The Donnas give a loud history lesson
 
SIMONA CHIOSE
Special to The Globe and Mail
Thursday, July 29, 1999
 
Toronto -- Tuesday at the El Mocambo

If the members of Kiss, AC/DC and the Ramones had four daughters, they
would be the Donnas.

As they showed during their Tuesday-night set at Toronto's El Mocambo, the
Palo Alto, Calif., band borrows enough from each of those 1970s rock
legends to stake a claim on the halls of fame for both punk and heavy
metal. Their songs clock in at about three minutes each, they have faith
that power chords are where it's at, and they can whip an already
overheated crowd into a worshipful frenzy.

Unlike what you may expect from a bunch of musicians in their early 20s,
this band's musical tribute to the seventies is not the least bit ironic
-- on Get Skintight, their current CD, they even do a version of Motley
Crue's Too Fast for Love. During a radio interview before their set,
singer Donna A. told a reporter about going to see Poison, the eighties
metal-and-makeup group. The band was awesome, she said, and then proceeded
to mock the boys in her junior high school who played grunge covers.
Somehow, the nineties passed the Donnas by.

Yet if the band can rock, they also have something else going for them:
their gender. In the currently oversubscribed pantheon of "bad girls," the
Donnas reign supreme. Together since junior high school, the foursome
adopted the communal Donna moniker a few years ago. Now, aside from Donna
A., we have Donna F. on bass, Donna R. on guitar and Donna C. on drums.
 
In photographs, they all wear T-shirts bearing their names, and
accessorize them with pouts and skintight pants. (When the band released
American Teenage Rock 'n' Roll Machine last year, news articles described
them as high-school dropouts. In fact, they have all finished high school,
and are even taking university courses.)
 
Clearly, nothing the Donnas do is terribly complex. It's arguable that
lesser-known bands such as New York's Fur, who have a similar mix of
influences but a far more ferocious vocalist, have been trafficking in the
same brand of female rebellion for years. These girls, however, are tight.
And Donna A. means it when she sings, "I'm only 17 and I want a little
piece of you/ I'm thinking of taking a bite, if you know what I mean," on
Outta My Mind, or "You thought I would be broken-hearted/ Maybe I would if
you weren't so retarded," on I Didn't Like You Anyway.
 
With that kind of attitude, it hardly matters if in their own way the
Donnas are as slick a package as the teen-star brigade. In her radio
interview, Donna A. said that the four girls would like to go on a group
date with the five Backstreet Boys. The mothers of the Backstreet Boys
should be terrified: the Donnas would eat their sons for breakfast.