Song of the day – 122: The Runaways

Just been to see the Runaways movie.

It’s rubbish, but Kristen Stewart is totally hot playing a teenage Joan Jett wandering around in leather trousers the whole time (although still not as hot as the teenage Joan Jett was in real life).

It’s way mawkish, the producers have clearly never been inside a small rock club or house party in their lives, the guy playing Kim Fowley is righteously hilarious and steals all the best lines by quite some distance, Cherie Currie is irritating as all hell but not half as irritating as real life, some of the music is just great of course, and there are way too many “significant” shots of folk swimming underwater or heels crushing pills or whatever. The bits in the trailer park are very funny, though. And I had no idea that Joan Jett and Cherie Currie had a full-blown lesbian love affair (presumably the film’s main selling point). I never knew that Joan Jett wrote ‘I Love Rock’N’Roll’ in her knickers, either. The stuff you learn from Hollywood…

There’s totally not enough Sandy West in it, but it’s still better than that god-awful documentary made by a former guitarist a few years back, though.

Whatever. Need a throwaway teen trash movie? I guess this one works.

Here’s the original. Queens Of Noise was the second album I ever bought (after The Fall’s Live At The Witch Trials).

And here’s Joan, telling it like it is.

“I called my mother from Mardi Gras the other day, and I said ‘Mom I just called to tell you I joined a rock’n’roll band and I won’t be coming home no more’. You know what she did? She started crying and weeping and whimpering like all mothers do. She woke up my father and told him about it, and he said, ‘There ain’t a damn thing we can do. That’s just the way she is because she was BORN TO BE BAD!'”

by Everett True

My name is Everett True. I am a music critic. This is what I do. I criticise music. The clue is in my job description – music critic. I do not consider myself a journalist, as I do not research or report hard news. I do not consider myself a commentator as I believe that everyone should be a participant. I criticise people and in return I am not surprised if other people criticise me. It is part of the whole deal of being in the public arena. I am Everett True. Believe in me and I have power like a God. Quit believing in me and I no longer exist.