Rise Industries

m u s i c a l t u e s d a y s
On Saturday Jeremy was on a crazy itunes shopping spree of bad 80’s metal bands, Skid Row, Def Leppard, Warrant, Winger… Which sparked a joke about a hypothetical performance of dueling Hair Metal bands vs. Riot Grrrl bands. I searched off and on the rest of the day between Sleater Kinney, Excuse 17, Team Dresch, Heaven’s to Betsy, Le Tigre, Julie Ruin, Bratmobile, Joan Jett … and I kept wondering – who recorded the original version of “Cherry Bomb”? I finally came up with The Runaways – “the first all-female band to make a substantial impression on the public by playing loud, straight-up, guitar-driven rock & roll,” whose original members consisted of Joan Jett, Micki Steele (later of The Bangles) and Sandy West. Later versions of the group added others including Lita Ford. They began in 1975 and the perfect combination of “Jett’s punk and glam rock influences clashed with West and Ford’s love of straight-up hard rock and heavy metal” led to their demise in 1979. If this is where it all started, it is the essential band for our duel.
(quotes from itunes bio)