Eva O

Eva Ortiz (born January 11, 1961 in Las Vegas, Nevada) moved to Los Angeles, California in 1979 in hopes to start a rock band and be a rock star. She started a local, all-girl punk band in Long Beach known as the Speed Queens, and played with them from 1980-1982. Speed Queens broke up before they could release any songs, and she and bassist Sandra Ross started the Super Heroines. About the same time, she met Rozz Williams, who was starting the band Christian Death. The Super Heroines released several albums, and Eva recounts that the band members (including herself) all used drugs while in the band; they often would smoke marijuana before playing concerts. When Rikk Agnew left Christian Death, Rozz asked Eva to fill in on guitar. She was in Christian Death for a short time before they added two more members, one of whom later played some shows with the Super Heroines. The Super Heroines made their last album, Love and Pain, in 1983; but it was not released for another 8 years. In the mid-1980s, Eva became involved with personal demons and a strong distaste for the world. She spent a lot of time with Richard Ramirez, with whom she was in a relationship, she felt she had someone that could relate with her her feelings and beliefs. Ramirez committed several murders in San Francisco and stood trial there. Eventually, she got back together with Rozz, married him, and moved to San Francisco with him. While there, she became interested in the writings of Anton LaVey and Boyd Rice and started to suffer from depression. Out of boredom, she and Rozz started another band known as the Shadow Project; they released two albums in the 1990s with that band. It was after their second album, Dreams for the Dying, that Eva and Rozz started to write even more darker, depressed and rage filled subject matters which was a reflection of the internal struggle they were having in their personal lives. Christian Death reunited and released two more albums, but the lineup that the band used on those albums was essentially just everyone from Shadow Project. Shadow Project went on one final tour after recording a live album, In Tuned Out. Tired of Rozz's getting most of the credit for the Shadow Project work (most of which she wrote), Eva O went solo and released Past Time in 1993. In 1994, while working her second solo album, which she was going to call Angels Fall for a Demon's Kiss. Rozz Williams killed himself on April 1, 1998; the last Shadow Project recording was released on May 12 of the same year. On the Damnation/Salvation two-part album, which she released with MCM Music (a small record label run by Eric Clayton of Saviour Machine), she worked with Josh Pyle (keyboards/programming), River Tunnell (bass), and Kristian Rosentrater (drums). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.