Loving the Lunachicks

4 stars

Watch the documentary. Maybe watch it a second time. 

Get a bunch of Lunachicks music and put it in heavy rotation. (I’m playing it while I write this.)

Go to the official website, https://www.lunachicks.com, and order up a copy of Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of the Lunachicks by The Lunachicks with Jeanne Fury. Look for a cool Lunachicks T-shirt or other merch while I’m there, something vintage, so I don’t look like a total newbie fanboy.

If you watch Ilya Chaiken’s new documentary, Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks, and don’t have a checklist like this by the end, then you either were already a fan of the band or you need to watch it again.

I’ll admit, even though I went through my punk/new wave music period – and still listen to a lot of the same bands today – I’d never even heard of The Lunachicks until this morning when I watched the doc. They never made that leap from being big in NYC to being big beyond the five boroughs that some of their peers did. Watching them open for bands like the Go-Gos and The Offspring, my newfound fan voice was all but shouting at the screen, “They should be headlining!” At the time those bands were popular, I’m quick to remind myself I thought they sucked. (Still do …but I digress.)

If Chaiken’s film was simply a love letter to a band she wished more people knew about, then Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks could have been just another Behind the Music special. The things that make it so much more than an episode in some forgotten VH1 archive are the warts-and-all deep dive she takes the audience through to intimately know each ot the band members, as well as the unique way she lifts the material to be not just about this band but about hundreds of bands then and now, bands filled with musicians struggling to make a living doing the thing they are passionate about, making music. It should inspire generations of musicians to keep playing and music fans to keep going out to see and support live bands.

Even if you don’t play – or even really like – music, there’s another layer to Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks to embrace: it’s a celebration of friendship, especially female friendship. As a straight, white male, I won’t even pretend to know that particular dimension of the story. Still, as someone who is equally appalled by the misogynist, knuckle-dragging frat boys who yelled “show us your tits” at the band or physically harassed the young women in their audiences, I can still appreciate and admire the fight they made against it. It’s another reason I’m a fan of the band.