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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.
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.”
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.