It wasn’t easy for female musicians to make a name for themselves in the testosterone-laden world of Metal music back in the Seventies / Eighties. Girlschool, Lita Ford and Wendy Williams were some examples, but there was a lot of other artists no so lucky.
One of these is Californian LISA BAKER and his own band. Now 2022, her mid-Eighties recordings are being released for the first time. “Fool Of Lies” was released on 7” single in 1986, but the other tracks remain unreleased: demos, but enough to check out the potential of this band.
A Los Angeles native and daughter to two teachers, Lisa Baker grew up doing musical theater. But she had been born with an ear for riffs. By the late ‘70s, the young singer was at clubs, checking out the bounty of heavy bands on the rapidly growing scene – among others, Lisa was singer of Xciter, George Lynch pre- Dokken band.
Singer Jack Russell was a family friend, and Baker got to know guitarist Mark Kendall, who played with Russell in a pre- Great White line- up. “Jack had gone to jail [in 1978, for an accidental shooting during a drug robbery] so Mark had me come and fill in,” Baker said. “We were called Dante Fox then, and we did a lot of huge backyard parties; Mark’s mom’s house could cram 1,000 people in the yard in West Covina.”
Dante Fox also gigged at the Whisky, the Roxy, and at Anaheim’s legendary Woodstock Concert Theatre. Within a year, Russell was out of jail and back in the band. But Baker had caught the eyes of many, and was recruited for Xciter, helmed by George Lynch, then post-Boyz and pre-Dokken.
Xciter was a thrill for Baker: “That was the first time we really did the Starwood and we opened for The Motels. That show was really, really cool,” she said. “Starwood was really a great place to play, probably my favorite. I played there maybe three or four times.”
Xciter set its sights on Europe. But the promoter who’d begun arranging their tour was killed in a car crash. “Don Dokken knew that we were coming over there, though,” Baker said, “because he was always wanting to play with George.”
So Lynch headed overseas alone, darkening the future for Xciter. “It was too bad because I was thinking maybe we were on our way to really doing something,” Baker said. “But we just didn’t
get the break.”
Meanwhile, guitarist Joe Calderon was stalking the scene’s stages in a band called Viper. That act’s revolving door of vocalists opened for Baker, after Calderon dug the contents of a cassette she handed him after a show.
Rounded out by drummer Tommy “Herr” Herrera and bassist Franki Mayan, the quartet began amassing originals and set “Fool of Lies” and “Every Girl’s Got a Fantasy” down as a self-released 1986 single that credited Calderon as “Joe Seff.” They wrote material that was heavy, but not entirely metallic.
“I think it has the energy of metal, but a little bit more melodic,” Baker opined.
“We were loud!” Calderon laughed. “We had the 100-watt Marshalls going on.” Though they were one of just a few female-fronted heavy bands, “It never ever crossed my mind,” Calderon said. “It’s like, when you put us all in one room, we were just rocking. It’s like we had no gender.”
Rehearsals went down in and around Herrera’s garage and backyard pool—when they weren’t held in the big room at SIR (L.A.’s Studio Instrument Rentals service) with Mötley Crüe and the Pointer Sisters in adjacent spaces.
And there were out-of-town gigs… or gig, rather. In 1985, the Lisa Baker Band piled into a beat-up tour bus to navigate cross-country for a single show. That show? An opening slot for Extreme at Boston’s Orpheum.
Family connections had helped the band score other such opportunities. “My dad was a head of casting at Baker-Nisbet, on La Cienega, many, many years ago,” Baker said. “[They] needed a band for Showtime when it first came out.”
So the band appeared in a video promo for the future cable TV giant. “There was like a two- or three-second
shot of the back of my head, ha ha” Calderon said.
Calderon would spend ensuing decades as a working musician, playing and recording blues, jazz, and more. He’d play Madison Square Garden, audition for Ozzy Osbourne in 1994, and collaborate with Dianne Reeves, Michael Sembello, Robby Krieger of The Doors, and Quiet Riot’s Rudy Sarzo.
Neither Calderon nor Baker nurses any regret about their early exit from the ‘80s metal scene. “I think it’s good when you get out of the biz at a good time,” Calderon said. “We never had [the] opportunity to fizzle out.”
LISA BAKER Band had a lot of potential, and now we can hear their ’80s recordings.
01 – Fool Of Lies
02 – Every Girl Has A Fantasy
03 – Cut Above The Rest
04 – Rock Into Your Heart
Lisa Baker – Vocals
Joe Seff Calderon – Guitars
Franki Mayan – Bass
Tommy Herr – Drums
LISA BAKER – Fool Of Lies [1986] (remaster 2022 + rare) EP
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