Screaming Females Mosh Pit Montage

Screaming Females at Maxwell’s NJ on August 13. 2010.

What you can’t see in this photo is what I had to do to get it… pushing back a frenzied group of crowd surfers, defending my post against a photographer with far better gear than mine, remembering why you should never wear open toed shoes to a punk show, and wedging myself in-between a stranger’s husband and a speaker in order to stand steady enough to take a photo in focus. Just sayin’. Also just sayin’, I loved it.  But then after that I decided just to take pictures while moving with the crowd, I mean…. the experience is far more blurry than anything else, especially if you didn’t get there early enough to stand close to the stage.

What I think is most interesting about Screaming Females is that a) they aren’t all females and b) the audience is largely straight white men. Other shows I’ve been at lately  with female artists attract mostly other females. And in the case of Lilith Fair, that whole dynamic of women-who-make-music-attract-female-audiences devolves into some sort of marketeer’s dream and ceases to be about sound or self-expression at all.  It’s not that it matters who listens to your music as long as you like making it and they like listening to it, but what’s right with Screaming Females is what’s wrong with a lot of  assumptions about, well, Chicks with Guitars –  especially the ones who are virtuosic in rock and indie genres and don’t play into stereotypical ideas of feminine beauty or musical styles. I wish I had the guts to be Marissa Pasternoster.  I think it’s awesome that this petite woman with a girlish speaking voice gets a whole room full of guys to go berserk while she stands on stage, covered neck to knee in a frumpy frock while simultaneously screaming and eating a microphone.