Female Bonding celebrated on The Go-Go's debut Beauty and the Beat

Go Go's : This Town

On July 8, 1981 The Go Go's released their debut album, Beauty and the Beat, on IRS Records. It would take nine months and MTV, but the album topped the US charts for six weeks beginning in March of 1982."We Got The Beat", a #2 hit, introduced American audiences to the five musicians who came across as best friends. 

"This Town" is the mission statement. /"We all know the chosen toys/ Of catty girls and pretty boys". As Rob Sheffield writes in the Spin Alternative Guide:

In Go-Go's songs, the pretty boys just kept their mouths shut and preened, while the catty girls took center stage to make up that face, jump in the race, and get dressed up to get messed up, whether flashing their underwear in public fountains or prowling by night. The Go-Go.'s eventually developed a knack for songs about men ("Turn To You", "Yes Or No"), but their grand theme was always femme bonding : we rules the streets tonight, this town is our town, our lips are sealed.

The best Go-Go's songs begin with tomboy Gina Schock laying down the beat.

While American critics swooned, the English were less taken with the album .Robert Eggar from the NME summed up the album writing that 

"The Go-Go's play sixties pop for the eighties with a seventies philosophy. This record is three years of struggling with instruments, of sleeping on floors in strange cities, of flirting too close with an easy terminal escape from reality. It sounds like a joyous, bubbling celebration by five cute girls, with no thoughts inside their darling little heads save for tonight's beach party."

But there's also some disillusionment with the seedy side of Hollywood night life, summed up on "Tonite," "Lust to Love," and "This Town", which includes lyrics that provide a counterpoint to that joyous MTV video: We're all dreamers, we're all whores/ Discarded stars/ Like worn out cars ".

Beauty and The Beat finished #10 in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop critics poll. It topped Greil Marcus's list:

GREIL MARCUS: 

Go-Go's: Beauty and the Beat (I.R.S.) 20; 

David Lindley: El-Rayo-X (Asylum) 20; 

Red Crayola with Art & Language: Kangaroo? (Rough Trade) 15; 

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Reactor (Reprise) 10; 

The Mekons (Red Rhino import) 10; 

Joy Division: Still (Factory import) 5; 

Rickie Lee Jones: Pirates (Warner Bros.) 5; 

The "King" Kong Compilation (Mango) 5; 

Au Pairs: Playing with a Different Sex (Human) 5; 

Raincoats: Odyshape (Rough Trade) 5. 

 

The Cramps' "Drug Train" is NME's Single of the Week

The Cramps : Drug Train

[Purchase]

In September of 1980 IRS Records released The Cramps' Alex Chilton produced single "Drug Train" in the UK, backed with a cover of Charlie Feathers' "I Can't Hardly Stand It". This is the last track to feature the cigarette swallowing Bryan Gregory on guitar. It sounds like a party, but apparently Gregory was more interested in either drugs or the occult. Depends on whom you ask. In December of 1980 Kid Congo Powers, a former president of The Ramones fan club, would join the band.

In the US the single was "Garbageman" b/w "Drug Train".

I like the way a Otto Luck reviews the single on Rate Your Music:

When a clearly-agitated and bug-eyed Lux adamantly proclaims, “You ain’t no punk, you punk” to kick off “Garbageman,” it’s probably best to nod your head and say, “Yessir!”, thanking God and all the muses that he’s going to let you live. For now. 

 It’s just about impossible to overrate this rigomortized Cramps mind splitter, which surfs out of nowheresville on the back of the sinister dark-hearted twelve strings of Bryan Gregory and Poison Ivy Rorschach and the jungle pulse laid down by Nick Knox, perhaps the coolest drummer EVER. It wouldn’t surprise me if autopsies of all three revealed battery acid in their veins.

 Spiritedly rudimentary, “Garbageman” is deliberate musical primitivism from a band who look to be cursed with bad genes and broken chromosomes and sound like they invented whatever genre you may want to lump them under. And if they didn’t, well…you tell ‘em, not me.

Going Over The Cutting Edge (1986)

Over  Mardi Gras weekend of 1986, MTV's "The Cutting Edge" came to New Orleans to videotape various musical acts for their Mardi Gras special which aired March 30th. Producers from IRS Records called college radio station WTUL to find someone who would work for free on the production crew. Since I was writing a fanzine ( The Now Zounds) to promote my band's tune "Jefferson Avenue", I agreed to help out. And that's how I wound up buddy-buddying with the modern hipsters of the musical world.



We videotaped Alex Chilton playing his acoustic guitar in a cemetery. After performing "Lost My Job" twice, a Bach piece and two Box Tops tunes including the 1967 smash "The Letter" and "Neon Rainbow", Chilton obliged The Cutting Edge with a rare interview. After a health food lunch consisting of vegeburgers, I chatted with Alex over a glass of carrot juice.

ME: Have you heard any cover versions of your songs that you've liked?
ALEX: No, to tell the truth I haven't. But I haven't heard the Bangles song yet ("September Gurls")
ME: What new bands and new records do you like?
ALEX: I don't know. When I want to hear some music I play my guitar. I did some stuff with the Replacements.
ME: Were you surprised when "The Letter" became a hit?
ALEX: No. I think everyone thinks their song's gonna be a big hit.
ME: Yeah, I think "Jefferson Avenue" will be a smash hit, don't you?
ALEX: This carrot juice sucks.



It had been a long time since Mitch and I had gotten together and Let's Active had a completely new line-up. "I choose the members of my band by making sure they're all shorter than I am " joked the four and a half tall producer/performer. I told Mitch that while Cypress was the most overproduced band without Todd Rundgren's name on it, I enjoyed the live show and their cover of the MC5's "Shakin Street". Easter gave me his card which I tore up immediately.



I was getting sauced with dB's guitarist and vocalist Peter Holsapple:

ME: The dB's: one of the three hardest working bands in America.
PETER: We're definitely the hardest working band without a label. I was thinking we should end our shows with our roadies coming out and packing us up in crates.
ME: Any labels looking at you? IRS for instance?
PETER: Yeah but the whole band has to agree with the label choice. I'd like to sign with IRS.
ME: Did you ever read Spy In The House of Love by Anais Nin?
PETER: No but I meant to. I had it rolled up in my back pocket for a while but I never got to it. We had a dance for the song ( "Spy In The House of Love") but Ready For The World stole it.

I reintroduced myself to Fleshtone/ Cutting Edge host Peter Zaremba and we recalled our on-the- air argument two years ago. Although no fists were thrown, I could never convince Peter that the vocalist gave a shout out to The Osmonds in the Fleshtones classic "American Beat '84".

    At Jim Russell's Records, I recommended Dyke and the Blazers "We Got More Soul" to an apparently unfamiliar Zaremba. Then I bough Cornelius Bros and Sister Rose's "Treat Her Like A Lady". Z was psyched. "We do a mean version of that song," he said. "We're definitely gonna do that song Sunday night man".
   And they did.

"The Cutting Edge" had a major impact on a lot of musical tastes by introducing all kinds of artists to audiences who otherwise would have only heard what was playing on the radio. Sadly, at the time, none of these artist were getting radio play outside college stations like the mighty 'TUL