Live Review : Cherie Curie + Blue Ruin + The Razors @ The Tivoli, Buckley on March 17th 2023

We open proceedings tonight with The Razors, a competent local covers band who rip through some rock classics and warm the place up nicely.

Next up are a group no doubt inspired by tonight’s headliner. Blue Ruin are a female quartet who play up-tempo, bouncy pop punk. They introduce themselves and as 2 of them are from New Zealand, one from Italy and one from Bristol I can’t help wondering how the hell they rehearse? Anyhow that’s bye-the-bye. Their influences are obvious, their record collections obviously contain a lot of Hole, a bit of Siouxsie and a fair dollop of Fall Out Boy. If this sounds like a weird combination it is, but somehow they manage to make it work. Mostly though it’s kind of like if you ordered Avril Levigne from Wish. Looks like the original at first glance, but on delivery it’s just not quite right. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either. I didn’t find any standout songs, but then again they did keep my interest throughout the set and got my toes tapping a few times. The crowd was fairly sparse tonight too, which I think didn’t help. A smaller venue and a bigger crowd might have suited them better, as in the rather echoey Tiv tonight they were just a little bit beige.

Headliner Cherie Currie however is a totally different kettle of fish. She is a one-off, an original. She came to fame in 1976 as a member of all-girl groundbreakers The Runaways when she was just 17 years old. Since then her life has been a maelstrom of rock and roll, acting, abuse, addiction issues, marriage and divorce and ultimately the circle has turned and she’s back to rock again. If you look at her history it has been a hell of a ride. But what does that mean for Cherie in 2023? Is she still relevant? Most of all can she still sing? Well the answer to that is a resounding “yes”.

With a new band around her that have been together properly for just a matter of days this frail and rather fragile looking woman really belts out the tunes. The band (Dennis, Marcus, Alexx and Danny) may not have been a thing for too long but they are tight and together, and provide a blistering backdrop for Cherie’s vocals. We start with a couple of tracks from Cherie’s solo albums, them moves on to ‘Mr X’, a song written for her by Slash and Duff. As if that wasn’t enough name-dropping we also get ‘Roxy Roller’, a cover of a Nick Gilder song that she originally recorded with Joan Jett. The whole evening is full of reminiscing and features a lot of Runaways stuff – it seems their second album is a bit of a favourite for our girl. During the course of the set we learn that Lita Ford hated playing ballads, and that Cherie sadly lost her older brother very recently and is still grieving him. She dedicated a cover of Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’ to him, and actually broke down a bit at the end. Aw, we all just wanted to give her a massive hug! Her voice these days is maybe not as pure as it used to be, she has that slightly husky Marianne Faithfull million cigarettes note to it.

Doesn’t stop it all sounding good though, and as the nostalgia-fest comes to a close with her signature tune ‘Cherry Bomb’ I can’t help admiring her resilience and fortitude. Despite her obvious fragility and a somewhat sparse crowd she’s still out there giving it beans and her old Runaways crown from when they were known as the Queens Of Rock still fits nicely.