#the go go's

[punkrockhistory]

Happy Birthday Jane Wiedlin, co-founder, rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of the all female band The Go-Go's and also the drummer and backup vocalist of the rock band The Hex Girls, born on this day in 1958

[theunderestimator-2]

“Oh, to be young. To still be one's own hero.” (David Guterson): the late Marilyn Dean & Kathy Valentine, drummer & guitarist of The Violators, Austin's 1st (?) punk band, here at Randy's Rodeo for The Sex Pistols show in San Antonio on Jan. 8, 1978, as captured by Tom McMahon.

austinchronicle.com/ :"When The Violators and the Skunks invade Raul's, fourteen days after the Sex Pistols break up and mainstream media declares punk dead, Austin's scene begins at a Tejano bar…", [before a crowd of no more than maybe 50 or 60, since a 100 was a big crowd at Raul's at those first shows.] "The Violators were very young kids," says [The Skunks'] Blackmon. "Marilyn was like 16, Kathy was 16, Carla was probably 21. Jesse was probably the best musician in that band, off the top of my head. Carla was good. They were just kids playing fast English punk music. Those were our influences at that time." "It was mainly people who didn't seem to know what to make of cute girls playing guitars and drums," remembers Valentine. "More than the music, it was the fact that we were female that they had no reference for. The only females in Austin doing this played fiddle – Marcia Ball was the only real musician in a band. Everybody else played fiddle or sang or were folk people." "…More than anything, it was the shock of the new. The Violators were mostly young, attractive women playing loud, fast, Sex Pistols-meets-Ramones punk. And they were doing this in a Tejano bar on the Drag, in a town musically ruled by Cosmic Cowboys and white bluesmen. Everything was changing. You either changed with it, or you opposed it. There was no room for the lukewarm…."

Marilyn & Kathy met in high school & quickly became best friends, the teen kind that does everything together: as Kathy Valentine recalls, they started bands, went to clubs, met boys and dreamt of big things in life, even moved out to LA together in 1978 but as it so often happens in life, they drifted apart after a falling out. Kathy later went on to play bass in The Go-Go's and sadly Marylin Dean passed away in recent years.

Photo & info via Tim Stegall's 'Austin Punk Chronicles' at austinchronicle.com.

(via, via & via)

[likeimurloverr]

I think i downloaded the wrong spring awakening

[myimaginaryradio]

Head Over Heels - The Go-Go's

[fangomusic]

Brilliant '80s albums on cassette.

[archivist-crow]

The Go-Go’s - “We Got the Beat” (1982)

Forty-three years ago today, on January 16th, 1982, “We Got the Beat,” the lead single from Beauty and the Beat, the debut album by the Go-Go’s, was released. The song was first recorded in 1980 for the UK-based Stiff Records, and though the early version is a bit claustrophobic and rough around the edges, it—and a UK tour in support of the Specials and Madness—did help the band achieve some buzz. After the song was re-recorded and released as a single back in the States, it would become the LA band’s most successful track, spending three weeks at no. 2 on the US charts and helping propel the album to the top of the US charts.

[littletroubledgrrrl]

[emelies80s]

The Go go's

[higherentity]

[80s-song-smackdown]

80 New Wave Tournament Side A

[everydayblog]

The Go Go’s

[myimaginaryradio]

Our Lips Are Sealed - The Go-Go's

[bayareabadboy]

January 16, 1982

Los Angeles, California

The Go Gos released "We Got the Beat." The song evolved out of the Smokey Robinson song, "Going to a Go Go," which they covered at gigs at L.A. clubs such as The Whisky a Go Go.

[musicmusicalme]

The Go Go's