Female Fronts and Backs

Not that a show on an obscure Monday night needs a theme, because it's awesome enough that there is a great show to start off the week with, but tonight's actually did have one: female fronted bands. And, just for the record, I love watching a girl play drums (I'm sure that says something about me).

DC's Body Cop made me glad I'd brought earplugs, something I rarely bring or use. The band plays slow-paced punk while the tiny lead singer Kiki wails unintelligibly over top of all that sound; it's pretty impressive. A lot of people had come to hear them specifically and some even left after their set.

For the first few songs, she actually stood in front of the stage, one with the audience, who were barely two feet away. Her frenetic motions and screaming sounds made it hard for the audience to look anywhere else. Reverberating and shrieking, she appeared to be a force of nature.

Between sets, I ran into a friend and her musician husband, whom I'd seen play Gallery 5 with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists two summers ago. I remembered the great energy in the room that night and he remembered the sky-high temperatures ("I think it was 100 degrees," he recalled). In fact, he remembered it as the hottest show they'd ever played.

Richmond's The Two Funerals were next, girl-fronted (guitar and vocals) and girl-backed (drums) and with a guy on bass. They were great to watch, mainly because they all seemed to be enjoying themselves so much. My friend who had previously seen them warned me ahead of time, "They are so much fun."

Fun and apparently good friends with Screaming Females, the headliners for the evening. So, too, were my friends; in fact, SF are staying with them tonight, making them true arts supporters. Because they'd seen SF before, my friends informed me that I wouldn't be needing my earplugs for their set and I was happy to discover that they were right. SF's volume level was perfect: loud enough but not ear-splitting. Pink plugs stayed parked in pocket.

The last time SF played RVA, the show had sold out in an hour, so word had gotten around not to miss tonight's performance. The poster billed them as "NJ Christian surf jazz," an intriguing enough description no matter what it meant.

A lot of the word-of-mouth came about because of lead singer Marissa's epic guitar playing and she was indeed amazing. The songs were well-written and her distinctive voice added a lot of polish to each one. Dressed in red silk Chinese pajamas with big white frog closures, she looked a bit like an anime character, but she orchestrated that band like some kind of heroine.

After the show ended and the crowd began calling for more, she picked up the set list and pointed to the bottom, "We'll do one more. See here it says: Optional? We're choosing to do that song for you." But afterwards, when the crowd called for another, she came back and reminded them that the band had already done the optional song. I took it to mean, "Stop begging."

I understood her point completely. Here we are lucky enough to have these bands playing on a Monday evening, a typically boring night, so let's not be demanding, kids.

The audience's theme for a Monday show should be gratitude, not greed.