Category: Band News

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The Go-Go’s Talk ‘Stranger Things’

Legendary rock band The Go-Go’s have had a career full of big hits and exciting tours, all while paving the way for bands that would follow. Now, the band has teamed up with the Frito-Lay and Netflix for the Stranger Things Doritos Music Fest ’86. The story goes that back in 1986, The Go-Go’s bus crashed near Hawkins, Indiana and they disappeared into another dimension, which Stranger Things; fans will know as the Upside Down. Now, the band is back from the otherworldly zone and they’ve brought along some friends, including fellow ’80s musicians Corey Hart and Soft Cell, and modern pop star Charli XCX.

Read the full article on popculture.com.

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The Go-Go’s Are Hitting The Road!

We’re so excited to get back on the road, and we’ve got rescheduled tour dates for you!

3/24 – San Francisco

3/25 – Reno

3/27 – Temecula

3/28 – Anaheim

3/31 – San Diego

(Pssst: we’ve got a special LA show announcement coming *really* soon, and we can’t wait to share it with you!!)

If you’re holding onto tickets from the original dates, they’re good for these new dates!

Fan Club pre-sale is this Thursday, 3/27 @ 10am PT, public on-sale is on Friday, 3/28 @ 10am PT.

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Band News

Announcement regarding upcoming December/January tour dates

A member of our team recently tested positive for COVID. ALTHOUGH WE ARE, OF COURSE, VERY DISAPPOINTED, we will be following proper protocols and postponing our upcoming west coast dates.

We will be announcing new dates VERY soon and look forward to getting back to performing and celebrating with everyone.  WISHING EVERYONE A WONDERFUL AND SAFE HOLIDAY SEASON, AND SEE YOU IN THE NEW YEAR!

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The Go-Go’s Documentary to be released

Polygram Entertainment, the film and television production and development division of Universal Music Group, today announced four new feature documentary projects at Sir Lucian Grainge’s 2019 Artist Showcase, revealing the next wave of titles that will soon be available in theaters, on television networks and streaming services.

THE GO-GO’s:

Directed by Alison Ellwood and underpinned by full access to the band, THE GO-GO’S is a candid archive-rich feature documentary that assesses the iconic group’s place in pop history and examines the personalities and dynamics behind their rise, fall and numerous reincarnations.

Press release:

https://umusic.box.com/s/acmlakkvnwnp8rxkuyic1onyp9c22nki

UMG’s Head of Film & Television Development David Blackman introduced the film, with The Go-Go’s band members Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock, and Kathy Valentine in the audience.

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NY Times: The Go-Go’s Gave Us the Beat and So Much More

When the Go-Go’s’ debut album came out in 1981, it provided sweet vindication for girls like me. I was a California-born punk-rock pirate marooned at a Midwestern public high school. No one invited smart-alecks to the prom, especially ones who openly mocked the idea of slow dancing to “Stairway to Heaven.” Incapable of meeting beauty standards, I defied them. Patti Smith didn’t shave her armpits, so neither did I. My outsider status was writ large one sunny morning, when I woke up to the message “Punk sucks” spray painted at the end of my parents’ driveway.

Then along came “Beauty and the Beat.” Here were five women from my homeland, in angular haircuts and thrift-store miniskirts, tauntingly singing about their own public shaming — and not giving a toss. They chanted lyrics like protest slogans in the eternal anthem “Our Lips Are Sealed”: “Doesn’t matter what they say/In the jealous games people play.” Not only were the Go-Go’s sassy and saucy, they were winning: “Beauty and the Beat” became the No. 1 album on the Billboard chart for six weeks, the first by a female collective who wrote their own music and played their own instruments.

The album remains a new wave masterpiece and a blueprint for girl-powered bands to follow. It defined a moment, of California-style MTV pop feminism, or “Valley Girl Intelligentsia,” as the punk singer Kathleen Hanna later put it. Songs like “We Got the Beat” were built with a timeless durability as solidly constructed as a Motown hit. But to this day, the Go-Go’s music tends to be dismissed as frothy and cute, when in fact, the band was a paradigm shifter. Just check out the cross-dressing role reversals of their 1984 video for “Turn to You,” and you’ll understand the rationale for teleporting the Go-Go’s oeuvre — yeah, I said it — to Elizabethan England, in the gender-forward Broadway musical “Head Over Heels,” now playing at the Hudson Theater.

What is it about the Go-Go’s that empowers misfits? How did they puncture the blatant sexism of the music industry and claim their own right to unapologetic pleasure? What is the Go-Go’s secret formula?

Three words: They. Kicked. Ass.

The Go-Go’s were firmly rooted in punk. The singer Belinda Carlisle began her music career with a brief stint as Dottie Danger, drummer for the Germs, the doomed underground band from Los Angeles. In 1978, she, the guitarist Jane Wiedlin and the bassist Margot Olavarria were discussing their recent trip to see the Sex Pistols in San Francisco and decided, in true punk fashion, that they could be a band themselves. They were not the first, or the last, women to find liberation in punk’s do-it-yourself ethos and antiauthoritarian energy — in Los Angeles alone, they had sisters including Alice Bag, Exene Cervenka, Phranc and the Germs bassist Lorna Doom.

But the Go-Go’s used punk as a starting point, not a destination. They weren’t afraid to not only rock but to pop too. Ms. Wiedlin and the guitarist Charlotte Caffey in particular began writing songs that were Brill Building-worthy with their clever lyrics and unabashed hooks. This turn toward a more accessible, less aggressive sound soured Ms. Olavarria, who left and was replaced by Kathy Valentine; the drummer Gina Schock eventually completed the lineup. The producers Richard Gottehrer, a veteran of the girl-group era, and Rob Freeman, who had worked with Blondie (as did Mr. Gottehrer), recognized the classic chassis underneath the band’s dented rust and polished each song until “Beauty and the Beat” became one of those albums where on every listen, a different turn of phrase or guitar lick sticks in your head. Even the band was a bit shocked when they heard how pop the final result sounded. Then the radio adds and MTV play came rolling in.

But the Go-Go’s spirit, their tough, reckless attitude, came across as sharp as ever. As a 17-year-old girl, I related to the way these songs expressed female bonding, youthful insecurity and sexual freedom. “Lust to Love” celebrated a woman’s anti-romanticism: “Love me and I’ll leave you,” the narrator warns her mate. Sure, the hunter winds up captured by the prey, but she is still unrepentant about the game.

Patti Smith, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry and Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson of the B-52’s had shown women ways of being and creating that freed our minds and bodies. But the Go-Go’s taught a new generation, who were too young for the girl groups like the Ronettes and the Crystals, the power of the girl gang. “Tonite” and “This Town” celebrated that feeling of being out of the house, out on the town, aware of your own heat and in charge of your own life.

After all, unlike the Ronettes or the Runaways (who were trailblazers in the 1970s and broke down doors for acts to follow), the Go-Go’s had fuller autonomy. An important factor of the Go-Go’s relatability was that they were clearly singing what they knew. They were also managed by a woman, Ginger Canzoneri, a relative rarity in the music industry of the era.

The Go-Go’s were more than the sum of their parts, but like the best bands, those parts each had their own personalities, so fans could crush hard on — or want to be — a Go-Go of their choosing. I gravitate toward drummers, like Ms. Schock. But then Ms. Wiedlin was the consummate cute weirdo, smart and fun. Watching her bounce around the stage of the Hollywood Bowl in early July, at a Go-Go’s concert, I realized she was the prototype for that indie icon, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

The Go-Go’s were not the first or only all-girl rock band, of course. Later, I discovered their predecessors and peers, such as Fanny, the Raincoats and the Slits, all of whom made fantastic, dangerous music but didn’t penetrate my Midwestern bubble. The Go-Go’s, on the other hand, took over the then-nascent MTV along with Joan Jett, and soon, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. And despite having announced their retirement in 2016, the Go-Go’s are still going. They played three shows at the Bowl (without Ms. Schock) and joined the cast of “Head Over Heels” at the Hudson in New York on July 12. Ms. Wiedlin also has a new band, Elettrodomestico, a duo whose gender-playful videos offer timely, provocative, ear candy. Ms. Carlisle’s 2010 memoir “Lips Unsealed”will tell you just about everything you want to know about the Go-Go’s, and maybe some things you don’t.

In 1982 my high school hosted a talent show. MTV had busted classic-rock radio’s hold on America, and now everyone wanted to dress weird and be in a band. Musicianship didn’t matter. My friends and I formed an air band that “played” the B-52’s “Strobe Light” on tennis rackets. We were roundly defeated by other poseurs, a guy group who put on wigs and dresses for “Our Lips Are Sealed,” hilariously squeezing their legs shut for the song’s chorus. They could have been mocking these women who had suddenly made new wave mainstream, but I saw their act as being in the spirit of drag: both a tribute to and channeling of female energy — not a put-on, but a putting on.

Me, I’d been pogoing to the Go-Go’s nonstop in my bedroom for months, and I was happy to be joined in this dance that didn’t require an invitation, just a beat.

 

By Evelyn Mcdonnell
Source: The New York Times

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Band News Interviews

Then and Now: The Go-Go’s (People TV)

Thank you PeopleTV for this rad overview of our 40 year career and for showcasing our Broadway musical Head Over Heels – The New Musical 😍

People TV: The Go-Go’s ruled the pop charts in the early ‘80s, but by 1985 they were over. Now the girls are back, celebrating their 40thanniversary with live concerts and a brand new Broadway show, Head Over Heels. PeopleTV’s new franchise Then & Now links the past with the present, thanks to rare archival footage and exclusive, in-depth interviews – so join the band as they look back on their whirlwind road to fame and the long journey back into the spotlight.

Watch Video Here

 

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‘Head Over Heels’ Sets Sights on Broadway, After San Francisco

The Go-Go’s are going Broadway.

A seemingly improbable musical mash-up of the group’s 20th-century pop songs with a 16th-century prose romance will have a pre-Broadway production in San Francisco next spring, and the producers said Tuesday that they plan to open on Broadway after that.

The musical, a romantic comedy called “Head Over Heels,” had an initial production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, where The New York Times called it a “funny and frolicsome concoction” but said that the book was stronger than the music. It was further developed in 2016 at Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater.

The show, based on “Arcadia” by Sir Philip Sidney, was conceived by Jeff Whitty, the Tony Award-winning book writer of “Avenue Q.” Mr. Whitty did the original work on the show’s book, which was then adapted by James Magruder. Tom Kitt, who won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tonys for “Next to Normal” and more recently oversaw the pop score for “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” has written arrangements.

Among the songs being used: “We Got the Beat,” “Vacation,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Lust to Love” and the show’s title tune.

Michael Mayer, a Tony winner for the original production of “Spring Awakening,” is directing. The lead producers include the actors Gwyneth Paltrow and Donovan Leitch; the other lead producers are Rick Ferrari, Christine Russell, Louise Gund, Hunter Arnold and Tom Kirdahy.

“Head Over Heels” is scheduled to run at the Curran Theater in San Francisco from April 24 through May 20 before transferring to Broadway in the 2018-19 season.

Shows using the song catalogs of pop and rock stars have become a Broadway staple. “Escape to Margaritaville,” featuring songs by Jimmy Buffett, is set to open in March, and “The Cher Show” is scheduled to open next fall.

With competition fierce for available theaters, “Head Over Heels” is the ninth show to stake a claim for 2018-19, following “The Boys in the Band,” “The Cher Show,” “Gettin’ the Band Back Together,” “King Kong,” “Pretty Woman,” “The Prom,” “Straight White Men” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

 

Source: By Michael Paulson for NY Times

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Band News

Go-Go’s to perform at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards

Our lips aren’t sealed about this — The Go-Go’s will perform at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards.

The group will celebrate their 35th anniversary of their hit “We Got the Beat” at the ceremony. They will also announce their North American farewell tour.

The Billboard Music Awards, hosted by Ciara and Ludacris, will air May 22 on ABC.

SOURCE: Billboard.com