Fanny- Mother’s Pride
They were extraordinary: they wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers, they were just colossal and wonderful, and nobody's ever mentioned them.
— David Bowie
Fanny was one of the first all female rock groups to receive high amounts of critical acclaim and commercial success, including two top forty singles. David Bowie was a huge fan. In fact, everyone, including me, seems to recognize their talent and skill.
If I had to put Fanny in some kind of sylistic category, it would be somewhere in the Seventies rock Ballad category. But that isn’t meant to convey anything besides that the songs are longer and slower with just a hint of Meat Loaf esque drama. A still more apt comparison might be Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” which builds and spills over like quite a few of the songs off Mother’s Pride. And yet there are certain songs that have a harsh edge that Billy Joel can’t match, such as “Solid Gold,” a squawking and sarcastic celebration of success. But Joan Jett this is not.
My question is: why wasn’t this band more successful? I guarantee they were more talented than half of the top 40. I could see them mentioned in the same breath as Fleetwood Mac and other trailblazers. And yet nobody but rock insiders seems to have heard of them. But that doesn’t seem like a tragedy and that’s because I get the feeling that Fanny never really wanted to be successful and on the pop charts. And they didn’t seem so concerned with being trailblazers either. None of these songs are confrontational. They seemed happy enough being critically lauded and not living up to their potential commercially, shall we say. And that’s unfortunate in its way, because they deserve to be in the public consciousness. But unfortunately it’s hard to have one without the other. Why something gets popular, and why it stays popular seems to be largely a matter of luck, and Fanny seems to have just been unlucky. Doubt they see it that way though.
4/5 This seems like the kind of music my Mom would like, and that’s a good thing.