The mighty Girlschool, at their heyday at the height of the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal days and forever associated with it, have an excellent box set issued covering a career retrospective spanning five CDs one of which is a live recording in their prior-NWOBHM guise as Painted Lady.
From changing name to Girlschool in 1978 they’d become up there at the forefront of NWOBHM and possibly from back then arguably best known for their association with Motorhead and the riotous Head Girl EP the two bands recorded together.
However Girlschool were/are more than capable of pumping out the good stuff. Generally short, concise, very heavy, snarling, in yer face rockers with a punky/spiky edge to them and plenty of attitude and energy. Great live too. I’ve been a fan since their debut single of Take it All Away.
Their first three albums form the early 1980s – Demolition, Hit and Run and Screaming Blue Murder are classics and featured prominently on the first CD of this box set.
All the classics are selected from that trio – for example Demolition, Emergency, Noting to Lose, Hit and Run, Yeah Right, C’Mon Let’s Go and the aforementioned Please Don’t Touch (With Motorhead).
Have a listen to Emergency as an example of what the girls were all about back then.
Their fourth album – Play Dirty – not up to much in my opinion. Over produced, too slick, no power to it at all. Far too commercial.
The band suffered a big loss with the death of guitarist Kelly Johnson though continued to record over the years and back to form despite a few line-up changes held it together well with albums such as Running Wild and Take a Bite which are also featured where with selected tracks.
Disc four comprises of a huge 23 cuts of b-sides, demos and out-takes which is an interesting listen. As is disc five as the Painted Lady live stuff.
If you’re in to Girlschool from the start then you’ll probably at least have the first three (or perhaps four) albums particularly if you have the Bronze Years box set which came out a little while back.
If that is the case then this School Report set is likely to be of more interest to you for the demo/b-sides CD and the Painted Lady live stuff – which is why I bought it as an old fan. If you fall in to that category, you’ll be the same……!
>> GIRLSCHOOL THE SCHOOL REPORT 1978-2008 ON AMAZON <<
Alternatively for those first for albums, the Bronze Years box set may be preferable – read my review of that HERE.