The Bangles: Bangles

1982 IRS Records SP70506

I first came across the Bangles quite by chance when watching The Old Grey Whistle Test one night in 1984. OGWT had updated from its navel-gazing 1970s approach to include more, shall we say, accessible bands such as Lone Justice, Los Lobos and The Bangles, and it was a video by the latter that caught my eye. The band’s reworking of Going Down To Liverpool, Katrina and the Waves’ tough take on the hardships of unemployment on Merseyside, penned by Waver Kimberley Rew, featured Susannah Hoffs, Michael Steele and sisters Debbie and Vicki Peterson singing the song in the back of a limousine while driver Leonard Nimoy punctuated the tune with a periodical raised eyebrow in the rear-view mirror. I loved it, so I took a chance and rushed out to buy their debut album, All Over The Place, on Columbia, which I also loved – so I became a sort of Bangles devotee.

The band had emerged from the Los Angeles Paisley Underground scene as The Colours in 1981, before renaming themselves The Bangs who, consisting of guitarists Hoffs and Vicki Peterson and drummer Debbie, released the single Getting Out Of Hand on their own DownKiddie label. By the following year, having changed their name to The Bangles for copyright reasons, they had added Annette Zilinskas on bass and harmonica and released a five-track 12-inch/ mini-album on Faulty Products. Faulty folded soon after, but in 1983 the EP was picked up by I.R.S. Records, a label founded by Miles Copeland, whose brother Stewart drummed for The Police, who Miles also managed.

It was this reissue that I stumbled across in the racks one day. From the twangy guitar chords of the opener The Real World (also released as a 45), through the Sixties go-go sound of I’m In Line, to the fast-paced rock of Want You and the chugging Mary Street, there was no let up, and the urgent, supercharged How Is The Air Up There? (a take on New Zealand band The La De Da’s 1960s hit, which in turn was a cover of the song by US duo The Changin' Times), with its repeating chorus, was simply hypnotic. Surely there were more good things to come…

Well, yes and no… Liverpool and All Over The Place (which saw Zilinskas replaced by The Runaways’ Michael Steele) had won the band mainstream appreciation in the MTV age, and it was no surprise that this was reflected in their Columbia follow up album, Different Light, which I bought on musicassette. OK, I loved Walk Like An Egyptian at first – before it got burned out by numerous overplayed and inappropriate remixes – but I wasn’t at all keen on Prince's Manic Monday or Hazy Shade Of Winter, and I found the rest of the set somewhat lacklustre.

So there my flirtation with The B’s ended, but I always enjoy giving both Place and the Bangles EP a spin once in a while. Meanwhile, the latter became hard to find, with only occasional releases of individual songs turning up now and again, and it would only see the light of day as a complete entity as part of the 2014 compilation Ladies And Gentlemen… The Bangles!. In terms of The Bangles’ musical development the 12-inch 'mini-album' represents a bridge between their earlier, more abrasive Paisley Underground sound and the move to mainstream fame that came with Light, and it remains a powerful slice of early 1980s psychedelic garage rock and pop. Nice…