After four decades of being told predominantly by men how to perfect her performances, Ronnie Spector seemed to invite feedback on her imperfections Saturday night at the apex of the Girls Got Rhythm Fest.

"I like this audience," the Hall of Fame singer said on-stage at Amsterdam Bar and Hall in downtown St. Paul. "They tell me when I have lipstick on my teeth."

Lipstick traces abounded during Girls Got Rhythm, a three-day event featuring nothing but women singers or female-fueled garage bands -- and about an evenly split audience, gender-wise. There were no feminist speeches or riot-grrrl songs in the inaugural festival. But there was still a lot of grrr-ing and teeth-baring.

"Don't pick on me, or I will torture you," Muffs singer Kim Shattuck threatened in her Los Angeles grunge-pop trio's snarly, blistering set, a fitting finish Friday.

There was even a wee bit of smut. Flipping sexual innuendos on AC/DC -- whose song gave the festival its name -- Norwegian pop-punk quartet Caroline & the Treats delivered such saucy tunes as "Let's Get Dirty" and "Wam Bam Baby." Pigtailed, spandex-pants-wearing Caroline Andersen joked that the latter song was their "super mega-hit. It's been played on the radio once."

After Spector, the next-best-known GGR performer was Japanese surf-rock trio the 5.6.7.8.'s, recognized from Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 1." That wasn't enough to keep a third of the crowd from trickling out after Spector's set Saturday, leaving the 5.6.7.8's finishing to only about 200 fans with their quirky, stoner-warp-speed fuzz-rock ditties and a Japanese-language version of "Great Balls of Fire."

The performers seemed to be cult fans of each other, though. When Caroline & the Treats kicked into their cover of Detroit power-pop pioneer Nikki Corvette's song "Let's Go," fans were treated to a surprise appearance by Ms. Corvette herself. Nikki also performed Saturday using a band of local GGR participants, including members of Pinsch and fest co-founder Travis Ramin. Her set culminated with a dozen fans climbing on-stage to holler along to "Girls Like Me" (next line: "were made to rock 'n' roll").

Predictably, Spector's set wound up being the emotional and musical high point. The 68-year-old hitmaker only had about 68 percent of her legendary voice -- enough for "Be My Baby" alone to be worth the $45 price tag -- but she came off as cool as ever. With a seven-piece band, she dropped in tributes to Amy Winehouse (nailing "Back to Black) and Johnny Thunders ("You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory"). Then she bragged that both the Beatles and the Stones liked her version of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" when her old group the Ronettes toured with them. Talk about name-dropping.

Before singing "I Can Hear Music" in the encore, Spector pointed out that her girl group actually recorded the 1969 Beach Boys hit years before the Boys did. That's about as close as Girls Got Rhythm ever came to being an us-vs.-them competition.

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