The Runaways - classic or dud?

The "C-c-cherry Bomb!" hook can gets grating fast to my ears. It's not a bad song, just a song that overuses its best hook a little too much.

The documentary now on video should be rented for its two live sequences, both covers.

http://citypages.com/movies/detail.asp?MID=6066

Why doesn't Joan Jett let someone put together a real concert movie?

I hope someone does a full-bore Joan documentary sometime, though.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-1127330624-0#product_details

It kind of sucked but captured the sordid nature of her life and Runaways promotion. For lip readers, like any band promoted by Kim Fowley, the real script for "Foxes" only Cherie doesn't die, fortunately. Two solo albums, one with sister. Go for the one sans sister with Cherie in her thigh high boots. Not too good, but it's top fuel polishing material and Fowley had something to do with it so thigh-rubbing is purely a natural thang.

Second solo album was with ace LA session hacks. Jeezus.

Live Runaways "Japan" album rules, probably because a great deal of it was added in the studio by thigh-rubbing guitar-playing engineer layabouts. First album, my favorites: "American Nights" and the mini-opera where Cherie and Joan are breaking out of juvie. Basis for Wendy O. Williams' "Reform School Girls" starring that big chick Sylvester Stallone made movies with and who now shows up on Howard Stern professing love to someone twenty years younger.

They're one of the few bands outside of Blondie & the Beatles that can fill me with that kind of blissful pop hysteria. "Queens of Noise" is just such a ridiculously perfect song it nearly brings tears to my eyes.

Anyone remember when Cherie Currie starred in that (admittedly awful as I recall) film called Foxes with Jodie Foster in 1980? I was like 9 years old when I saw that.

I agree that the execution is better than the idea. Who would give a shit about all the feminist or erotic fantasy aspects of it if the music wasn't any good? I wouldn't.

Yeah, she gets in a car with a swinging Beverly Hills perv couple who drive recklessly and get in an accident. Cherie has the death scene, coughs blood into an oxygen mask, and expires.

She was also in an awful Charles Band movie called Parasite with pre-fame Demi Moore. She was also infrequently in dramatic TV as a character actress.

Parasite

The credits of Cherie Currie including the never duplicated "Cherie Curie's Chainsaw Art"

She probably has another interesting bio in here. The original, cited above and now sold at Powell's and which I read, wasn't it. She needs a co-writer to bring out the blood, drama and trainwreck in a fascinating way.

And btw: the Blackhearts are on the Warped tour this Summer.

And if the second CD actually arrives in the post tomorrow I'm going to annoy my neighbours thoroughly. The music speaks for itself, this is absolutely amazing stuff. Swept under the rug of history perhaps, but nonetheless...

I still love this band. As long as Cherie is in it.

Just so you aren't talking to yourself... it's their cover of Roadrunner that got me hooked recently. No Cherie, oh well.

I'm not sure if I've heard that before, thanks.

I was in a department store earlier today and they were playing something in there that was a poor, poor, poor obvious ripoff and horrific diluted copy of the riff from Runaways "Is It Day Or Night?" and I was really disgusted and I vowed to post about it here. I don't know what this song was, but you can keep your modern music far, far from me.

I haven't finished, though. For I heard Duran Duran's Reflex in there too and if that isn't THE worst Duran song on earth...

I love playing with fiyah
fiyah

1st album is so great. goes for some money though! i found a nice vinyl copy for 10 bucks a couple years back, but gave it to my gf cuz i knew she'd like it. she does, but now i (greedily) want one of my own :(

http://youngmanhattanite.tumblr.com/post/37135660965/cryptofwrestling-the-runaways-visit-rush

Nobody mentioned "Heart Beat" yet. I'd failed to notice it until hearing the Bebe Buell cover version. Now one of my favorite things. The stitched together video here works well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwhAPNo5z8Y

harrowing stuff

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/the-lost-girls/

very much, if I were not at work I would be crying now

strong piece, heartbreaking story

obviously i had read about him being a nasty piece of work, but i had no idea as to this level of depravity.

Sounds totally fucked up about Jett and them as well.

wow @ that fowley zine ad

Scram zine interview with the publisher of Back Door Man in 2003:

Scram: What was the origin of the inside back cover ad in issue # 3 that has Kim Fowley soliciting a girlfriend?

Don: He paid for it.

Scram: Was he serious?

Don: I can only guess at his motivation. I think it’s obvious. (laughter). I’ve always thought of Kim as an eccentric uncle. He’s very funny when he’s not talking about his own projects. When he’s talking about his own stuff, its just bullshit on bullshit. I would watch him work the phones and come up with weird slang and say things like “Gram Parsons is just a guy who knew a lot of George Jones B-sides.” He’s a pig. I really must say that. A lot of women find him disgusting.

This story is horrifying. I wish I was more surprised by it, that I didn't feel like this was an inevitable revelation.

Ms. Fox is a sophisticated attorney who is surely-well advised (and was a dear friend of a managing partner at a BIGLAW office I for some dumb reason worked at). Kim Fowley was not well-connected or even well-liked toward the end of his life. I will be very interested to read Joan Jett's response.

🗻
she's 13 it's cool, bbs.

16 and his ward, but what's the difference really? What a fucked up time this was:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-light-of-the-world-the-steve-tyler-and-julia-holcomb-story

Bonus points for a bizarre and unexpected Bill Cosby appearance in her story.

is that ann powers piece really good? I can't get past the first paragraph's shoehorned song references.

Last week, a story about Jackie Fuchs, centered around her account of being raped by the late music entrepreneur Kim Fowley in a motel room full of people on New Year's Eve in 1975, challenged the very idea that rock and roll is something worth loving. Fuchs's account hit the music world like a bomb that obliterated all taste of cherry from our mouths,

I mean, those bolded bits above belong in Rolling Worst Music Writing thread imo

I don't know about the phrasing, but this story definitely made me rethink a lot of the rock&roll mythology / self image of rock&roll

the cherry bomb pun seems unfortunate

Not sure why Iggy, Bowie, Johnny Thunders never get mentioned, is it because critics like them?

She said she named the examples listed off the top of her head without doing research so maybe Iggy, Bowie, and Johnny Thunders weren't located at the top of her head.

Also yes probably that's why they don't get mentioned.

i was reading the holcomb story and getting increasingly surprised by how it turned into a paean to pro-life + then i looked at the url

Ann Powers piece *is really good, god though someone should have subbed that first paragraph

I think the Ann Powers article does a good job of putting Kim Fowler in the larger context of rock and roll at the time, but I think you need to look at an even bigger context and look at it in the context of how women were treated generally in the US at the time. Like, women legally couldn't get credit cards without a husband to co-sign for them until 1974 (so the year before the Runaways were formed). States could make it illegal for unmarried women to get birth control until 1972. Women could legally be excluded from juries solely on the basis of them being women until 1975. It was legal to fire, refuse to hire, or generally discriminate pregnant women in the realm of employment until 1978. So adult women were basically treated like children, which is something you can definitely see in advertising of the time as well. And when you blur the line between women and girls, you get shit like this:

http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2010/10/18/6/enhanced-buzz-10341-1287396425-2.jpg

Which is a point Cherkis made - that it was more acceptable for adult men to prey on young women in the 70s, but I attribute that to adult women being viewed as children, and if all women are basically children, what does it matter how old she really is?

So depressingly true

Good context. Can I just say though, my wife really does drive like that. I wore the finish off the oh shit bar in her last car. I'm making a note about those tires.

...

good pt carl

sorry, it was an ill-considered joke. Must have been channeling my father-in-law or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_tom65LKiE

Age: 14.

Brooke's exploitation began much younger - it's insane that she's a naked sex object in "Pretty Baby". you know, a nostalgic, romantic bildungsroman about a 12yo prostitute (written by a woman!) that I'm appalled even got made. baffled that it was even legal at the time.

if this is turning into a discussion about exploitation can it be moved elsewhere? i mean generally i am pointing the finger at the concept of objectification, and even listing examples of severe objectification as exploitation seems...exploitative under the circumstances.

speaking of, this conversation has reminded me of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

fair enough

i was reading the holcomb story and getting increasingly surprised by how it turned into a paean to pro-life + then i looked at the url

I thought the same thing – but given the nature of the story, I wasn't entirely shocked it ended up there. The whole thing was depressing and manipulative.

To pull this back to rock, the internet is full of these stories. Pamela Des Barres' Lets Spend the Night Together documentary from VH-1 is on YouTube in its entirety, with bits from Lori Maddox talking about losing her virginity to Bowie at 13 or so and Cassandra Peterson (ne. Elvira) fleeing the room when Jimmy Page was trying to rape her. There's the whole saga of Sable Starr and the Stooges, a lot of which is covered in Please Kill Me.

To VG's point way upthread, once this all goes from "Hey, things sure were crazy back then" to "Dudes were raping girls and getting their parents to sign over legal custody of these girls" it begins to change how you perceive this whole era. Punk doesn't seem any more enlightened or liberated than the dinosaurs they ostensibly replaced.

what do you mean by "punk" there - I can't recall any similar stories about, say, the Clash or Blondie or Black Flag or the Go-Gos for ex.

Johnny Thunders + Iggy more than punk.

"Punk doesn't seem any more enlightened or liberated than the dinosaurs they ostensibly replaced."

There were definitely dinosaurs among the punks (or specifically people who aspired to the same sort of "rock star"-life as the dinosaurs).

I don't know about the Black Flag years specifically, but I remember one Rollins spoken-word tape where he tells this "funny story" about a girl who wouldn't do him, so he jacked off on her in her sleep.

And I haven't seen it, but according to descriptions I have read, the infamous Go-Go's tape features them penetrating a passed-out dude with a vibrator.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was more sexual violence in the punk scene.

I have been thinking a lot about Lori Maddox

I think that the problem with rock n roll success and stardom & the sexual power it affords/afforded to men is that for these v young girls there isnt always a vocabulary for it being wrong dangerous illegal and horrible bcz it falls under the umbrella of "attention" --- and there isnt a way to even talk about the dangerous illegal horrible - she begins her confessional with the words "Jimmy Page" & any wrongdoing disappears because he is a guitar god end of story

You know? Like even her own perception of him if she is a fan becomes distorted, this must be ok because the world has made him into Jimmy Fucking Page & he must be right because why else would they make him famous

idk a lot about her but I am just thinking this through in the mind of being 14

I don't know about Jimmy Page but I would have willingly gone along with Robert Plant when I was 14, and who knows whether I'd have the... whatever it requires to look back on that as an adult and call it out for the exploitation that it was.

yeah some kind of Stockholm Syndrome variant

"I wouldn't be surprised if there was more sexual violence in the punk scene."

Uh I would pretty surprised actually if there was more sexual violence (and exploitation) than in the previous era.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was more sexual violence in the punk scene.

I'm thinking back primarily to We Got the Neutron Bomb (which, btw, does include Fowley and the Runaways but does not, iirc, address Fuchs' rape) and once people like X, the Germs, Black Flag, the Weirdos, etc. were on the scene yeah it just doesn't seem like this creepy predatory sexual atmosphere permeated everything as it did a few years prior. a lot of the women are more assertive, openly hostile/aggressive in their own right, and there's a different kind of asexual/gender confusion/queer strain running through it, and the previous generation is (with a few exceptions lol Ray Manzarek) largely despised and scorned for their gross "rock star" ways.

Forgot about that Go Go's thing. That's a pretty sordid tale.

I think there was less 14 year old girl exploiting, but it would be extremely naive to paint the punk scene (any scene that is cast as primarily masculine, assertive women aside) as some kind of safe space where women were free of sexual violence.

even the Go-Gos incident cited above (I haven't seen the tape either) is kind of unprecedented/unthinkable in the previous era of just a few years prior, none of the Runaways were in a position of strength/authority that would have allowed them to sexually assault one of their roadies or male fans. (not that either scenario is a good thing! obviously) just that the politics of the scene def shifted.

xp

I don't think of the punk scene - particularly the LA and british punk scenes - as primarily masculine tho

certainly hardcore turned into that in the mid-80s but between '77-'82 or so? nah

Uh I would pretty surprised actually if there was more sexual violence (and exploitation) than in the previous era.

Not "more than", just extra unearthed.

Stuff that hasn't come to light.

like the last bazillion years of human history
i think it's safe to say that where there is objectification, there will be exploitation (and sometimes violence)
there is not a safe zone afaik, and if there is one please tell me where it is

yeah can't really argue w that

ll otm

And what changes?

http://flavorwire.com/528083/pop-punk-keeps-forgiving-sexual-harassers-to-the-detriment-of-its-teen-girl-fanbase

Fuckin' Front Porch Step. There was another one from the Warped Tour crowd last week as well, I think.

this photo

https://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/front-porch-step-warped.jpg?w=728&h=489&crop=1

there was also the story recently from the bass player for Enabler, which is awful

http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/07/13/former-enabler-bassist-accuses-frontman-of-physical-and-sexual-abuse-band-goes-on-indefinite-hiatus/

That's what I was thinking of - Enabler. But regardless, searching "sexual assault" on the AltPress website brings up a number of recent allegations.

A few years ago (2011) I went on tour with the band A Day To Remember (Florida pop-punk with heavy parts) in the UK, for an AP cover story, and we talked a bit about the fact that the majority of their fanbase was 15-17 year old girls. They were very careful about how they spoke, and acted, with/around the girls. Never anything but polite and friendly. It was even weirder for me, since they were in their mid-20s and I was six months shy of 40.

how is McElfresh a real name?

and the previous generation is (with a few exceptions lol Ray Manzarek) largely despised and scorned for their gross "rock star" ways.

Which is especially rich given what a fucking sexist he was ("women shouldn't be in bands" or something to that effect)

I'm thinking back primarily to We Got the Neutron Bomb (which, btw, does include Fowley and the Runaways but does not, iirc, address Fuchs' rape) and once people like X, the Germs, Black Flag, the Weirdos, etc. were on the scene yeah it just doesn't seem like this creepy predatory sexual atmosphere permeated everything as it did a few years prior. a lot of the women are more assertive, openly hostile/aggressive in their own right, and there's a different kind of asexual/gender confusion/queer strain running through it, and the previous generation is (with a few exceptions lol Ray Manzarek) largely despised and scorned for their gross "rock star" ways.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 16, 2015 5:06 PM (Yesterday)

this is definitely the sense i got of the UK punk scene from jon savage's england's dreaming. i haven't read viv albertine's book yet but i'm curious what her perspective was.

THEY BEAT ME WITH A BOARD
IT HURT JUST LIKE A SWORD

oh my GOD.

As I was getting DUSTED
I happened to get BUSTED

you don't sing and dance in juvie, honey.