Riot Grrrl may have closed its New York and DC chapters in 1996 but it is not over. Camp Cope, an all-girl band from Australia, is keeping the movement alive with their music.
The punk rock movement was alive from 1975 to 1980 and while many bands used the platform to make a difference politically, as the scene grew older it became clouded and corrupt. They were especially harmful to women, “who would be assaulted at shows and not taken seriously as artists,” as said by Polyphonic. That’s when women like Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail stepped in to create the zine and all-girl punk band by the same name, Bikini Kill. In their zine they wrote their manifesto, saying how their mission was to “make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work,” while not having to “assimilate to someone else’s [boy] standards of what is or isn’t.”
But while the Riot Grrrl movement made strides towards women empowerment they couldn’t completely get rid of the problem. To this day women are still underrepresented in the music scene and those who are involved still face the possibility of assault and being undermined by men. The same can be said for any woman, inside the music industry or not.
This is where Camp Cope comes in. They were kicked out of the punk scene in Australia because they used “blunt dialogue” in their lyrics to call out “sexism, bigotry, and assault as they witnessed it,” as said by Stereogum. By being outcasted by the scene that was built against fighting The Man for doing just that, Camp Cope became the misfits of the misfits.
With songs like “The Opener” and “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams” Camp Cope has become what I believe is our present-day Riot Grrrl. They are showing girls that we have a place in the music scene and are fighting against anyone who tells them they’re not good enough. They were even the first all-girl band to perform at the Sydney Opera House which you can watch here.
In “The Opener” lead singer Georgia Maq screams her lyrics with such conviction that you can feel how angry the band is for not being treated fairly. This song doesn’t even have a hook but her voice will be stuck in your head for weeks shouting:
“It’s another man telling us we can’t fill up the room
It’s another man telling us to book a smaller venue
‘Nah, hey, c'mon girls we’re only thinking about you
Well, see how far we’ve come not listening to you
‘Yeah, just get a female opener, that’ll fill the quota.’”
When Camp Cope combines Maq’s powerful lyrics with their bassist Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich’s strong chord progressions and drummer Sarah Thompson’s steady beat their message will have no other choice but to be instilled in you.
The not so crazy thing is that even though they are trying so hard to challenge the injustice between males and females so clearly in their songs there are still men trying to tell them that they are doing everything wrong. They are telling them that they aren’t holding their instruments correctly, that they are “missing a frequency,” while they are calling these men out for saying these exact things in their songs. Maq said in an interview with Stereogum:
“After that song [“The Opener”] came out, someone shared a Twitter post with us that had dozens of reactions from guys. It was guys questioning what we were saying, guys saying we recorded it wrong, guys saying we should have spent more time on the album. And I poked around to see who these people were. It was people who work in fields like construction! These people were telling us we were doing everything wrong. What better way to prove that “The Opener” is a very real, true life experience than to look at a comment section on our work.”
Despite how it can sometimes feel like no change is ever being made Camp Cope still fights on and I urge you to do the same. It’s time to stand up and make a difference. It’s time to get rid of the gender bias that pollutes the music scene along with everywhere else.
Some ways that you can help is by going to one of Camp Cope’s concerts and supporting them along with any other women in the music scene.
You can also visit these websites to learn about their mission and make a difference: