By DeAnn Rossetti

Carla DeSantis’ hair is a visual metaphor for her being. It’s a subtle golden color from the crown down to the final third, where it turns a fiery crimson.

DeSantis herself appears calm and subtle until you start talking about women, or lack thereof, in rock bands. Then she reveals her fiery feminist heart.

“The idea that women should have equal opportunity in music bothers some people — that’s too bad,” De Santis said. “I still hear every day from teenage girls who experience the same prejudice that I experienced as a teenager, being dismissed as a musician, and that’s just wrong.”

Carla DeSantis put her money and her time where her mouth is and founded ROCKRGRL magazine to highlight women who rock. The magazine is now a decade old and growing stronger every year.

DeSantis points to a policy that was in effect until the late 90s: Radio stations couldn’t play two songs by women back-to-back because they felt listeners would turn the dial.

“In the world of rock, few bands are as maligned, ridiculed and written off as a `novelty’ as often as the `girl band,”’ wrote DeSantis in a ROCKRGRL article. “Even the term itself is slightly derisive — hinting that a band comprised exclusively of women is somehow less than a `real’ band.”

DeSantis points out that Lilith Fair, a successful music festival of women who toured the country twice, was started as a reaction to Lollapalooza, which had no female bands on its roster.

A Boston native, DeSantis went to high school in California, and then attended California State at Chico and the University of Oregon, studying journalism before dropping out and doing what she really wanted to do: become a rock star.

“I was initially in a band called RMS, among other things. We figured if we kept changing our name, it would make us better,” laughed DeSantis.

She answered an ad in the paper for a bass player, and learned to play bass after getting the gig. That band was playing country music when she joined, but soon came around to rock ‘n roll under her tutelage. Unfortunately, just as with her first band, this band played fairs and festivals in Elko and Reno, Nevada, instead of Las Vegas.

“I went to another band that doesn’t travel as much because I was getting married,” she said. “Then I had a baby in ’88 and quit altogether.”

DeSantis put her all-girl band back together in 1990, doing ’50s and ’60s girl group covers, until she got divorced in 1992. She started noticing things like the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with Liz Phair that carried the headline “Women in Rock.”

“Inside in the article, they spoke to all these famous women musicians, and they didn’t ask them anything about music,” DeSantis said. “They just asked what their favorite perfume was.”

She bemoans the fact that while playing with her band, she would be asked almost nightly if she were lip-synching. She also noticed that guitar and drum magazines had little or no female representatives within their pages.

“There’s this urban myth that girls don’t play rock music,” she said. “But I’d look at the charts and see tons on women there in the ’80s.”

DeSantis said she felt that the advent of MTV and its music videos quashed the hopes of a number of female bands, because suddenly there was an new esthetic. “You had to look a certain way to be on video, and suddenly, video was more important than your record,” she said. “Some of the great musicians of the ’60s, like Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith would probably not been signed today because they don’t look like traditional `Barbies.”’

DeSantis realized that there were other women like herself craved a community of rock women to talk to, she said. Wanting to start her own magazine and record label, she got on the Internet and asked people to submit CDs and articles for consideration. “The record label didn’t happen, but the magazine, ROC KRGRL, did,” DeSantis said.

A friend who had already founded a “zine” did the layout, and DeSantis went to Kinkos and made 100 copies of her first ROCKRGRL magazine in January, 1995. She then distributed them by hand to book and record stores.

“By issue three, I couldn’t keep working at my job as a legal assistant and keep the magazine going, so I ditched the job,” recalls DeSantis. “I started selling ads in the magazine, but that wasn’t lucrative. I just decided to concentrate on the magazine because that was more important than money. It was about changing the culture and perception of what women are capable of in the music world. I felt that if I didn’t do it, no one else would.”

DeSantis, her son and her magazine moved to Mercer Island in 1996.

“The magazine started out black and white and slowly moved to color,” she said. “While I don’t have huge circulation (25,000), I do a lot of guerrilla and Internet marketing, so the magazine has stayed afloat despite common sense.”

DeSantis’ first interview was with Gretchen Seager, a musician she met on the Internet. Her second issue contained an interview with famed “Heart” songwriter Sue Ennis, who became her best friend, helped DeSantis move to the Northwest and helped her get Heart’s Ann Wilson to write several articles for ROCKRGRL. “For me, it was a dream come true to have these kind of people participate in the magazine,” she said. ROCKRGRL has become so successful that DeSantis was able to move, on the 10th anniversary of the first issue, out of her home and into a stylish office in Seattle.

In 2000, ROCKRGRL magazine hosted a wildly successful women’s music conference, with more than 250 female bands performing in various local venues such as the EMP and the Crocodile Cafe. Celebrity Musicians such as Amy Ray from Indigo Girls, Ronnie Specter and Courtney Love spoke to sold-out crowds. Heart was given the first annual “Women of Valor” award, and for two days, 44 panels discussions on everything from ageism to songwriting reigned in Seattle.

DeSantis has decided to do another Rockrgrl conference Nov. 10 through 12 at the Madison Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, and a workshop called “Reclaiming Your Power” for women musicians on Shaw Island June 3 and 4. There will also be a “ROCKRGRL Rock and Roll Camp for Girls” at the Old Firehouse in Redmond in August.

Meanwhile, DeSantis plans on keeping a rigorous schedule of college lectures, guitar lessons, writing songs, judging performers on Seattle’s version of American Idol, “Gimmie the Mike” on KONG-TV, and working on the board of the American Recording Academy, which hosts the Grammy Awards.

She’s noticed sexism is still the norm on shows such as “American Idol” and “Gimme the Mike.” “There is no `ugh factor’ for men in (the music) industry,” she said. “For women, if you’re above a size zero, you should jump off a bridge. In an industry which considers itself liberal, that’s really intolerable.”

Her biggest goal, she says, is to put herself out of business.

“I want the music industry to be accountable for the way women are written about — as musicians, rather than female musicians,” she said. “I want to see the novelty of a female playing drums disappear. Then my work here is done.”

For more information about programs or ROCKRGRL magazine, check the Web site at www.rockrgrl.com