Femme Fatale – S/T (Release Year – 1988)
Several weeks ago, my wife and I made an unplanned stop at a Used CD store that I used to shop at several years ago. Flipping through the bins, the other customers in the store must have thought I won the lottery. I screamed out in delight when I found the self-titled disc by Femme Fatale. (Ok Bob Vinyl, you can laugh now.)
I have been searching for this disc for several weeks, and have been unsuccessful getting a copy off of EBay. I used to own a copy of this on cassette years ago, and never got around to replacing it. In 2007, it is nearly an impossible task with this out of print disc.
Some of you are probably asking, who is Femme Fatale?! This is an 80’s glam metal band that was fronted by singer Lorraine Lewis. The band members are as follow: Mazzi Rawd (Keyboards, Guitar, Backing Vocals), Rick Rael (Bass Guitar and Background Vocals), Bill D’Angelo Lead Guitar and Bobby Murray (Drums and Background Vocals) Femme Fatale’s self titled debut hit #144 on the Billboard chart and spawned a couple of videos on MTV.
Waiting for the Big One
Falling In and Out of Love
Sadly, after the band’s 1989 tour, they split up and were never heard from again. This self titled effort is a decent but very hard to find pop metal disc.
Usually, I don’t care for bands with a female lead singer, but there are a few exceptions to the rule, and Lorraine Lewis proves to be a very solid vocalist.
The lead guitar work of Bill D’Angelo (R.I.P.) is good, but sometimes sounds constrained. He occasionally gets some good guitar licks in but is unable to cut lose, as quite a few tunes have more of a keyboard focus.
At times, some of the songs on this disc start reminding me of Pat Benatar tunes, which depending on who you ask, is either a compliment or an insult. I think it is a good thing, as very few female rock singers showed their vocal prowess as much as Pat Benatar did in the 80’s.
I prefer the harder rocking tunes on this disc. The best ones are Waiting For the Big One, Falling In & Out of Love, Fortune & Fame, and Heat the Fire.
Is Femme Fatale the best band I have ever heard from the 80’s era of hard rock? Not by a long shot. This CD does have a few good tracks that still sound good in my playlist today.
You can hear more tracks at the band’s myspace page here.
Copies of this turn up on Ebay from time to time, and have hit as high as $30.00. You can also find this disc at GEMM.com. The prices will likely scare away even the most savvy consumer, for this long out of print disc.
Rating: Out of 10.
Track Listing:
- Waiting for the Big One
- Falling In & Out of Love
- My Baby’s Gun
- Back In Your Arms Again
- Rebel
- Fortune & Fame
- Touch and Go
- If
- Heat the Fire
- Cradle’s Rockin
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I think the best songs on this are If, Touch & Go and Falling in & Out of Love which I always have to crank!!
I found it on ebay for less than that using a misspelling ebay script.
How can I laugh at a band named after my favorite Velvet Underground song? Actually, I remember this band, but not well enough to say if I liked the music. I just tried looking at Rhapsody and there is a Femme Fatale album there, but its a different band (album came out last year and it’s a noisy garage/punk kinda thing).
I can see how the Pat Benatar thing can be taken both ways. She was a good female rock vocalist, but the music was more non-descript arena rock. Still, I have like six of her albums. I liked her a lot in the early 80s.