So which came first, the chicken or the egg? The film or the band?
"Prey for Rock & Roll", a film about a contemporary LA all-girl rock group of the same name, is rooted in Cheri Lovedog's autobiographical rock musical. But wait! Girls Against Boys are out there right now touring this material in the US with Gina Gershon fronting the band. And the film hasn't even been released over here.
Still there's nothing like having a feature length advert for your record, just ask Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston or Will Smith. That said, the supergroup amassed to perform on the "Prey For Rock and Roll" soundtrack should ensure quality along with the hype. Gina Volpe (Lunachicks) executes guitar duties, Sara Lee (Indigo Girls/Ani De Franco) on bass, and Samantha Maloney (Hole/Motley Crue) on drums amongst others make this what should be a first class femme rock-athon, or at least an all grrrl Sacktrick. Guest appearances and some writing
credits go to flavour of the month Linda Perry (fresh from writing Pink's last album) Patty Schemel tub thumps for a tune ... yes all the pieces are there.
But somehow the material isn't. Maybe the glammish rawk simply isn't my thing, but the songs feel undernourished, as if there wasn't quite enough time for the musicians to make the songs their own, no matter what the musical background. Gina Gershon (Face/Off, Showgirls) the film's starlet, producer and only
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performer who features on both the record and in the film perhaps needs a few more seasons in the studio and off
the red carpet to give her balls-to-the-wall rock attitude more depth.
This is rock - not Hollywood, as Courtney Love has found, moving between rock music and film is often a one way ticket (someone give her a record deal! this is criminal!).
For all this however, the film could be great and the associations with the music result in the kind of en-masse
buying and fervour which transforms the mediocre into epoch making. We'll see over the next couple of months. In the meantime I'm going back to my Halo Friendlies CDs. Get them while they're hot.
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