Of all the music I listen to and/or follow, The Donnas have to be my favorite band. They went mainstream back around 2002-2004ish with the release of Spend The Night. The song "Take It Off" was all over MTV, the radio, etc. Right around the same time, "Who Invited You" was released from the same album and suddenly this all-girl band was on the map.
I love their music, but I have to say that I'm a relative newbie compared to most "Donnaholics". Besides Spend The Night, I also own Gold Medal and Bitchin'. I've asked for Greatest Hits Volume 16 for Christmas, so hopefully this will fill in a few gaps for me.
So, about the band and what makes them so popular. At the start, each of the four girls were named Donna with their real initial. For example, Donna R., Donna A., etc. After some time, the girls seemed to have ditched these monikers for their real names: Maya, Allison, Brett, Torry.
Throughout the years, I've listened to their music but not really followed the band too closely. They don't often tour to the city closest to my part of the east coast - Charlotte - and the music was my main love, so that was good enough for me.
To backtrack a little, when Gold Medal came out, circa 2004ish, I had heard some press about this being a more mellow album due to someone in the bad having some physical problems of some sort. Not sure what I heard or who had the problems, or even what the issues were, but I loved the collection, so I never questioned it any further. Then, back to the present, I realized that a friend of mine from the left coast is also a fan of their music, so we got to talking about the band and it made me think that I should do some research and find out if the band had any plans to travel to the Queen City. Long story short, no tour is currently in the works. Or maybe it is, and nothing has been released. In any event, as I was going through the clips of articles, I noticed that Donna C., a.k.a. Torry Castellano a.k.a. the band's drummer is no longer with the band. It seems that back in the early to mid 2000's when I had heard that the band was focusing on slowing things down it was because Torry had developed some type of wrist injury that she eventually had surgery to repair. According to what I read, she relearned how to hold the drumsticks and everything. Then sometime in 2008 (I could be way off with the dates, so bear with me), she apparently developed pain in her shoulder. This eventually forced her to retire from the band. Retire at 30ish...don't we all wish...
As I thought about it more and more, I couldn't help but feel awful for her. She is doing the thing she loves more than anything (this could be a stretch, but I have to believe if you're making music and touring with a band of your best friends, then at least on some level this is your greatest love, right?)
I mean, just imagine if something happened to me and I couldn't go to work and run the selling report that my boss is going to lose on his desk before it eventurally ends up in the garbage. Or if something happened to me and I lost my creative ability to develop advertising in the system that sucks the life out of you by giving you an error message every 2 minutes, or by having you retype everything until you have memorized every word of every ad down to a "T". Ok, well maybe my examples aren't mano-e-mano with Torry's but you get the idea. I'm obsessed with tragedy, I've decided. I find something tragic, which I believe this situation is, and then I have dreams about turning back time and making everything better. Most times it involves people I don't know and probably never will know. But I have a strong sense of empathy and wish that people didn't have to go through the things people have to go through.
In the end, I hope that The Donnas have success with their new drummer, Amy Cesari, and that Torry enjoys a life free of pain and full of excitement.
I'll leave you with this...Treat yourself to The Donnas today! Gold Medal and Bitchin' are awesome listens...who am I kidding...everything from The Donnas is a great listen! Your ears will thank you!!!!
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