Tag Archives: Cherie Currie

Music, Pop Culture

Recommended Listening: Take It Or Leave It, A Tribute to The Runaways

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While the span of the band’s career was relatively short, The Runaways changed the landscape of rock and altered the perception of women making music forever. With The Runaways’ biopic just released last year, who would have imagined that their influence would continue to be topical several decades after their break up? I was around for the duration of their rise and fall and, the significant post-Runaways careers of Joan Jett and Lita Ford notwithstanding, I sure never thought we’d still be taking about them 30 years later. So it’s not surprising, really, that Main Man Records has compiled what can only be called the definitive Runaways tribute compilation; a two disc set called Take It Or Leave It. All you need to know is that this record fucking rocks. Continue reading Recommended Listening: Take It Or Leave It, A Tribute to The Runaways →

Books and Periodicals, Pop Culture

Must Read Book: Neon Angel, A Memoir of a Runaway By Cherie Currie

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“Neon Angels On The Road to Ruin…”

Few true tales have the power to compel and transport the reader quite like the life story of a bona fide Rock & Roll Survivor. Of Rock’s innumerable legends with stories worth telling, so many of them – Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison; the list is endless, really – never lived long enough to write their histories in their own words. And of those that have written autobiographies, no one ever really gets – or takes advantage of – the opportunity to go back and revisit his or her life on the written page, updating the tale or adding details that were perhaps forgotten or too painful to tell the first time around. Cherie Currie, former lead singer of the teenage all-girl rock band The Runaways is an exception to that rule.

Continue reading Must Read Book: Neon Angel, A Memoir of a Runaway By Cherie Currie →

Film and Television, Pop Culture

Must See Movie: The Runaways

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Runaways Poster

The biggest problem you generally encounter when Hollywood tries to make a movie about rock musicians is the overwhelming tendency to dilute reality and surrender to the cheese factor. Honestly, filmmakers have gotten it right exactly twice: first with Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap – a work of blindingly brilliant satire – and later with Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous; which, though a work of fiction, would be hard to top for its feeling of authenticity, in my opinion.

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Film and Television, Pop Culture

Living Things To Play The Ramones In Runaways Movie

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Living Things

New York, NY, July 11 – St. Louis garage rockers Living Things are about to appear as one of their hero bands, The Ramones in the now-filming The Runaways, the biopic about the groundbreaking 70’s all-girl hard rock group led by Joan Jett. Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame plays Jett, with Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Academy Award-nominated actor Michael Shannon as the band’s “Svengali” Kim Fowley (excellent call). Continue reading Living Things To Play The Ramones In Runaways Movie →

Music, Pop Culture

Sandy West, Runaways Drummer and band Co-Founder, Succumbs to Lung Cancer

Sandy West Portrait On Kit
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10/21/06 – Los Angeles, CA.

Sandy West, drummer for the influential 70s band The Runaways, died Saturday, October 21, 2006 after a long battle with lung cancer.

She left an indelible mark on rock music as a founding member of The Runaways, which featured fellow rockers Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Cherie Currie, and as a leading inspiration for a number of notable musicians, both male and female. Many young musicians can trace their inspiration directly to the first time they heard “Cherry Bomb.”

Continue reading Sandy West, Runaways Drummer and band Co-Founder, Succumbs to Lung Cancer →