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Friday
Oct232015

Femme Fatale Friday 

Just because it's Friday and we rarely talk about Femme Fatale. Here's "Falling In and Out of Love." A great, underrated band!


Reader Comments (11)

Thanks Allyson. I had actually never heard that song before. Great tune.
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered Commenternc rocker
They really were a great band back then... Keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Mazzi Rawd was the main songwriter & a great talent. FF's management did a full makeover on Lorraine between their club days & the record's release. Gone was the redheaded Tina Turner "Private Dancer" hairdo & in it's place was the augmented, showgirl look & a glossy produced record.

For some reason, the record never really took off. Could be that it was on MCA...
"Musical Careers Annihilated"....
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAce Steele
@Ace MCA - Hilarious and you make a great point. Record companies could kill a band with lack of promotion and support. Falling in and out of love and waiting for the big one are the two songs I remember the most.
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterShawn
Always liked these guys (and gal) Pretty sure Lorraine has Courtney Cox from The Iron Maidens playing guitar for her now when she does live shows. If you get a chance,check her out,as she is an incredibally talented guitar player,very easy on the eyes,and a Pennsylvania girl to boot. Lol. Thanks for the flashback Ally.
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterGary
Shawn , that's the point... Femme Fatale' had it all, looks, (manufactured or not), songs, an OK produced record, MTV airplay for 2 videos, high powered management (Howard Kaufman @ then industry powerhouse "Fronline Management" , & even with the full promotional power at MCA behind them.... the record was a huge flop.

MCA - (Musician's Cemetery of America) just has a reputation for being inept when it comes to rock.

The long standing joke in the industry is: "What's the difference between the Titanic & MCA?"

the answer is : "The Titanic had a good band on board"
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAce Steele
Wow. Haven't thought of Femme Fatale in a while. Great voice. Great song.

That reminds me of another female-fronted band from that era - Saraya. Best known for the minor hit "Love Has Taken It's Toll" from their self-titled debut album, the shame of it all is that the followup record, When The Blackbird Sings, is the best hard rock album nobody ever heard. If you do the Spotify thing, it's on there, as well as youtube. Worth a listen, in my opinion.
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterTheCheapSeats
Saraya was awesome Cheap Seats! . Love Has Taken Its Toll is one of my all time favorite songs. Sandi's voice was killer,as were the songs on that first album.Just good,down and dirty hard rock. I'm going to have to check out that "When The Blackbird Sings"release. I had zero idea they'd released anything past about 1989. Thanks for that. 😉
October 24, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterGary
Ah, what a catchy tune, one of the finest from the Female Fronted Rock genre (FFR, in the RARE CD trading game) of Hair Metal.

Ace's description is spot on and his background intel on this band is incredible. Sounds like they got it right with Lorraine's makeover. As Ace describes it, this is "Corporate Rock" of the highest order. Crunchy AOR, all the way! It seems like a smart formula: Excellent Hair Metal Song plus a Hot Chick Singer with a Killer Set of Pipes. First Class Big Production plus a Well Directed, Beautifully Shot Video.

I picked this up when my memory was jogged from seeing the video on Metal Mania back in 2007. I remember thinking the video was great when I saw it on Headbanger's Ball back when it came out. A particularly "killarious" moment is around a little under a minute end when that guitarist runs his a*s off down the stage and takes a big leap from the top tier stage (like I said, "Big Production"!) to the lower stage.

But I didn't buy the album then. And I bought a ton of sh*t on cassette AND LP, even 8 Track sometimes, examples of those, Motlëy Crüe "Too Fast For Love" and Motörhead "Ace of Spades", among others, haha!!) back in the day.

I have heard the stories about MCA and Ace's joke affirms their reputation at the time. It probably fell apart in the promo department. They just couldn't get it into rotation on the radio. But the bigger reason this band stiffed is it's missing something... And that's called soul. That intangible "it", that extra thing that separates the men from the boys, or in this case, the girl from the boys.

Another possibility is the Female Fronted Hard Rock Formula may have never really found it's audience. There were just only so many big haired receptionists out there at the time to buy this kinda stuff.

Still, I bought this CD on eBay back in 2007 after rediscovering them on Metal Mania. And it was all about this song. I caught them on The Monsters of Rock Cruise a couple years back. And, Gary, you are indeed, correct... Courtney Cox does indeed play for Femme Fatale... Had drinks with her on the Cruise. Super nice but her boyfriend's kind of a d*ck but I guess I would be, too, with all the Piranhas. Or maybe not.

Shawn, "Waiting For The Big One" was the other song of note from that first album and that's the other problem. Though those two tracks are solid with "Falling In And Out Of Love" as the standout, the rest of the album is pretty standard formulaic and forgettable 80's AOR FFR.

What is waiting to be heard is the unreleased second album, "Lady in Waiting", which was supposed to be released by Rock Candy Records, one of the kings of putting out either unreleased albums or reissuing rarities and hidden gems that have been long out of print, but it never surfaced. Here's hoping it will someday as another rare odd curio from that wild time capsule of Sunset Strip Hair Metal.

Cheap Seats... Got all Saraya's stuff. Those albums are stellar, indeed. There is a little more sophistication and poetic depth to her songs than Femme Fatale's. Plus, she could sing even better than Lewis. Nevertheless, they never really caught on either though as we've talked about it many times here, album sales ain't everything. And they had that little bit of intangible "it" thing going on, oh, yeah, and SOUL.

TOP 10 GREATEST 80's/90's FEMALE FRONTED ROCK & ROLL BANDS:

1) Heart
2) Blondie
3) Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
4) Divinyls
5) Plasmatics
6) Smashed Gladys
7) Concrete Blonde
8) Saraya
9) Harlow
10) Warlock
October 25, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterMetalboy!
@Cheap Seats Thanks for reminding me of Saraya! Love has taken its toll is a great song added it to my ride play list ..
October 26, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterShawn
Quite the history lesson, Ace, and quite the list, Metalboy! Doro could body-slam Ford any day, then or now. Not that it should be an issue of men v. women in metal (even if it was in terms of how one was promoted over the other, or how the latter were corseted into corners that made a really big breakout--MCA or otherwise--nearly impossible. Exhibit One: just look what they did to make Lita more marketable after the Runaways (compare the covers of her first three albums, it is like a whiplash of gendered norms being tried and tested).

Though, I must say, something about "Waiting for the Big One" always made me cringe (even back in the day). I full well recognize the nuances and the metaphors at play, and perhaps that is the problem. It's about as subtle as the BB's "Hard as a Rock" and just not as good. Which is the overall point I think Metalboy! makes: there was something missing.
October 29, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterHim
True, true, HIM! "Waiting For The Big One" is about as subtle of a between the lines wordplay as... Um... Well, you get what I mean!
November 5, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterMetalboy!

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