Ciravolo—whose first exposure to a female playing rock bass guitar was Suzi Quatro as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days—was a quick learner and by age 16 was on tour with a band called Plateau.
When Plateau played in Kansas City, she decided to stay there and enrolled in Penn Valley Community College as a journalism and business major.
After receiving her degree, she moved to Los Angeles, where she balanced a series of day jobs (including waitress at Duke's Coffee Shop and assistant to Jay Leno and his former manager, the late Helen Kushnick) with amateur night performances at The Improv and Comedy Store.
Ciravolo played in several bands, including Rag Dolls, The Velvets (a female Psychedelic Furs-type outfit), They Eat Their Own (new wave pop) and, eventually, her own group, Shiksa and the Sluts.
Finding other creative outlets, Ciravolo also made two independent films (The Wake and Birds & The Bees) and wrote a sitcom with her partner[ambiguous] Karen Peterson.