One More Time

Seattle-by-way-of-San-Francisco writer and musician Carla DeSantis started Rockrgrl magazine in 1994, after having had enough of music magazines that make women out to be little more than attractive accessories. Focusing on smart women making smart music and smart choices—and jettisoning beauty tips and fashion advice in favor of tips on effects pedals and advice about audio recording, Rockrgrl provided a bimonthly meeting place for female musicians and their fans. In 2000, DeSantis and the magazine staged their first conference; the second will take place Nov. 10–12 in various venues around town. Though the magazine proper's final issue will appear around the time of the event, the Rockrgrl brand remains strong, with DeSantis an in-demand public speaker. Amidst the madness of the conference's final preparation days, DeSantis took time off to sit for the Jukebox at my dining-room table.

Concrete Blonde: "Joey" (1990) from Bloodletting (IRS)

Carla DeSantis: Johnette!

Seattle Weekly: I know Johnette Napolitano, Concrete Blonde's singer-guitarist, has written a lot for the magazine. I have to say, I read that story she wrote recently about singing so hard it forced her tampon out, but I'm not quite sure I believe all that. . . .

DeSantis: I do! It must have been a hell of a high note, huh? Johnette's been sort of a guardian angel to Rockrgrl since the beginning, and when I first started the magazine—[distracted by music] that's such a great voice—she was one of the first people to buy an ad. The record label would not buy an ad, so she paid for one out of her own pocket. So she's always been sort of a patron saint. She was on the cover of the second issue, with her Chihuahua. She's somebody who has been a champion of the magazine, so she wrote that tampon thing and said, "I don't know where else to send it, so I'm sending it to you." And I kind of went, "This is crazy, but OK." I really like her; she's fun and she's cool and her heart is so in the right place. So I think she is going to have a lot to say. If anything, going just one hour with Johnette, that will be the tricky part.

SW: Right, she's a keynote speaker for this year's conference. What's the angle for her speech going to be?

DeSantis: I think she's just really going to talk about what it's been like for her. She's been a bandleader, she was on IRS records. That is really the whole crux of what the conference is about, for people to talk about their stories and be inspiring and cautionary simultaneously. When I was putting this together I asked her to be a part of it, but I hadn't really asked her to be a keynote speaker because, you know, when you know people—I can't say that I know her really well, that's so presumptuous to say—but then I realized that she had so much to say. She's had a really interesting career, with people leaving in the middle of tours, and she's been the chief songwriter all along.

SW: Yeah, she's the girl in a band of guys.

DeSantis: But she's kind of held her own, and I think she's one of these artists that no one ever looked and said, "Chick in band." She's always just been Johnette. I don't think she's ever been identified in that way, which is interesting, and neither has Patti [Smith]. They've never been identified as chick rockers or whatever that horrendous thing that [role] is.

Hole: "Doll Parts" (1994) from Live Through This (DGC)

DeSantis: I'll name this song in one note.

SW: Tell me the Courtney Love story from the 2000 conference, when she just kind of showed up. You guys are friends or you were friends?

DeSantis: Well, that implies reciprocity. . . . I've known her for a long time, and I do have to admit that when Kurt died I was really fascinated by how so many young girls identified with her and how she was the bad girl in a dress. We didn't have bad girls in dresses before Courtney. And I also personally felt the need to defend her because my feminist buttons were all pushed when, you know, Courtney was supposedly responsible for everything bad that happened to Kurt. That made me crazy: He was so wonderful and she was so horrible. Now, I'm not saying that he's horrible and she's wonderful by any stretch of the imagination, but . . . 

SW: You object to the easy answer.