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The Donnas
Back in
the Garage:
Santa Cruz welcomes a not-so-new revival
by Arwen Curry
THE RETURN OF THE GREAT GARAGE band is far from new, but for SC, with all its nuances and subtle fashions leaking in from surrounding big cities, the allure of fairly straightforward rock & roll hasn't exactly gotten its due. I heard so many ecstatic comments about such a band, the Donnas, that I had to check out Saturday's Vets Hall local premiere and sure enough, I was blown away.
I'll start with the opening band. The Hostili-teens is a new band--this was its first show, to my knowledge--and despite debutante jitters, it managed to capture some of the energetic brilliance of Get Action-era Teengenerate, a thoroughly under-appreciated garage-punk album imported from Japan in recent years. The Donnas, an all-longhaired girl outfit from the Bay Area, was certainly no letdown. A gig at downtown's Drop-in Center stole half the show (or maybe people just aren't into it), but the crowd that showed sure appreciated every millisecond of fuzz. The Dukes of Hamburg, from SF, rocked even harder--covers of a lot of old classics won't do you any harm. The evening brought nothing but the fondest memories of the shitty acoustics of a worn-down garage.