BABES IN BOYLAND (w/ Out of the Box)
The Donnas : Seattle, Graceland (02.17.2001).


Ootb/BiB : How long have you guys been together, then. I mean, you talk about the Electrocutes, was it already the 4 of you ?
The Donnas : Yeah, we were 13, it's been 8 years now, almost. It will be 8 years in May. Basically we met in middle school. Some of us even went at the same elementary school, so we've known each other for a long time.

Ootb/BiB : Are all of you 21 ?
The Donnas : Well, no, some of us are 22 now…as a matter of fact some people really think we're younger. People who saw us when we release our first single, when we were 16 or 17 tend to think that we're going to be that age forever. But hey, we ARE getting older…

Ootb/BiB : Before you're 21, can you play shows, though ?
The Donnas : Yeah, you can play shows, there are lots of people that let us play, but I think they were nicer to us because we are girls and we wouldn't sneak in and get some drinks and stuff, but a lot a boys in bands were asking us 'I got kicked out of that club, why didn't you?'… people just let us. Yeah we were pretty lucky. There was just one club in San Francisco when we were first starting out that wouldn't let us play, but most of the other ones did. Beside by the time we started our first tour we were already 18 and most people would let you play at 21 and over because you're 18.

Ootb/BiB : So what do you guys listen to when you're on the road ?
The Donnas : I like rap (Snoop Dog) We listen to AC/DC in the van most of the time. Them and other bands we are touring with. It's kind of fun especially if it's there last album that they just put out, to listen to it during the day and then see them play at night.

Ootb/BiB : Is there anybody you don't like ?
The Donnas : There's a lot we don't like. Basically everything on MTV, unless it's a joke, pop songs we make fun of. We hate the new rock, we really don't like Orgy, Limp Biskit and all that. The whole turn in the rock thing is just a joke. They made a mistake on 120 Minutes when they were supposed to premiere our video, they got messed up and they played Dog's Smack instead of it. 'Here's the Donnas', like the guy announces it and everything and they screwed up and the next video is Dogsnak, it was really weird. We always joke when we see it now 'hey look, here we are!'

Ootb/BiB : How did you like touring Europe ? Was it your first time there ?
The Donnas : No, it was our second time and the first time was pretty horrible, because it was like… well, it wasn't Europe's fault, it was our fault, or the promoter's fault. There was a bad, bad communication. We were obviously not prepared for where they were having us stay and everything. It was very different from our first American tour. Like for example they were telling us before we left that we didn't need our sleeping bag, that we didn't need to worry about hotels and then when we got there, it was a different story. I mean, it's great to sleep at people's place but we were pretty young at the time and it often felt quite awkward, and then some of the squatts are just really nasty. You know we could have survived except that we didn't have sleeping bags. So we started spending money on hotels, then running out of money and then we have to cut the tour short the first time because we ran out of money. But we went back and the second time was great… in spite of the tour manager, but that's another story.

Ootb/BiB : I don't know how familiar you are with the history of influential girls bands here in Washington, with the Riot Grrrlz movement especially. There were a lot of very important local bands, especially from Olympia. Do you have any scene like this where you come from, and which ones of those bands were influential to you ?
The Donnas : When we were younger we were really into Riot Grrl, although we were a little too young to be as political as they were. So we would go to the shows to the Guilmon (we're from the Bay area), and kind of wish that they would let us go in there and into their group of women musicians. Nobody liked us at our school, so we were like 'if they don't like us at our school, maybe the women musicians will like us. But we were so durky and young and a lot of them were kind of stuck up, not at all what we thought they'd be. I thought they were into like girls, and I mean we were four young women who wanted to play, you know. All we wanted to do was just play and we hated the boys, so we thought we had many things in common, but they would just give us dirty looks. Once we gave someone our tape and then we found it on the floor at the end of the show. We were really sad -it was a Bikini Kill show…-- They were like our favorite at that time too, that's why we got really sad, 'cause we were just like dreaming of opening for Bikini Kill at Gilmon. And I mean there were lots of girls bands in the Bay area at that time that were really bad, but we would go to their show anyway, because that's how deep into the Riot Grrrl we got, you know.

Ootb/BiB : So basically you're saying that these bands might not have been as inspiring as they usually say they are...
The Donnas : So I mean listening to these bands was really inspiring, their music was. The scene they had among friends was inspiraing too, but just the social part, like for us, who didn't belong to this very specific geographic community, it just mad us feel even lamer and alienated. It was like boys bands didn't like us, and then the girl bands didn't like us either. We didn't fit in anywhere. So we thought we must have been really lame or something, because nobody wanted us, so we just kept playing with ourselves. Every once in a while we met another band our age, they were all boys, you know what I mean ?


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