Queens of Noise

On the recommendation of my just-published friend, I rented the best documentary ever the other night called "Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways." Although I'm a little too young to have been into them during their brief moment of notoriety, I was obsessed with singer Cherie Currie's film "Foxes" in 1980 (which also starred Jodie Foster, Scott Baio and Sally Kellerman) and later learned more about the '70s wild-child band when Joan Jett shot to the top of the charts in '82. Around then I began digging into the archives to learn more about them and discovered the stranger-than-fiction rock 'n' roll childhood they'd had courtesy of the Runaways and the man who discovered, produced, managed and abused them, Kim Fowley. (My brother actually had a promo copy of Kim's 1980 album, "Sunset Boulevard" that he'd gotten at the paper where he was working one summer while in college, but I was so creeped out by the album cover I don't think I ever got up the nerve to listen to it.)

Released in 2004, "Edgeplay" is the work of the Runaways' bassist Vicki Blue, who replaced Jackie Fox after a near-suicidal meltdown in Tokyo where the band was rather famous. Although the film is at times disjointed and amateurish, so were the Runaways, so it works to its advantage as Vicki questions the girls, putting them very much at ease, one by one about their days in the band. (Lita Ford's still a pisser.) For reasons that are not explained, Joan Jett is the only missing principal -- and her lack of cooperation keeps the film from using the band's best-known song, "Cherry Bomb" (which Joan and Fowley apparently wrote on the spot for Cherie Currie's audition), but none of this gets in the way of 90 minutes of utterly fascinating tales of the world's first all-girl jailbait band. Sadly, drummer Sandy West died last year. She seemed the most hurt by the band's dissolution and its inability to ever reunite in the three decades since. If you love rock 'n' roll, be sure to rent this film.