Catscratch (Photo By John Anderson)
Catscratch, Hipshot, Wild Things, Miss Spent Youth, Spitfire@La Zona Rosa
February 10 "They'd play an encore if they knew one!" So said Michele Murphy as she led the audience at La Zona Rosa in applause for Spitfire, one of the kid bands from her Natural Ear Music Camp. Only the quartet didn't head for the bar when finished with their two-song set. Instead, they hugged their parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and other family congratulating them as the next group took the stage. Does it seem like musicians are getting younger? They are. Pauline of Spitfire is 10, the other band members between 8 and 9, but that didn't seem relevant when she chant-sang "Gloria" in a way that would make Patti Smith beam. The Van Morrison classic and another Sixties staple, "Wipeout," were played repeatedly throughout the evening with varying levels of proficiency, and an unvarying enthusiasm for the music. That innocent love of playing was palpable. With each set, the bands became more polished until headliners Catscratch finished with a burst of punky, feminine power pop as informed by Slim Harpo as the Donnas. Among the five acts, their dynamic was as individual as the bands themselves, never mind that they tapped the same classics. For Spitfire, the dynamic was their youth. For Catscratch, it was their relative age. For the second act, Miss Spent Youth, it was "Pipeline" with fiddle as the lead. That was pure inspiration and the moment that ensured other epiphanies would follow. They did. The Wild Things embraced Roky Erickson's "You're Gonna Miss Me" and were sophisticated enough to note in the intro to "Treat Her Right" that, "If you don't know this song, you don't know Texas." Doug Sahm might have said the same thing. Then there was Hipshot, which produced the unheralded star of the evening, a 14-year-old named Sara who had the pipes and gutsy sustain to take on "Rescue Me" and "Let's Have a Party" among the offerings of the Arc Angels' "Shape I'm In" and ZZ Top's "La Grange." By the time Catscratch blew through the blustery evening's last set with a handful of bouncy originals and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll" as encore, watching teenagers play didn't feel like a novelty. It felt like the winds of change.
