Dec 14

The Go-Go’s

Greatly Appreciated

THE GO-GO’S
 
 
The Go-Go’s  are an all-female American rock band formed in 1978.  They made history as the first, and to date only, all-female band that both wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to top the Billboard album charts.  The Go-Go’s rose to fame during the early 1980’s.  Their debut album, Beauty and the Beat, is considered one of the “cornerstone albums of (US) new wave” (Allmusic), breaking barriers and paving the way for a host of other new American acts.  When the album was released, it steadily climbed the Billboard 200 chart, ultimately reaching No. 1, where it remained for six consecutive weeks.  The Go-Go’s have sold more than 7 million albums.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Charlotte Caffey left the Eyes shortly after the release of “Don’t Talk to Me” to become one of the founding members of the Go-Go’s (one of my all time favorites); she was bass player in the Eyes but became lead guitarist in her new band.  Despite their girl-next-door rep and cheerleader-good-looks, this most successful of the all-female rock bands was well rooted in LA’s punk rock scene:  The other two founding members, lead vocalist Belinda Carlisle and guitarist Jane Wiedlin were numbered among the back-up singers called the Blackettes that performed with Black Randy and the Metrosquad. 
 
(July 2010)
 
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The American songwriter/producer trio of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer has been a veritable cauldron of one-hit wonders over the years.  I later saw Richard Gottehrer’s name on recordings by Blondie, and he produced the first two albums by the Go-Go’s, Beauty and the Beat and Vacation.   
 
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Writing for Allmusic, Stewart Mason gives the Tina and the Total Babes album four stars (out of five) and states:  “The songs themselves are absolutely terrific; the melodramatic ‘Tragedy’, which sounds like the Go-Go’s covering the Shangri-Las, is alone worth the price of admission; but the presentation and attitude are so equally perfect that She’s So Tuff is every bit the equal of the records that inspired it.  In fact, it may be better!”  
 
(May 2012)
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This is a first-wave punk rock band with an all-star line-up:  Bass player and vocalist Charlotte Caffey later was lead guitarist for the Go-Go’s, while DJ Bonebrake became the drummer for X.   My earlier article on the Eyes mentioned that members of the Go-Go’s had deep roots in the Los Angeles punk rock scene, but I didn’t know the half of it.  I recently picked up an LP called Germicide (oh, yes, they are still making new LP’s – I get them all the time) of the first live concert in June 1977 by the Germs (I also mentioned that band in the article); their first single on What Records?, “Forming” b/w “Sex Boy”  is regarded as the very first punk rock record that was released in LA.   The woman introducing the band at the beginning of the concert was “Belinda”; and sure enough, I was able to pin that down as being Belinda Carlisle, the lead singer of the Go-Go’s. 
 
(July 2012)
 
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I have presented most of the photos from the album insert in this post.  There is another on the CD itself, a negative photograph of Holly Ramos playfully positioning her crotch above the hole.  Once I saw the pose, it seemed like an obvious thing for a woman to do on an album, but I have never seen it done before or since. 

 

This photo is not at all pornographic – Holly Ramos is clearly clothed.  However, it makes me think that the band name Fur is meant to be a sexual reference.  The 2nd solo album by Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s is called Fur (1988); she is pictured on the cover holding a rabbit (a fertility symbol from time immemorial), so Wiedlin probably intended the same, even though Jane Wiedlin is well known as an animal rights activist. 

 

(June 2013/2)

 
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I have already mentioned the London Mod band called the Eyes in the discussion about the Klubs.  There is also a lesser-known Liverpool band called the Eyes – they were active only from 1964 to early 1965 – and evidently, a heavy metal band called the Eyes has recently formed.  The UARB is yet another band called the Eyes and is a first-wave LA punk band that includes future members of the Go-Go’s and X.
 
A promotional photograph of the Eyes from back in the day shows future Go-Go’s lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey sitting up front. 
 
(July 2013)
 
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The flamboyant look of Fuzzbox and their savvy meld of new wave and punk a la the Go-Go’s with fuzztone made the British band indie rock darlings for a time.  Allmusic gripes that, if anything, they don’t use their fuzzbox enough; but I was always satisfied.  We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It includes mostly cool original songs but also a cover of the fuzz classic “Spirit in the Sky”; the song was originally released by Norman Greenbaum in late 1969, reaching #1 on the British charts, and was a #1 hit in the UK by another British band Doctor and the Medics in 1986. 

 

(February 2014)

 

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In seemingly no time, the music scene was crowded with top bands and artists whose work has held up well over the decades since, among them Patti Smith Group (whose debut album, Horses came out before Ramones, in December 1975), Television, Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers (the punk band not Tom Petty’s group, though he was a part of the scene as well), Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Clash, the Cars, Elvis Costello, Pat Benatar, Joy Division, the Specials, the Go-Go’s, the Police, etc., etc., etc. There were so many that rock critics and others began distinguishing bands in the safety-pin set as “punk” and others that were less confrontational as “new wave”.  
(December 2016)
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I have written already of several of the first-wave punk rock bands that were formed in the wake of the proto-punk bands that I wrote about in my last post:  the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, the Modern Lovers, MC5, and others.  In fact, one of my early UARB’s was the Eyes; they were one of the first punk bands in Los Angeles and included in their line-up future stars Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s and DJ Bonebrake of X. 
 
(March 2017)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021