, and, to be blunt, the quality of the songs varied from band to band. Some songs were melodic and poppy, while others were post-punk or straight up pop punk and others had a variety of elements that came together.

Boys, girl power, school, waking up, and even difficulty writing songs were among the topics for the the songs. Some of the lyrics were complex, while others were more on the simple side. My favorite set of lyrics was a narrative about a boy who has a crush on the narrator and the twists and turns as that story plays out.

A number of songs were impressive while others…weren’t to my taste–though even one of the ones that I personally liked the least was better than some of the adult bands around San Francisco. And I should perhaps rephrase what I just said: all of the songs were impressive. We marvel when a 19 year old like Zach Condon (of Beirut, his age when he released Gulag Orkestar) writes beautiful songs after years of practice and previous attempts at albums that next-to-no-one heard. Well, here are kids 3, 5, 8 years younger writing and performing songs a week after they formed the bands. That’s impressive. Some of the girls even started their instruments that week!

Bands played and in between songs, some of the organizers MCed, running the raffle or pumping up the merch (both to benefit the Rock Camp) or telling stories from the camp. They spoke a lot about the girls reaction to the camp, which seemed to be overwhelmingly positive and empowering.

In fact, it unsurprisingly felt a bit like a school band concert–an audience made largely of people who were supposed to be there, plenty of affirming talk and plenty of affirming applause. Well, there was a couple big differences, I suppose: unless you count jazz tunes made mostly of improvised jazz solos, I was rarely at a school concert, even through high school, where the performers wrote the song. And, I never saw this much rock at a school concert.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 10:23 pm Posted by adrian in SF bay area, live review, photos. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.