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Performance on NPR’s Sound Opinions with Rivers Cuomo
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Audrey Leon, Loud Loop Press (June 2010)
If I have learned one thing about Chicago, it has a lot of extremely talented females. The Cathy Santonies describe their music as “a subversive mix of riot grrrl and cock rock.” I know what you’re thinking, how is that possible and didn’t the Donnas already do that? Well, the Cathy Santonies do it better; the band has emerged as heir apparent to the throne of such influential women rock groups as Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. If you don’t believe me, check out the track “Warrior” from its new EP I’m Yr Friend! I’m Yr Revolution!. Want another reason to come out to this show? Mud Queens of Chicago are the main event. Rock and mud wrestling… what could go wrong? Plus the lovely ladies from Wanton Looks will be ripping shit up with their brand of fearsome power-punk.
DeRo’s Review of Girls Rock! Chicago Kick-off Show (June 2010)
In addition to supporting the program, my own rockin’ girl and I came out to the baseball field beside Josephinum to see the Cathy Santonies. A little more than 12 hours after tearing it up at the Flesh Hungry Dog Show in the middle of the pseudo-hurricane Friday night, the four musicians, several of whom volunteer to teach at Girls Rock!, braved the punishingly bright, sunscreen-defying rays on Saturday afternoon to unleash a short but invigorating set reconfirming my belief that they’re one of the best up-and-coming bands on the local scene. Even as they rotate through a trio of drummers in search of a permanent percussionist, Radio Santoni, Mojo Santoni, and Jane Danger can do no wrong and never fail to deliver a cathartic explosion of energy.
Ethan Stanislawski, Tynan’s Anger (May 2010)
They may have gotten their first national exposure making my least favorite musician in the history of ever sound badass, but the longtime Chicago buzz band Cathy Santonies have unlocked the secret that those still bemoaning Sleater-Kinney’s demise a half decade later have lacked–unbridled, sincere positivity, the kind that dares you to try to bring them down.
The Santonies use hardcore tropes because that’s what they play, and they cite Full House because it’s what they know. They play their instruments better than most bands of any stripe, finding that the precision of punk can produce the self-discipline most wannabe Lydia Lunches stupidly thought to throw out. They end up making the punk equivalent of Happy-Go-Lucky, finding that the most radical approach to music these days is non-naive optimism, which is the natural flow from living through this and digging you out. The Santonies end up more badass than just about anything these days. Homer alert: they hail from my alma mater. But listen you must, whether or not you’re an intellectual snob.
A
Greg Kot–Chicago Tribune, May 2010
from the article/interview: “Cathy Santonies a full house of rock power”:
The Cathy Santonies are the kind of band that sounds like it’s playing with a chip on its shoulder. For the Chicago trio of Radio Santoni, Mojo Santoni and Jane Danger, “rock” is a challenge not to be taken lightly.
“I joined the band two years ago because I liked the people in it and they could play – they’re a lot better than a lot of female-fronted Chicago bands,” Danger says. “They’re not afraid to speak their minds, they’re not afraid to offend and they don’t sing about common frat-boy themes.”
Besides being a pretty good rhythm guitarist, Danger would make a fine music critic with that analysis. The Santonies, who are releasing their third EP, “I’m Yr Friend, I’m Yr Revolution” (available here: http://cathysantonies.bigcartel.com), in conjunction with a concert Friday at Mutiny, are unabashed disciples of riot grrrl – the early ‘90s musical movement that brought together overt feminism and punk rock. But they’re also fans of guitar solos and hard rock in the vein of AC/DC and early Ted Nugent. Though politically or socially there’s not much in common between those two genres, the Cathy Santonies make it work musically with their blood-pumping attack, Radio Santoni’s don’t-mess-with-us vocals and Mojo Santoni’s shred-happy guitar solos [drummer Kaylee Preston is leaving the band in the next few weeks].
The group’s roots are in the blue-collar town of Columbus in southern Indiana. Radio and Mojo met in high school in the mid-‘90s. They were misfits who bonded on music.
“We were shy, insecure, weird, we didn’t fit in with the normal kids,” Radio says. “But we taught each other about feminism, about supporting each other, not judging each other. The music gave us a good outlet for all that.”
They were introduced to riot grrrl through a mix tape with bands that sounded nothing like what they were hearing on the radio – Bikini Kill, L7, Sleater-Kinney.
“I always wanted to sing, but I was always told I was really bad,” Radio says. “Then I got introduced to riot grrrl on that tape and I thought, ‘I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.’ When I heard [Bikini Kill’s] Kathleen Hanna singing what was on her mind in her own voice, that was a big motivation.”
Mojo and Radio began writing songs and making bedroom recordings for a mythical band, Puberty Boi. They each went to college, with Radio moving to Chicago and graduating from the University of Chicago with a PhD in developmental psychology, and Mojo ending up in Indianapolis after studying graphic design. They resumed their songwriting collaboration over the phone and then Mojo moved to Chicago in 2005 to join Radio. Puberty Boi morphed into the Cathy Santonies, named after a character in “The Full House” TV show.
“Cathy Santoni [the ‘Full House’ character] was a scapegoat for all the bad things that teenage girls do to each other,” Radio says.
“We wanted to combine the riot grrrl message with girls who actually know how to play their instruments,” Mojo says. “Riot grrrl faded out and then ‘emo’ came along and boys started blaming women for everything and yet got women to feel sorry for them, which is ridiculous. Now we need to take riot grrrl to the next level, and be able to back it up with how we play. The riot grrrls alienated themselves from the rock world. We need to infiltrate that world and show everyone that we’re able to play side by side with the guys.”
The battle is ongoing. Despite decades of progress in women’s rights, it’s still possible for female rockers to feel like second-class citizens in rock clubs.
“We get condescending attitude from bar owners, sound guys, because sometimes they assume we don’t know what we’re doing,” Radio says. “Then we get up there and play, and then nobody can doubt that we know what we’re doing.”
EP preview in AV Club, May 2010
The Cathy Santonies are basically the sonic second coming of Bikini Kill, but the local all-girl quartet shrugs off any feminist agenda in favor of singing about beaches, killer piranhas, and booze. Still, the shrill wailing propped up against razor-thin distorted guitars and thudding beats says that it has more in common with those long-dormant riot grrrls than a shared lack of Y chromosomes. Earlier this year, the Santonies’ profile rose considerably when Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot drafted the ladies to serve as Rivers Cuomo’s backing band for an appearance on Chicago Public Radio’s Sound Opinions, where they reimagined the Weezer frontman’s songs live on the air and without any rehearsal time. (According to Cuomo, they bested the original compositions.) Here, the band celebrates the release of the new I’m Yr Friend! I’m Yr Revolution! EP.
Andy Downing–Chicago Tribune, Feb 2010
The circumstances surrounding the Cathy Santonies’ earliest gigs are so bizarre that they sound lifted straight from the plot of some ridiculous, mid-’90s television sitcom. Singer/bassist Radio Santoni, then a student at the University of Chicago, became heavily involved in several activist groups (promoting sex education and the like), which invited the band to perform at a series of school-sponsored events where both the group and its music often felt horribly out-of-place.
“We would go play … in this austere hallway full of portraits of dead white guys while everyone waited in line for free burritos,” says Radio Santoni, who first picked up the bass guitar when the band formed four years ago. “People would come out of their offices and complain, like, ‘We’re trying to work here!’”
With three-fourths of the band performing under pseudonyms and a practice space in an “undisclosed location” on the city’s West Side, the Santonies initially come across like comic book superheroes or escapees from some governmental witness protection program. In reality, anonymity has little to do with the adopted stage names.
Guitarist Jane Danger, who began playing under her nom de rock with Three Dollar Bill nearly a decade ago, explains that the monikers are “just another way to gain confidence or take on a different being.” Guitarist Mojo Santoni, who also picked up her nickname long before the group formed, expresses a similar sentiment, saying that “it’s kind of like a character … and Mojo is the confident one.”
Listening to the ferocious tunes streaming on the group’s MySpace site (myspace.com/thecathysantonies), it sounds impossible that the quartet (drummer Kaylee Preston, who joined the group in September, rounds out the current lineup) could ever have lacked for confidence. Take the tornadic “Piranha,” in which dual guitars circle and thrash like hungry sharks as Radio Santoni yelps and howls: “Don’t take the bait/Keep your head above water!”
“If you listen to our old [stuff] we surely don’t sound like this,” says Radio Santoni. “[The sound] has really been built up by working really hard both together and on our own.”
Influenced heavily by the early-’90s riot grrrl movement, the crew initially set out to make hard-hitting rock ‘n’ roll with a positive, feminist message — a message the group found lacking in the current musical climate. As Danger puts it: “It inspired me to write the songs I wasn’t hearing.”
But it wasn’t until the group, which has gone through several lineup adjustments in its relatively short existence, penned the song “Friend/Revolution” that it really found its voice. “It’s about overcoming this feeling women have that they have to compete with one another and instead embracing each other,” says Radio Santoni. “To me, that embodies what we’re trying to do. We’re all working together as women to make something awesome.”
Greg Kot–Chicago Tribune, Dec 2009
from the article: “Top Chicago indie releases of 2009″: Riot grrrl velocity combines with the type of guitar solos you might stumble across on a Judas Priest album. The quartet recently added drummer Kaylee Preston and her presence is immediately felt on the three fast, furious songs on the group’s MySpace site.
Jim DeRogatis–Chicago Sun-Times, Feb 2009
On the dreadful yet somehow oddly addictive sitcom “Full House,” Kathy Santoni was the often talked about yet never seen nemesis of oldest daughter D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron)–the too cool for school, wise beyond her years beauty who always made our heroine feel inferior. The Chicago quartet the Cathy Santonies could just as well have called themselves D.J.’s Revenge, since they even the score for uncool but hard-rocking girls everywhere with their ferocious mix of punk-rock venom and unrestrained head-banging glee.
“Our music is a subversive mix of riot grrrl and cock rock,” guitarist-vocalist Mojo Santoni, bassist-vocalist Radio Santoni, guitarist Jane Danger and drummer Johnny Swanko write on their Web site (www.cathysantonies.com). You might not think those two genres make for easy bedfellows, but like chocolate and peanut butter, once you’ve put ‘em together you’ve more than doubled the delights. These girls (and guy) ain’t kidding when they boast, “We’re cocky, loud, full of wild energy and catchy as hell!”
The foursome released a self-titled EP a few years back, and the five songs are streaming on their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/thecathysantonies. But the group is finishing up a new album, and anyone who’s ever been tormented by a Kathy Santoni should scoop it up the minute it’s available, because the last laugh is always the sweetest.
Tynan’s Anger, Nov 2007
One of my friends at this school once remarked that his brother decided not to apply to the University of Chicago because of the write-up we got in Rolling Stone’s Guide to Colleges that Rock. Apparently, our campus is so classical-based that its pathetic rock offerings are taking away potential applicants. This coming from the publication that gave Papa Roach 4 stars.
Well, on Saturday I did discover one band that may change that. Fire Escape Films hosted the event Synesthesia, which put student films on the backdrop of some of the University’s best rock bands. The featured band was U of C rock staple The Goddamn Shame, who had the unfortunate problem of trying to banter with the crowd with a guy fellating a toothbrush in the background. But the band that stuck out to me the most was The Cathy Santonies, a band of two girls and a guy who have been performing together for only a year and a half, but sounded like goddamn pros. They played a nice mix of riott girl and balls out punk rock, and sounded like Bikini Kill, X, and Le Tigre (bassist Radio Santoni donned a Le Tigre shirt during the performance). They seemed a bit unsure of themselves performing, but if they keep playing like that, they’ll get more comfortable much more quickly.