Loud Fast Lady with Tina Lucchesi

Loud Fast Lady gets this hairdresser–garage rocker to spill a few glamorous secrets

By Beverly Bryan
Published: July 7th, 2009 | 7:00am

Tina Lucchesi of Top Ten — and, like, about a million other bands — is a prime candidate for a garage rock lifetime achievement award. Barely into her twenties, she began playing drums in all-girl surf band the Trashwomen before going on to front the Bobbyteens in 1995, with stops all along the way for one-off projects like Tina & the Total Babes. The drummer and frontwoman says she’s had 14 bands all told. Now 40, the Bay Area native could look back on a 20-year career in music — if she ever had any free time.

Currently, Lucchesi plays drums in an all-girl garage band, the Primitivas, glitter-rock cover band C’mon Everybody, and occasionally, comedy band Dinky Bits & the Lil’ Guys. But it’s Top Ten where you can really see her out front, snarling something nasty into the mic. To hear said nasty sounds, grab the new 7-inch from guitar player Erin McDermott’s label, Classic Bar Music.

Lucchesi claims she’s trying to cut back on bands right now. “There’s other things I’d like to do, like go to the movies, hang out with friends, have a boyfriend one day again,” she waxes wistful. The challenge there is that she’s also running Down At Lulu’s, a salon and vintage boutique (with some records thrown in) located in Oakland, with longtime friend Seth Bogart of Gravy Train!!! and recent side project, Hunx and His Punx. Lucchesi calls it “our little fantasy dream shop.”

The nation can catch a glimpse of their fantasy on an episode of the reality show, Split Ends, airing in September on the Style Channel. “It’s like wife-swapping, only salons swap hairdressers. So they pick a real bougie one and then a real janky, wacky one. So Seth got sent to Boca Raton, Florida,” she says, giggling. (Guess which salon was the “wacky one.”)

Whether she’s singing or keeping the beat, Lucchesi always looks as fierce as she sounds. So it should come as no surprise that she’s a stylist, too. Down At Lulu’s allows the inveterate stuff-collector to share her love of vintage clothes and old records with the world while also spreading her personal sense of glamour. She particularly enjoys seeing full-figured women looking and feeling sexy. “I try to buy larger sizes for the store, and we have a lot of clients that come in and look for that. I think with me being a larger lady, they kind of expect it.”

As long as she’s on the phone, Loud Fast Lady can’t resist pumping this busy rocknroll girl (and professional style maven) for a few hints about how she stays stunning while working and playing so hard.

Lucchesi graciously starts with a quick and dirty guide to thrifting: “Find a city. Go to the suburbs. Go to where there’s some money in the town and look in the YellowPages. Rip those pages out and hit those thrift stores. Little old lady ones are so good because they’re cheap and they have cooler, older stuff.” Her secret hunting grounds are the suburbs around Palm Springs.

So what are the staples every woman should have in her closet? According to Lucchesi, “A leopard coat, a pair of black, stiletto pointy heels, a pair of combat boots, a black leather mini skirt, a pair of fishnets, red lipstick, a black little, slutty dress, and a pair of kind of thrashed Levi’s 501s.”

She even lets slip her one indispensible styling product: “aerosol hair spray,” she says definitively. But not just any old aerosol. Specifically, Davines Defining Glam Power Spray. “Aqua Net is gross. Glam Spray is workable and you can back comb the hair and the hair looks soft.”

There is, of course, the eternal problem of keeping fresh on tour: “I bring a lot of shirts and a lot of accessories: scarves, big earrings, and get some looks together before I leave. I bring fewer bottoms because you can’t bring a lot of stuff: a few skirts and tights, a couple pairs of shoes,” Lucchesi says. The lady prefers Chuck Taylor’s onstage.

In the end, her favorite look is totally fearless: “There’s some girls that are dressed fuckin’ awesome that come in the store and Seth knows them and they’re young, in their twenties, and they really go for it with some real crazy outfits. I love to see people not being afraid to wear something just nuts.” Sometimes, more is more.

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Top Ten MySpace

Down At Lulu’s official site