Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. In honor of The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame finally getting around to inducting The Go-Go's, the latest shared post is my look back at how I discovered the group and their music, The Everlasting First: The Go-Go's.
The Go-Go's are also the subject of this week's Greatest Record Ever Made! video rant, spotlighting "We Got The Beat." In a post in March, I selected debut album track "Skidmarks On My Heart" as part of that week's edition of 10 Songs, I wrote this about the group:
"One of my favorite albums of the 1980s, The Go-Go's' 1981 debut LP Beauty And The Beat is very nearly a perfect record. I confess I've never cared for the track "Automatic," but otherwise? Love at first spin. Aside from that one exception, every track on Beauty And The Beat is simply stellar, and it bugs me that the album (and the group!) remain so criminally underrated. I'm delighted that The Go-Go's have finally been nominated for induction into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. They deserve to be honored.
"The hit singles 'We Got The Beat' and 'Our Lips Are Sealed' are Beauty And The Beat's best-known songs. Their album-track sisters 'This Town,' 'Can't Stop The World,' 'How Much More,' 'You Can't Walk In Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep),' and 'Fading Fast' all maintain a comparable level of sheer fantasticness, and the same can be said of 'Skidmarks On My Heart.' Underrated album, underrated band."
The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has itself been a popular piñata here at Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do). This year, I'm happy that The Go-Go's, Tina Turner, Todd Rundgren, and Carole King received their long-overdue nods, and bummed that The New York Dolls were dissed yet again. Among my previously-posted complaints about the Hall's ongoing doodyheadedness, we find a fake This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio playlist of worthy acts (then) not in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, a hypothetical list of the 100 acts the Hall should honor if it only honored 100 acts, and a 2019 piece declaring that the Hall's many shortcomings were and remain unlikely to ever be remedied. The latter piece grumbles that The Go-Go's would probably never get in; I'm delighted that I was wrong about that, and I hope history will prove me wrong about some other acts, too.
And, of course, The Monkees remain The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame's most egregious omission to date. I made my case on The Monkees' behalf here. And I griped again about the continued snub here. Man, #inductthemonkees awready.
But today, we celebrate The Go-Go's! The Everlasting First: The Go-Go's is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
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