Girlschool - Hit & Run

The Lemmy endorsed band, Girlschool are an all female rock band. Their music is kinda a mix of Motorhead's hard rock, and gurgled down with a glass of JD and heavy metal. They were pretty well known in the 80's and supported many bands, including the previously mentioned Motorhead who would also collaborate with them. What strikes me about Girlschool is that in the male-dominated craze of NWOBHM, they struck out as a successful and quite good band... And that also they all look like my mum.

Ok, so the A side for this little gem is Hit & Run, a fiesty little track in the Heavy Metal Vein. It's remarkably Killing Machine era Priest in it's rythm, the singer, (who, due to having a number of lead singers, I assume to be) Kelly Johnson comes across with a strong pop-y voice over metal's trademark muted powerchords, we get a little bit arena rock with the chorus, a repeating of the simple phrase 'Hit & Run!' and also a neat little solo as average of it's time. While listening to this track, I couldn't help think of Bad News,  the 80's alternative comedy Heavy Metal Band with their songs 'Bad News' and 'Warriors of Ghengis Khan', and this is in no bad way. It's a simple fun rocker with nothing in it other than fist pumping. Quite nice for a change.

The B side, Tonight, continues in the Motorhead-meets-Judas Priest style, but is a much stronger track. It's heavier, faster, chunkier and shows that Girlschool could really keep up in the laughably heterosexual-male world of heavy metal. It really reminds me of British Steel/Point of Entry era Priest. Johnson's(again an assumption) vocals really pierce through the music, and there is a notable groove to this track. Again it's very of it's time, early 80's NWOBHM but really it's a headbanging great. The solo is decent and the fact that it's at times out of tune only adds to the hard rocking not caring about little details attitude.

This is the first time I've sat down and properly listened to Girlschool, and it suprised me. As a teen, I was a geeky white lonely male heavy metal fan, in my dumb teenage fantasies, I saw metal as totally masculine, and not for girls. I think that allowed me to accept my place, and is generally true of many metal fans. However Girlschool really kick that view out of the water with some proper solid 'ard rockin' tunes. If you're into Heavy Metal and/or Hard Rock, give them a try. If you don't like hard rock though, this isn't really going to convert you. Motorhead on the other hand, will.