The La Donnas

Rock You All Night Long (Scooch Pooch)
by Jon Sarre

No relation to Darin Raffaelli’s vision of muffettes in matchin’ Tees playin’ Ramones-inspired teen-dreamin’ power poppage (or even to a French Canadian cover band), this Denver-based crew walk a mile high in their Converse All-Stars, constructin’ 2:30 punk rock epics out of the mere ditties lesser mortals come up with off their frayed cuffs. On Rock You All Night Long,The La Donnas pretty much rustle the Lazy Cowgirls’ Harleys and ride ’em off into the sunset spoutin’ put-downs like “No Direction, Just Go,” followed by drunken bratty harmonizin’ like a pack of wiseass thugs at a reform school reunion.

“We want your money, yeah!/That’s all we give a fuck about!” they sneer, tongue-in-cheek maybe, a mini-guitar solo rises out of the chaotic swirl and the song ends, crash landing in a puke-yer-guts-out-all-over-rock’n’roll-classicism finale. They rip off whomever the Electric Eels (and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments) ripped “Cyclotron” from on “Perfect Stranger,” only the La Donnas do it better, taking dirty guitar grindage and sandblastin’ it to Jimmy Reed’s “Ain’t That Loving You Baby” unattainable female musings. “Destruction Man” is the Saints’ “Demolition Girl” (or Grace Jones’ “Demolition Man,” but definitely not X’s “Call of the Wrecking Ball”) rewritten as unconscious hit-the-wall and crash’n’burn out-of-breath-out-of-luck mindfuckism. The final track, “That’s Rock’n’Roll”‘s easy-listening DJ patter-over-heavy guitar workout sorta falls flat in comparison to the title track’s blissful approximation of “How To Cock-Rock 101,” but that’s not sayin’ they didn’t make their point with the rest of the album. That’s rock’n’roll!
(5850 W. 3rd St. #209, Los Angeles, CA 90036)