Bad Girls

———— So lets talk about women and rock n' roll.

Ah, a subject close to my heart. For awhile women in rock n' roll was a given; you had Jefferson Airplane, Janis, Pat Benetar, Bikini Kill, Fleetwood Mac with Stevie Nicks and Christine Mcveigh. And lets not forget the British chicks rockin' and rollin' on the other side of the great pond—Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, Poly Styrene. It seemed like for every great guy headed or guy-dominated band there was badass female counterpart; little sisters of punk legends or maybe even their mothers.

Today, with the rise of emo music, chicks are largely under-represnted. Lilith was short-lived, and even 90's greats like Liz Phair have gone under the radar except for re-runs of I Love the 80's. Sheyrl Crow is probably most famous now for being Lance Armstrong's ex-girlfriend. The Shira stage at Warped Tour was considered by many a joke.

So where are the girls? Well, if you listened to emo music you'd assume they were busy breaking boys hearts; boys get jilted and all of a sudden they've started a band and spend their time demonizing (in extreme cases) women. And selling a shitload of cds in the process.

And who buys these cds?

Young girls.

Ironic, eh?

I don't necessarily enjoy the female perspective on break-ups. Yes, love is the most crazy fucking force known to man but in the words of Cyndi Lauper we really just want to have some fucking fun.

In comes Oreska Band.

Oreska Band is a 6-girl group of the most adorable Japanese girls you've ever see. If you walk around backstage you'll usually see them on razor scooters smiling for no reason in particular, or laughing to themselves. I'd heard of them a ton and decided yesterday during Charlotte Warped Tour to give them a listen in the Ampitheater on the Hurley Stage.

Wowwwwwwwza.

Maybe I'm a little emotional as of late, it depends on the time of the month, but their set made me very nearly cry. Think about it: Women in rock n' roll are so laughed at, so marginalized, so ignored. Young girls are discouraged from going into fields like Math and Science and Music because they're "masucline" disciplines, and girls aren't right-brained enough anyway. And here were these 6 girls on stage, speaking broken English but thousands of people were actually LISTENING TO THEM.

Nobody was staring at their tits (well, maybe some people were) or thinking about how to get them in bed or blowing them off because they weren't hot enough.

People were listening. And if you see them (you should try as hard as possible) you will only want to run up on stage with them and dance because they are having fun. Girls having fun. Not to mention, their music is great.

I think it's easy to see I'm heated on this subject….yeah, I'm just a little bit of a diehard feminist. On the first date in Atlanta, Jac and I got interviewed by a feminist website called sugarhookers.com. I had just recently been subjected to a bunch of girl-band bashing and needed to get some steam off my chest and the perfect place to do that was infront of a camera.

If you want to check them out (they seem pretty awesome) you can probably see the video sometime after warped tour is over (my opinions are that extreme that they don't want me getting hurt, haha)

But yeah, sisters. Rock on.

—Jen

SHOUTOUTS TO JAC AND KEL (ALWAYS), AJ (who helped us sell $100 worth of stuff in 20 minutes) and the old dude that wouldn't give me an empty cup unless I paid six dollars.