BEFORE: Well, here's symmetry for you, I started the Big Music Summer Concert series with the Runaways (well, almost, except for one film) and I'm wrapping it up with another all-female band, the Go-Go's (well, almost, I've still got one music doc coming up in a few days...)
Sting carries over from "Pavarotti".
THE PLOT: This documentary chronicles the meteoric rise of a female rock band, born from the L.A. punk scene that not only captured but created a zeitgeist.
AFTER: The Go-Go's were a popular female band in the 1980's, and as this doc points out, they were the FIRST all-female band...to write their own songs AND play their own instruments AND have a #1 album. Umm, that's a lot of modifiers for a statement of pride - that means there were all-female bands who did two out of those three things, so really, were the Go-Go's all that groundbreaking? They might, arguably, be the "most successful" all-female band, but after just a couple albums they broke up over money, songwriting credits, and petty in-fighting. In other words, they were a typical band. If anything, perhaps they should be known as the first all-female band to do more drugs than the average male band.
I didn't know they came out of the punk scene, that they were a punk band before they were a pop band, but now that makes sense - because you can get up on stage and play punk music even if you don't know how to tune a guitar or play a regular drum beat. But then somebody accidentally wrote "We Got the Beat" and somehow it became a hit, and so they had to change their whole approach, their look, and for some reason, their manager. At some point it didn't matter who got them where they were, and it became about who could get them to the next level. That goes for the band members who were jettisoned after being labelled as dead weight, also - there are two or three Go-Go's I've never heard of before, who got left by the side of that road.
Then the band had a hit ALBUM, top of the charts, which is great, but that leads to the inevitable "What comes next?" and "How do we avoid the sophomore slump?" and suddenly it's not so easy to repeat success, catch lightning in a bottle the second time. Yeah, sure, by all means, crawl into a bottle or do a lot of blow, that'll help you figure things out. Everything was fine until the second album had only one potential hit song, "Vacation", and that was written for one band member's previous band, they just got lucky that nobody ever bought that record.
Before long, after that tour of London opening up for Madness, the band was split down the middle when the band members who weren't songwriters found out that the ones who WERE earned more money. Look, if you're upset that your bandmates are getting publisher royalties for writing songs, and you're not, then the solution is fairly simple - write some songs for the band yourself. What's that? You can't do that? It's hard to write a good song? OK, then, you've just proven WHY your bandmate makes more money than you, so maybe shut up now.
But for some reason they couldn't hold band meetings or discuss these situations like adults, they just broke down and stopped communicating with each other, and retreated to their new McMansions bought with the royalties from "Beauty and the Beat". By the time they got together to record their fourth album, Jane Wiedlin wanted to sing lead vocals on ONE song, and got outvoted, so she quit. No discussions, no negotiations, it's just over.
A band can have more than one lead singer - look, Keith Richards usually sings leads on one song each Stones album, on average, and takes over when Mick needs a break in concert, right? Jeez, the Beatles had three solid lead singers, and even damn Ringo got to sing lead on few songs, what's the big deal? Look, I have a version of Jane Wiedlin singing "Our Lips Are Sealed", and I prefer it to the version that got released. I can understand all the lyrics for one thing, plus she just has a better singing voice, there, I said it. #TeamJane
If anything, the Go-Go's proved that a female band could be just, on the whole, as childish and insecure as any male band, which I'm not sure counts as progress. Why just settle for being as good as men, when you can be BETTER? Why try to be the first woman on the moon, when you can be the first person on Mars? Then there's the debate at the end over whether the Go-Go's should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - when I'm still trying to determine if they even deserved a documentary.
Tonight's glaring omission is that notorious sex-tape that got made behind the scenes before their SNL performance, or something. Gee, I can't imagine why that didn't make the cut, maybe because the band members harassed a female fan into servicing a male roadie? Turns out some women can take part in sexual harassment, too, it isn't just a male thing.
NITPICK POINT: Why the apostrophe in their name? It's unnecessary. Grammatically, it's needed if you're talking about the plural of letters ("the A, B, C's") or years ("the 1970's") but it's not needed if you're talking about the plural of go-go clubs or go-go dancers. "The Go-Gos" would have been FINE and correct.
Also starring Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine, Jane Wiedlin, Elissa Bello, Paula Jean Brown, Ginger Canzoneri, Chris Connelly (last seen in "Gilbert"), Miles Copeland, Stewart Copeland, Pleasant Gehman, Lynval Golding, Richard Gottehrer, Kathleen Hanna (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Margot Olaverra, Dave Robinson, Lee Thompson,
with archive footage of Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Zappa"), Rodney Bingenheimer (also last seen in "Bad Reputation"), John Lydon (ditto), Sid Vicious (ditto), Katie Couric (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Terry Hall, Martha Quinn (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Andy Summers, Jann Wenner (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band")
RATING: 4 out of 10 lawsuits
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