Toni Valenta and Lisa Black (a.k.a bellylove) started writing songs in 1998. Lisa Black, a serious veteran of the local L.A. club scene, started out with Gwen's Pandora's in the early 80's. Fresh out of high school Lisa found herself playing shows with bands like L7, Jello Biafra, Social Distortion, Fear... and many more. Gwen's Pandoras recorded one EP for Enigma Records, which never was released, "worm boy" a really cool tune, did make it's way to the Enigma Variations album. The "record it and trash it" syndrome became an unwelcome trend which continued with Hardly Dangerous, a local fav in Hollywood for several years in the late 80's. Hardly Dangerous inked a development deal with Madonna's Maverick Records (with lead singer Tomi Rae, who is now married and touring with James Brown) and recorded an entire album's worth of material with Pat Dinizio of The Smithereen's producing. The band was dropped to make room for the next up and coming female artist Alanis Morisette.

Lisa met Toni Valenta through a mutual friend. Toni had never played a live show when bellylove was featured on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She did spend some time in an industrial project in the 90's called "Partly Cloudy". It wasn't long before the two had written several songs and decided to record a c.d. for art sake. They had some c.d.s made, created some homemade artwork and handed out maybe 4 copies when they received a phone call from Marti Noxon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer asking if Joss Whedon could use "Back to Freedom" on the 3rd season premier of the show. The answer was obvious, and the following week they were shooting on the set in Santa Monica.

bellylove received an endorsement from Fender Guitars and has played such awesome venues like The House of Blues, The Calliope Fest in Florida opening for Ani DiFranco & Melissa Ferrick, The Viper Room opening for C.C. Deville, Paladino's, The Knitting Factory opening for Stephen Pearcy, The Cat Club, The Joint, 14 Below, The Pitcher House, Riverside College, Taime Downs Pretty Ugly Club at Dragonfly, The Fender Guitar Museum and many more.

bellylove's latest release features the fabulous Michael Des Barres doing his best Simon Cowel. It also features some of the wonderful musicians we have had the pleasure of playing with. Paul Ill (Christina Aguilara, Courtney Love, & Pink just to name a few), Becky Wreck from the Lunachicks, Chris Russo, & Dave Norwoods. We can't thank everyone who has supported us through the years enough! We recently put together a new video, for our Too Old for American Idol song! Kevin Carr is the brainchild of that gorgeous footage, thank you Kevin. Watch out YouTube...

bellylove: first off, lets clear up one thing, the name is subjective. If you want it to mean erotic sexual stuff, go right ahead....we don't want to deprive anyone of a good time, but weren't thinking of that when we chose the name. Bad Boy Kitty was the inspiration for the name cause I love to rub his belly, he has a webpage (www.myspace.com/badboykitty), and not to mention he is the president of our label. For us bellylove represents that time in our busy day that we take to give the little fur-people in our lives some quality attention, a good ole belly rubbin'. For some of you the mind wanders back to the erotic...enjoy, it's a band name and every band needs one.