Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-02-20


Interview:
Donita Sparks co-founded the heavy riff-oriented band L7 in 1985. L7 released six studio albums, one live CD, and one greatest hits record. Their 1992 release Bricks Are Heavy was included in Rolling Stone's list of "Essential Albums of the 1990s". With their recording career beginning in 1987 and continuing through the '90s, L7 spawned underground and mainstream hits such as: Shove, Pretend We're Dead, Shitlist, Andres, and Fuel My Fire. Touring the world countless times, L7 also graced the main-stage of Lollapalooza in 1994 and appeared in the John Waters movie Serial Mom as the band "Camel Lips". In 1991 Donita and L7 formed Rock For Choice with the Feminist Majority Foundation which staged numerous concerts benefiting pro-choice organizations. Recently, Donita along with Kristin Hersh launched CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders). CASH Music is a platform for artists to create a sustainable livelihood and more interaction/exchange with their fans. In addition, Donita contributed to the score of the 2007 feature film The Life of Reilly (starring the late Charles Nelson Reilly). She writes a weekly music column "The Spin I'm In" for the popular, politically progressive blog Firedoglake.com. Donita also created a mash-up of Brazilian rock sensations CSS (vs. L7) in response to the band doing a lively cover of the Sparks' penned L7 classic Pretend We're Dead. The mash-up, Pretend We're Alala, can be heard on L7's and CSS's MySpace pages. We had the honor of sitting down with Donita to discuss her new album, her days with L7, touring with Nirvana, and her business venture with Cash Music. Here's what she had to say:

You're no stranger to the music scene, how would you describe your growth musically since L7 in 1987?

I'm expressing my musical tastes more, a wider range of what I actually listen to. When L7 started, I listened to the Mills Brothers as much as I listened to Motorhead, but I expressed the Motorhead side of me. Now I can express pop and softness as well.

When you toured last fall, fans got to hear some of the songs from your upcoming album. Did you notice that they seemed to have a favorite or one that got more of a response?

A lot of them got a really great response... People are really picking up on "Curtains for Cathy". I think it's kind of an unexpected thing when they hear us do it. They also like "Fly Feather Fly" which is the first track on the record, and we usually close the set with that. So it's just kind of this spiritual chant, and the audience just gets caught up in it, which is really cool. I wasn't really expecting that they would get it like that, but they did.