SCREW HOME EC; WE’RE MAJORING IN SHOP
It is, let’s face it, a little harder to think of something as a novelty after it starts to make serious money The Go-Go’s have spent the last several months making mountains of dineros at the top of the charts, the first all-female rock band ever to do so.
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SCREW HOME EC; WE’RE MAJORING IN SHOP
GIRLSCHOOL Hit And Run (Stiff America)
Laura Leather Libber!” Fissinger
It is, let’s face it, a little harder to think of something as a novelty after it starts to make serious money The Go-Go’s have spent the last several months making mountains of dineros at the top of the charts, the first all-female rock band ever to do so. Also raking in the bucks these days is Joan Jett, shutting down the snickers on another front by showing consumers that there is a significant difference between real life tough girls and professional pouters like Pat Benatar.
England’s Girlschool is a good four piece heavy metal band, all women and all tough. No snapping spandex for this batch when choosing weapons for a rumble. According to chauvinist and feminist dogma alike, of course, it shouldn’t work—women being loud, churlish, randy, monosyllabic and making music that lands on a listener’s face like a jet plane. After all, who’s done it prior to this, back when women’s libbers were chic and heavy metal wasn’t as tired as it is now? In the past they either got ignored until they shut up and went away (Fanny) or got packaged to be parodies of women and heavy (metal (the Runaways). If Girlschool has to go away, I don’t think they’ll be doing so quietly.
According to what is discernable in Hit And Run’s “Not For Sale” (do you believe it? A heavy metal LP that should have a lyric sheet!), Girlschool is not interested in being a hot property because they are women (bad attitudes and black leather don’t always keep the nitwits away). Nor should they be—Hjt And Run is high-grade heavy metal. It makes your ears hurt. It moves fast. It has tunes. And unlike so much of the important junk passing for metal on the charts these days, it has a high quota of the sort of rudeness and primal ARRRRGGGHH that civilized people hate. All of which has nothing to do with being female.
But here’s the best part—Hit And Run is not an androgynous record. Girlschool doesn’t pimp their gender, no—they simply let it do some small but significant alterations on their sound. Ten-ton rhythm guitar is prettied up by harmonically agreeable chordings and on-thedime precision. The slam of the arrangements is made even more physical thanks to some comparatively light-footed phrasing. Lead guitarist Kelly Johnson is obviously so sure she could break someone’s face if sufficiently provoked that she actually plays melodic leads. And several of the lead vocals here feature skillful, musical singing.
I guess the bottom line on Girlschool is that they are so metal and so female that they make me wish I was 16 again, getting drunk and hassling some boy. If the Stiff marketing people get behind this band, maybe we can send those wimps like Journey and Foreigner back to the kitchen, where they belong.
