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 making of URGH ! A MUSIC WAR

Oingo Boingo : Ain't This The Life

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On the weekend of August 16 British filmmakers, working with IRS Records and FBI Booking Agency,  showed up at various Los Angeles venues to shoot performances that would appear in a 1981 concert movie called Urgh! A Music War. 

It all began on a Friday night at Santa Monica Civc Center with sets from Chelsea ("I'm On Fire") and the Dead Kennedys ("Bleed For Me"). X followed with a version of "Beyond and Black", followed by The Cramps playing "Tear It Up" with their new guitarist Julien Hechtlinger, aka Julien Grindsnatch. 

  The next night featured Stiv Bators, who didn't make the cut. Wall of Voodoo followed with "Back In Flesh". The Members("Offshore Banking Business")  were next and then came Pere Ubu with "Birdies". David Thomas looked like a junior banking executive.

Magazine followed with a version of "Model Worker". Said a reviewer from Sounds "Howard Devoto was looking like an over-intelligent lift-operator from another world dropped into a disco".

On Sunday night the filmmakers moved to the Whiskey A-Go-Go to film The Surf Punks performing "My Beach", followed by The Go-Go's with "We Got The Beat". 

The Alley Cats took the stage that night to play  "Nothing Means Nothing Anymore" and a band called Oingo Boingo with "Ain't This the Life".

In San Francisco they would catch Devo on stage. 

The following weekend the crew would be in New York City catching performances by The Fleshtones, Joan Jett and, most memorably,  Klaus Nomi performing "Total Eclipse". The movie would be released in 1981 along with a soundtrack by A+M Records which may why The Police, shot in September along with the likes of XTC and Echo and the Bunnymen, get three songs on the soundtrack. 

Both Talking Heads and The B-52's both turned down offers to appear in the movie.  

The 1980 Go-Go's single that made the UK fall for them head over heels.

The Go Go's : We Got The Beat

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In June of 1980 The Go Go's headed back to California after taking the UK by storm. Their Stiff Records single "We Got The Beat" would do very well there and the tour had some critics falling heads over heels. When you look at the cover of the single you see a band that isn't trying to sell you a record on sex appeal. They probably just got off stage. But thoughout the 80's The Go Gois would be objectified as sex objects.

This is Tony Mitchell writing for Sounds Magazine about a gig he saw at The Venue in London:

The Go-Go's are a real dolly mixture of sizes and shapes, from the buxom-ish, Fifties-starlet looks of singer Belinda Carlisle to the diminutive but perfectly-formed figure of rhythm guitarist Jane Weidlin. Doin' their thang each night in a motley collection of mini-shorts, Doc Martens and what looked like a job-lot of footless tights, they gave the impression that the five of them could have been thrown together as much by their unconventional looks and non-conformist fashion tastes  as by any shared interest in music. The Go-Go's bubble without gushing, their sparkle is genuine and not injected for easier consumption, and they're sweet without being sickly. They're special-count on it-but at the same time they're just like the girls next door.

Guitarist Charlotte Caffey wrote the song by herself on New Year's Day in 1980:

I really wanted to write a beat-centric song. So I locked myself in my apartment, got high as a kite, and listened to a ton of Motown while the annual Twilight Zone marathon played in the background on TV. I sat down a couple of times and tried to write something, but nothing happened. I gave up, did more drugs, and started watching TV . Around midnight this idea came into my mind. I scrambled to turn on my cassette player, and the entire song came to me in just a few minutes. I remember thinking "oh shit" because I believed I had just written a hit song. I still have that original cassette. 

The single and its B-side ,"How Much More", would be re-recorded for the Beauty and The Beat album. In 1982 it would hit US#2