Terrific collection of The 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 a fresh reissue. 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 represents the heart and soul of the 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 the province of completists. For those new to the group’s repertoire this four-LPs-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 most of the story: five girls who are both a legitimate rock group and puppets of their Svengali producer, Kim Fowley. The dynamic of teenage hormones, rock ‘n’ roll dreams and jailbait marketing gave the album both muscle and sexual sizzle. Joan Jett proved herself a songwriter with an uncommon touch for evoking mid-70s Los Angeles teendom, and she and Cherie Currie sang with a conviction that couldn’t be faked. The band’s playing could be plodding and clumsy in spots, but it was still surprisingly powerful. The group’s 1977 follow-up, Queens of Noise, followed the same template, but within it you could hear the group was a year wiser to the perils of rock ‘n’ roll. Abused by their managers and worn down by the road, they were staring at the madness that would cause the band to implode.
The group’s 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 power and authority. The Runaways’ final studio release for Mercury, Waitin’ For the Night, saw the band reconfigured: Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox were gone, and with them went some of the band’s overt sex appeal. The former’s vocal spotlight fell to Joan Jett, the latter’s bass playing to Vicki Blue, and the focus to the band’s music. Jett seized the opportunity to assert herself as group leader, rising to the challenge of writing most and singing all of the album’s tracks. In the album’s wake Jett proved, at least to listeners, if not to the record industry, that she was a star in the making. Lita Ford’s two metal-tinged originals also pointed to post-Runaways commercial success.
If you’re new to the group and not ready to invest in the anthology, the self-titled debut album 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 hooked and want to hear it all, 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 era, but they were trailblazers whose albums captured a time and a place from a young, female perspective that was, and remains to this day, theirs alone. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com] 