beauty and the beat (1981) – go-go’s: irs records, sp-70021

Me telling you that male performers dominate rock is about as revelatory as me telling you water is wet. For every Heart there are dozens (if not hundreds) of Aerosmiths.  The punk revolution of the late 70's and early 80's helped reduce gender imbalance somewhat as the shift in the musical landscape brought all-girl or female-led bands like the Slits, the Pretenders, Nina Hagen, the Runaways, Blondie, Lene Lovich, the Plasmatics, Siouxie and the Banshees, Cyndi Lauper, the Waitresses, Josie Cotton, Kim Wilde, Berlin, and Missing Persons and many more than I can list.  And all of them found at least a decent level success.

But perhaps no single band encapsulated the gestalt of the advance of Grrrl Power in music more succinctly than the Go-Go’s.

Today we remember the Go-Go’s as a simple bubblegum band - sort of like the female version of the Archies.  What we forget is that these were women with serious cred. Belinda Carlisle (lead vocals) made her bones playing drums for the Germs (under the name Dottie Danger) before providing backup vocals for Black Randy and the Metro Squad (please, if nothing else, go listen to I Slept In An Arcade, right now!). Kathy Valentine (bass) got her start playing with the British female metal group Girlschool. And lead guitar player Charlotte Caffey began as the bassist with local LA punk band The Eyes.

Clearly, these women were not dilettantes. These were serious, hard, OG, bona fide punk rock chicks. Which makes the fact that the Go-Go’s ended up as anything but a serious, hard, OG, bona fide punk rock group somewhat odd. Especially when one considers that the Go-Go’s started out as a serious, hard, OG, bona fide punk band, often billed with serious, hard, OG, bona fide punk rock acts like X, Fear, and the Plugz. But when Charlotte joined on guitar they began to develop their signature new wave power-pop sound, and found a level of success that eluded the serious, hard, OG, bona fide punk bands like X, Fear, and the Plugz.

Beauty And The Beat was their 1981 debut, and is one of those truly eruptive albums. It seemed to come out of nowhere and wound up everywhere overnight. It was like a musical-ebola outbreak or something. It struck the sort of pop culture nerve that bands like the Plimsouls could never manage, reaching number 1 on the Billboard album charts, and spawning two hit singles in Our Lips Are Sealed, and We Got The Beat. It was also the first album by an all-woman band in which the women played their own instruments, wrote all their own songs, and hit number 1 on the Billboard charts.  Grrrl Power, indeed!

Side 1: Our Lips Are Sealed How Much More Tonight Lust To Love This Town
Side 2: We Got The Beat Fading Fast Automatic You Can’t Walk In Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep) Skidmarks On My Heart Can’t Stop The World

Now, I probably heard every song off  Beauty And The Beat a hundred times before I actually bought it back in ’81, because, as I mentioned, it was every-freaking-where, especially in LA. It was a staple at high school parties; at least five of the songs got massive and regular airplay on KROQ; it was on regular rotation at shopping malls where boys could go watch the Hot Dog On A Stick girls make lemonade in time to the music; no school dance would be complete without at least one Go-Go’s song; and one would hear it playing in cars as they drove by, or on radios or cassette players on the beach.

In fact, to this day I simply cannot hear We Got The Beat without immediately being transported back to the volleyball courts on Toes Beach in 1981. With good reason. Not only did this thing explode during that magnificent summer before my senior year in high school, it was also the perfect 80’s beach song, much as Surfin’ USA was a fantastic 60’s beach song, and Don’t Stop was a great 70’s beach song.

Besides, one needs to remember, that the Go-Go’s were an LA band. Not just a band from LA, but an LA band (if you grok what I mean). And even though people in other parts of the US could listen and enjoy and be fans, the Go-Go’s were ours, not yours, in the same way that the Ramones belonged to Queens, or the movie Dazed and Confused belonged to Austin. It didn’t matter that only Belinda and Charlotte were SoCal girls – the Go-Go’s were quintessentially LA, and they provided an idealized version of SoCal to the country: pretty girls, carefree life, sunshine, tans, endless summer and non-stop partying.  This was probably best exemplified by the Our Lips Are Sealed video in which the girls go cruising along in a vintage, peach, Olds convertible selling the SoCal dream to the punters in the midwest (and let's face it, having the telegenic Belinda splash around in that fountain at the end didn't hurt!):

The real accomplishment was they were able to sell this fantasy of LA even while openly acknowledging what a hollow and superficial place it is in the song This Town:

Change the lines that were said before,
We're all dreamers - we're all whores
Discarded stars like worn out cars
Litter the streets of This town

This town is our town,
It is so glamorous,
Bet you'd live here if you could
And be one of us 

Yeah, that's pretty cold right there. It's rubbing it in the faces of the poor slobs in Nebraska, Maine, Minnesota, etc by admitting that even though LA might be a cesspool of plastic people and crushed dreams, it's still better than where they live. Harsh.

Unfortunately, that hollow and superficial angle is what really stood out for me during this listen. Aside from Automatic, all of these songs are basically interchangeable. The fact that We Got The Beat and Our Lips Are Sealed became hits while How Much More, This Town, and You Can’t Walk In Your Sleep didn’t seems more a matter of a coin flip than anything else. Not only that, but during this listen I found the bouncy, perky, sparkly songs on the album showing their age in the same way that the bouncy, perky, sparkly me of the 80’s is now showing my age. This album is clearly a child of its time, and now may only really be suited for purposes of nostalgia for salty old bastards like me, or for kitschy 80's-themed parties that stupid millennial hipster douchebag kids seem to think are ironically cool (oh, and stay off my lawn).

Yet even though the songs now just run into one another and I find it hard to locate any significant substance within them, I have to admit I was smiling as this played. Because everything else aside, this album is still fun and it is still music that calls to mind pretty girls, carefree life, sunshine, tans, endless summer and non-stop partying.

You know, rock and roll.

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