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Exposure: Cherry Bombs
by Tim Kenneally
Good girls go to heaven; the Donnas go everywhere
Every high school has at least a few of them: the way-cool girls who cut gym, smoke in the parking lot, and eventually take up permanent residence in detention hall. At California's Palo Alto High, the bad girls were the Donnas, but instead of just bitching about how much school sucked, they wrote songs about it. Now, fresh out of school, sporting tight, matching T-shirts and Joan Jett-type swagger, the foursome dispense their own brand of good-time cavegirl feminism. On their loud and proud American Teenage Rock'n' Roll Machine, the group -- vocalist Donna A., 18, guitarist Donna R., 18, bassist Donna F., 19, and drummer Donna C., 19 -- augment their buoyant pop-metal riffs with a flurry of "gonnas," "wannas," and "gimmes." Their manifesto: curfew + classes = bad; action + boys = good. In short, don't look for them on the Lilith Tour.
"We're not very girly, to tell the truth," says Donna R. What they lack in daintiness, though, they've made up in precociousness. Hastily assembled six years ago for a school talent show ("People were just like, 'What the hell is going on?'" she says), the band released a few singles and a self-titled debut album before being picked up last year by Berkeley, California's famed Lookout! label (Green Day, Operation Ivy). The Donnas claim they actually pulled good grades in school despite skipping out on most of it, and even gave collegiate life a shot last fall, but decided to tour behind Machine instead. So how would the Donnas' penchant for delinquency mesh with the rigors of academia? "We know how to bullshit," Donna R. says, "so we'd probably do okay. But I'd still probably write about how much it sucked."