CULT RECORD: GO-GO'S: "BEAUTY AND THE BEAT"

The Go-Go's were a culture club, a band who never would've sat together in the high school cafeteria. There were two sassy punks (Jane Wiedlin, Kathy Valentine), two blonde Real-Girl cheerleaders (Berlinda Carlisle, Charlotte Caffey), and an East Coast metalhead tomboy named Gina Schock. And in "This Town," they busted their cliques to salute their true audience: "We all know the chosen toys/ Of catty girls and pretty boys just kept their mouths shut and preened, while the catty girls took center stage to make up that face, jump in the race, and get dressed up to get messed up, whether flashing their underwear in public fountains or prowling by night. The Go-Go's eventually developed a knack for songs about men ("Turn to You," "Yes or No"), but their grand theme was always femme bonding: we rule the streets tonight, this town is our town, our lips are sealed.
Beauty and the Beat is the Go-Go's at their brashest, a record that broke out of the late-'70's L.A. hardcore scene to define the California mystique of the Square Pegs era. Gina Schock's drums flesh out the music's Buzzcocks/Ramones fixation with her own libidinally propulsive beat, making up for Carlisle's quavery voice. Jane Wiedlin establishes herself as the hyphen in the Go-Go's: their punk conscience as well as their most charmingly tuneful melodist. "Fading Fast" and "Skidmarks on My Heart" bookended many a breakup tape in 1982. while the heartbreaking "How Much More" celebrates the thrill of thwarted obsession. In "Our Lips Are Sealed" (at least the version not sung by Fun Boy 3) two catty girls roam the streets of Guyville getting hassled by jerks, but they strut proudly, they don't answer back, and when they look at them, they look right through them. Bells ring, cymbals crash, Jane chimes in with a seraphic lullaby, and you never doubt for a second that they're sticking together.

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THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

14. FREDA PAYNE: Band Of Gold/ The Easiest Way To Fall (1970)
 "We kissed after taking vows/ But that night on our honeymoon/ We stayed in separate rooms," Freda Payne, Invictus' answer to Diana Ross, confessed on this Ronald Dunbar and Edith Wayne-penned wedding night melodrama. While we'll never know the reason for the split--"I think it was about a situation where the woman was scared," reckons Payne, "but it's funny because most people have the opposite opinion, that it's about the guy"-- we can still thrill to Freda's poignant yet silky voiced plea for her husband's return and the sumptuous galloping Motown-esque background. Payne, who had first traded on her sultry torch singing tones with the big bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones respectively, had never wanted to voice a song centered around such an innocent character, but it;s a good job she did. It sold more than all her previous releases put together, reaching number 1 in the UK and number 3 Stateside, and also spawned a hit album of the same name.
Availability: Unhooked Generation Invictus CD

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CULT MOVIE: MYSTERY TRAIN (1990)

Hard to describe the crime in this three-into-one-must-go film without giving it all away. This tells three apparently unrelated stories (all based in Memphis) of a pair of Japanese tourists, a young Italian widow and a gang which rob a liquor store. Uniting all three stories are a gunshot and Elvis, either as a ghost or the singer of the ghostly Blue Moon which is playing on almost every radio anybody listens to. It's an odd film in which crime provides some kind of resolution and is a constant threat (as when the widow has to pay a wacko, who tells her the story of Graceland's hitchhiking ghost, just to leave her alone).

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CULT RECORD: LIVING COLOUR: "VIVID" (1988)

In 1988, Living Colour rode into the hard-rock arena on two mighty riffs:one,the colossal,avant-Zeppelin guitar line of "Cult of Personality";the other,the manifesto that African-Americans,inventors of rock'n'roll,have as much right to guitars,amps,and hair-waving arena rock as white boys do.Both were the work of guitarist Vernon Reid,m.v.p.of New York's downtown music scene,sometime journalist, and co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition-a support network for black, rock-playing musicians including Family Stand, Mother's Finest, Follow For Now, and 24-7 Spyz.While none of these bands went much further than B.R.C. compilation and major-label deals, Living Colour truly broke through to suburbia.Vivid--a politically-minded album of bombastic prog-rock-- sold two million copies and the band toured with the Rolling Stones, loudly challenging racist assumptions and the same people who jeered Prince on his Stones dates

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THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

16. THE KINKS: You Really Got Me/ It's Alright (1964)
Thanks to Dave Davies' guitar distortion, You Really Got Me is credited with inventing heavy metal. It's equally a paradigm of visceral '60s beat economy. Its primeval riff, clipped verses and stomping chorus cut a swathe through the docile jangle of 1964 pop. Of course, distortion had been around since Link Wray's Rumble and three-chord pop nirvana since The Champs' Tequila, but nobody had  put the two together before. Whatever the historic nuances, any public airing of You Really Got Me will dare you not to bawl along.
Availability: The Ultimate Collection Sanctuary CD
15. THE EVERLY BROTHERS: Walk Right Back/ Ebony Eyes (1961)
Walk Right Back should never have been a hit. Intended as the flip to Ebony Eyes, it ended up higher in the charts than the original A-side, probably because it was a lot more fun, Penned by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets, and given to the Everlys shortly before Curtis entered the armed forces, it was really a work in progress, half-finished and lacking a second verse. But Don and Phil recorded what they had and, thiygh the song was basically about being lonesome, it had an upbeat, feel-good energy,making it an instantly infectious hit.
Availability: Walk Right Back WARNER BROS CD  

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CULT RECORD: MINUTEMEN: "DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME" (1984)

The Minutemen made punk rock that sounded like overheard conversation, with brief, angular song fragments flowing together in thew rhythm of babble. Guitarist/ vocalist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt, and drummer George Hurley mixed and matched these fragments with the surgical precision of beboppers, splicing their hardcore rant with folkie didding and jazz skronk. But they never sounded arch about it; their songs were earthy and almost always funny, the handiwork of three regular corndogs from San Pedro, lifelong friends who wore ugly black computer watches and didn't worry about their cholesterol intake. They accepted propaganda into their conversational mix because it was part of their language, and they let their fragmentary rhythms dramatize the chaos and internal contradictions of their propaganda. Their music always generated its own chatty energy, from Boon's guitar blurts to lyrics like "Force-fed sifted tin can turn handle puppet (pull toy)."
Double Nickels on the Dime is overkill at its most humane, pilling on the babble, cracking jokes, submerging intense musical climaxes into the "Spillage" of urban routine. The Minutemen haven't gotten the hang of writing songs about other people ("Jesus and Tequila" is facile satire worthy of Joe Jackson), but they nail down the details of their own lives, whether it's the rage of "This Ain't No Picnic," the loneliness of "Storm in My House," or, most importantly, the loyal fellowship of "History Lesson (Part II)." The splendidly titled "Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want the Truth?)" (answer:yes) admits the role of doubt and confusion in their politics, and when Boon sings "fuck advertising," it sounds like "fuck Eric Clapton." A jovial masterpiece that made its own unique place in a season that also produced Zen Arcade, Let It Be, and Meat Puppets II.

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