A large, homely girl stood in the small crowd that surrounded poet-singer Kinnie Starr after her Lilith Fair performance Tuesday night, clutching a T-shirt with a picture of a '50s-style blond bombshell and the words, "Beauty is Not Power," and "Most Politicians Still Think a Woman Should Be Seen and Not Heard." Suzanne Vega was starting on the main stage of the Shoreline Amphitheater just south of San Francisco, and most of the crowd was rushing to catch the beginning of her set. But the women who surrounded Starr didn't move. Instead, they gave her gifts -- one girl pressed a nectarine into Starr's palm, promising it was organic. When the big girl's turn came, she was beaming. "I just love this shirt," she said, handing it to Starr to sign. "Especially the part that says, 'Beauty is Not Power.'"

The show on the main stage, where Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan performed along with Vega, Paula Cole, Jewel and Tracy Chapman, wasn't much different from any big-ticket festival -- everyone played abbreviated sets, and the cumulative effect was at times numbing and exhausting. But Lilith felt different from other festivals. While the difference was subtle -- there was no touchy-feely granola vibe like at the Michigan Womyn's Festival -- the mood was so easy and comfortable that it occurred to me: this is probably how boys feel at shows all the time.

No one was putting on makeup in the women's bathrooms (one of which, judging from the long row of urinals, had been converted from a men's bathroom for the occasion). No one was trying to save their hair from the heat, probably because there were no roving gangs of hacky-sac playing thugs to impress. I was looking forward to making my way to the front of the crowd without being shoved aside by 6-foot punks, crushed by hairy ogres and slammed in the face by army boots on flailing crowd surfers. But unfortunately, the whole front of the amphitheater was reserved seating -- disappointing, especially since half the joy of seeing Sarah McLachlan, the tour's founder and headliner, is being up front to watch the worshipful tears in the eyes of her fans.

"Concerts are sometimes so aggressive," said Yesenia Sanchez, a 24-year-old with long black hair who was sitting cross-legged on the lawn with her friend Tina. "Here there's a different energy. The music is much more thoughtful, and it connects with people on a deeper level."

Indeed, most of the artists were thrilled to be playing to so many girls. "I finally get to play for my peers, all the girls who can't get into the bars where I usually play" said 19-year-old singer Lauren Hoffman. "Usually I go into the bar and it's a five-boy band, and then me, and then another five-boy band." Later, Hoffman seemed delighted to be signing autographs for fans her own age. The way her face lit up, it looked like she was the one meeting her idol.

The Lilith Fair is a world away from the boys-to-the-back anger of the riot grrrls, and Sarah McLachlan actually expressed disappointment that more men weren't showing up. "I'm up on stage and I started counting," she said. "It's like four women, then one guy, then five more women." In fact, McLachlan said, next year there will be men performing in the Lilith Fair. "This year a point needed to be made. There's almost a reverse sexism against a lot of guys right now. These introspective singer-songwriter men are being marginalized like we were a few years ago." She's even charitable to the promoters who booked the cock-rock Lollapalooza lineup. "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the women didn't want to do it. Personally, if I saw Metallica on a bill, I'd say no."

Not that there wasn't any righteous indignation fueling the Lilith Fair. The idea for an all women mega-tour was born in 1995, when McLachlan toured with Paula Cole and some promoters balked at having two women on the same bill. "What?" asked McLachlan, "Are you afraid people won't come?" Now McLachlan's put 53 female artists on the same bill (in a rotating line-up that changes by region) and all of the shows so far have sold out. McLachlan hopes it will prove, once and for all, that women rockers aren't just a trend, that "this is way too huge to be just a fad."

Carla DeSantis, who as editor and publisher of ROCKRGRL magazine is following the fair across the country, said she's tired of the way the media constantly recycles the story about the "trend" of female artists. "I came through the ranks as a professional musician," said DeSantis. "I started the magazine because I had taken a break to get married and have a child, and I couldn't believe that when I came back people were still making a big deal about girls playing music!

"I think this show proves the point I've been trying to make all along," DeSantis said. "Obviously, people aren't here to see a freak show. They're here to see talented entertainers. This summer there's more of a demand for Lilith than for any other festival."

But has the demand come at the price of making the festival too mainstream and non-threatening? After all, these angel-faced folk singers are hardly subversive. "I've heard criticism from some in the media that it's not diverse enough," DeSantis said, "that Sarah could have gotten Sleater-Kinney or Seven Year Bitch. But these artists really reflect [McLachlan's] taste and her audience."

As tame as the acts on the main stage were, there was a coherence to the show that many music festivals lack. Lollapalooza, which keeps coming up whenever anyone starts talking about Lilith, can be so stylistically scattered that the fans split as soon as "their" band stops playing. But most of the artists on the Lilith tour share an audience. The women sitting around me seemed to know the words to all of the songs. When Tracy Chapman sang "Fast Car," the whole audience was enthralled, and their unified attention seemed to make the song even more soulful and tragic.

That's not to say that some of the artists on the main stage weren't awful. Paula Cole was absurd singing her horrible hit, "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone," with its dead-earnest lines, "I will do the laundry/If you pay all the bills." It sounded especially ridiculous given the crowd around me -- on one side was a husky bald dyke with rainbow rings and a "Girls Kick Ass" T-shirt, and on the other was a tall, pretty woman whose shirt read, "Everything I Know I Learned From My Girlfriend."

Similarly, while Jewel's stage patter was disarming, her song "Pieces of You," is just so shockingly bad that it overshadows all her humble appeal. "I never thought I'd sell this many records," she said, thanking her fans. "I really love what I do for a living and I'm really glad I don't have to waitress anymore." The crowd, many of whom were surely waitresses themselves, cheered wildly. Her first few songs were twangy and effervescent. But then she started singing "Pieces of You," an embarrassingly banal song about discrimination. Her face was magnified on the screen above the stage, her doe eyes shut sensitively as she sang the worst lines I've ever heard in any song ever: "faaagooottt, faaaaaagooot" and "Ohhh Jeeeewwww, Ohhhh Jeeewwww."

It was on the tiny third stage -- a black box barely big enough for a singer, drummer and guitarist -- that Kinnie Starr, the true gem of the festival, burned through her way-too-short set. There's nothing more awful than bad poetry, which is why it takes someone like Starr to demonstrate how hypnotically musical spoken-word can be. "Lilith was banned from the garden of man, but she's back and in our face, wings stretched far as she can," Starr chanted in beatniky rhythm. The one song she did sing, before the start of Vega's set cut her short, was "Grandma's Bicycle," and it was the most captivating of any performance. "I am through with this whole damn world and its overwhelming bad taste," went the refrain, over and over in a smoky monotone.

"Most festivals are all men," said Starr, who has only been performing for a year and a half. "I've tried to get into so many of them and have been turned down." During her set, she pointed to two little girls in the audience and asked, "Do you two play guitar? Why not? Do you want to play my guitar?" They waited with their mother to meet her when she was finished, and Starr's friend gave them stickers. Starr said she's been thinking about being a role model a lot lately. "I never had that -- I mean, besides Janis Joplin. This is really, really good for all the little girls. I hope all the little girls go home and beg their moms for guitars."

July 11, 1997

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