Terrific collection of Runaways four Mercury albums
With the Runaways biopic getting a major market push, it was a no-brainer for their oft-ignored catalog to get another round of reissues. Contained in this set are the three studio albums the group recorded for Mercury (The Runaways, Queens of Noise and Waitin’ For the Night), and a live album originally released as an import (Live in Japan). This is the heart of he Runaways’ catalog, and though a post-Mercury album (And Now… The Runaways), an odds ‘n’ sods collection (Flaming Schoolgirls) and prehistoric demos (Born to Be Bad) can be found, they’re really the province of completists. For those new to the group’s repertoire, this four-LP-on-two-CDs set will tell you everything you need to know – if not a bit more – about the group’s recorded legacy.
The Runaways’ self-titled 1976 debut tells the group’s story: five girls who are at once a legitimate rock ‘n’ roll group and puppets of their svengali/producer Kim Fowley. The tensions between hormones, rock spirit and jailbait marketing give the album both muscle and sizzle. Joan Jett proved herself a songwriter with an uncommon touch for evoking mid-70s Los Angeles teenagedom, and she and Cherie Currie sang with a level of teenage conviction that couldn’t be faked; the band, though clumsy in spots, was still quite powerful. Their 1977 follow-up, Queens of Noise, followed the same template, though you could hear that the group was a year wiser to the perils of rock ‘n’ roll, abused by their managers, worn down into the road and staring at the downward spiral that would cause the band to implode.
Their live album, recorded before an enthusiastic audience in Japan, shows how well the act translated to the stage. As on their debut, the playing isn’t particularly refined, but Currie shows herself to be a commanding front-woman, and Sandy West holds down the beat with powerful authority. Their final studio release for Mercury, Waitin’ For the Night, found the band reconfigured: Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox were gone, with the former’s vocal spotlight added to Joan Jett’s, and the latter’s bass playing taken on by Vicky Blue. Jett rose to the challenge and asserted herself as group leader, paving the way for her upcoming solo career. Whatever innocence the girls had brought with them was long gone by the time of this swan song.
If you’re new to the group, perhaps having found them through the movie, and not ready to invest in the anthology, the group’s self-titled debut is the place to start. If you want to get a feel for their career arc, the short collection 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Runaways or the out of print The Best of the Runaways effectively sample their catalog. But if you’re all-in, there are winners to be found on all three of their studio albums, and the live release fleshes out the picture of rock ‘n’ roll life on the road circa 1977. The Runaways weren’t the greatest rock band of their time, but they were trailblazers whose albums captured a time and a place from a young, female perspective that remains unique to this day. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com] ![]()








