Sometimes you just have to form a band with your best friends in junior high and then go on to rock the world.

Brett, Allison, Maya, and Torry all shared 1979 as their birth year, met at school in Palo Alto, California, and formed an ad hoc band in 8th grade to perform at a school event. They decided to stay together and play together, mainly as a trashy metal band known as The Electrocutes, practicing relentlessly every afternoon in a garage. Wanting to also play a different brand of song without damaging their metal image, they formed a side project and called themselves The Donnas (similar to The Ramones, each member adopted the name but with a different last initial).

As they gained popularity, the side band became the main band, and The Donnas melded their love of metal, punk, and 70s classic rock into their own brand of loud and fast fun. You gotta give the people what they want, and they wanted The Donnas. The group released their debut album on an indie label and toured Japan before they even graduated from high school, and in 2001, after three more records of lean and mean riffage, they signed with Atlantic Records for their major label debut.

In 2002, The Donnas released Take It Off, their highest charting album featuring their most popular song, “Take It Off,” a track whose lyrics wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the catalog of a sleazy bunch of guys who worshiped at the altar of Kiss, but from an all-female band it sounded like a feminist sexual power anthem. What’s good for the goose, the gander wants to let loose.

So don’t waste time, just give it up …. to The Donnas.