Monday, December 13, 2010

Girl Bands That Time Forgot

Some of you might remember them. It helps to be over 40 and if you hung out in a college radio station for a few years, so much the better. Before the Internet, we relied on cooler people than us and fanzines for our information. Now there's YouTube to continue this information-gathering legacy.

Kleenex - "Nice" The lawyers at the Kimberly-Clark Corporation encouraged them to change their name, so they did (to LiLiPUT). This was recorded in 1978 from the mean streets of Switzerland.


The Mo-Dettes - "White Mice" They only made one album back in 1981, so if you blinked, you missed them.


The Slits - "Instant Hit" The Slits were truly making it up as they went along. Lead singer Ari Up would go on to celebrate dub reggae in the New Age Steppers. RIP Ari Up.


The Raincoats - "The Void" Dammit, every time I embed something by The Raincoats, it gets ripped away from YouTube like a copyright-infringement tornado. I don't know what the issue is with Raincoats songs. They're not that precious. And yet, they actually kind of are...


Tiger Trap - "Words and Smiles" In this batch of girl-groups, this is relatively recent--1993. But I don't hear a lot of praise for Tiger Trap lately, so let's hear it for Tiger Trap--yay!


And while I'm thinking of the 90s, here's Bratmobile, who seemed to be touring constantly during the early part of that decade. They kept sounding like this on a regular basis and so I say, hats off to you, Bratmobile.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh.... I've had a thing for the Mo-Dettes for. ever. Or, since when that I.R.S. double LP came out and I taped the songs I liked, one of them being White Mice. NINETEEN 79 or 80 I guess. Worked at Berkeley Photo Company, on Telegraph, sandwiched between Universal Records and Rasputin (before they moved) so spent many lunch hours perusing the records. Each store had a rental policy at the time, and my tape collection grew. -NM