Uwishunu.com

After months of fundraising, volunteer recruiting, equipment borrowing, and general planning mayhem, Girls Rock Philly 2008 is finally underway, with 50 girls aged 9-17 spending the week learning the ins and outs of starting a band – from songwriting to set-list writing, from tuning to t-shirt printing.

It all culminates with this Saturday’s showcase, in which the ten bands formed during this year’s camp will play short sets consisting of songs they spent the week writing from scratch and rehearsing. Held, like the camp, on the campus of Girard College, the showcase is a modest $5 and is open to the public.

Sure, Girls Rock Philly is a great cause, but that is hardly the only reason to show up and take your place among an audience of the campers’ friends and families. Both song and sound-wise, the musical results of Girls Rock camps can be strikingly original and inventive, as Arne Johnson’s and Shane King’s Girls Rock! documentary certainly proved. Same for Oak Oak OK, last year’s Girls Rock Philly success story, who are still together and playing shows.

Folks with minimal or no musical training who wouldn’t normally be encouraged to start bands, thrown together and making up the rules as they go along: If you don’t see the parallels here with the earliest days of punk and new/no wave, you aren’t paying attention.

Girls Rock Philly 2008 Showcase
Saturday August 9, 5 p.m.
Girard College: 21st and Girard
$5
www.girlsrockphilly.org