A surprisingly difficult part of this was establishing what we talk about when we talk about post-punk. Roughly, the term refers to the wave of musical experimentation which took place in the wake of punk from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. It was informed conceptually by the art-school background and grounding in political and cultural theory of many of its members, and distinguished by musical, vocal and lyrical experimentation and by a frequently self-conscious and self-critical approach to the idea of being in a band and making music. All of which meant that it sounded, to varying degrees, original, arresting, and odd.

Post-punk’s disorderly, subversive and category-resistant nature has seen it marginalised in accounts of its era, although the past few years have produced a handful of useful retrospectives, as well as the early-2000s revival of post-punk musical techniques which, if you still can’t explain what it is, at least make it easier to explain what it sounds like.

For me, a large part of the significance of post-punk was that it seemed to involve an unprecedented amount of women as artists, fans, and critics. Its musical, political and aesthetic influence can be traced in many subsequent female-friendly movements, including twee, riot grrrl, grunge and electro. Some post-punk women – the Slits, the Raincoats, Lydia Lunch – have made a more enduring dent in popular consciousness than others, and some of them are more ‘hmm, interesting’ than ‘fuck yeah, hidden early-80s gem’, but all the artists featured below are worth a spin.

Extending the gains of punk’s emphasis on DIY culture, accessibility and amateurism, post-punk women were able to take their bands in experimental directions, producing lyrics which explored the female experience in startlingly innovative ways, and music which itself took on what Slits bassist Tessa Pollitt described, when I interviewed her for the book, as a ‘new, raw, and female’ form, a self-consciously radical sound dealing with rarely-expressed emotions like embarrassment, awkwardness and anxiety.

In terms of subject matter, post-punk’s ideological concern with the politicisation of the personal, and with identifying and promoting authenticity in the face of popular cultural stereotypes, lent itself to exploration from a feminine and feminist angle. This concern with authenticity was expressed in the songs themselves, which were produced, structured and presented in a way which set them apart from the glossy manufactured products of mainstream artists. It was expressed too in lyrics which demystified and deconstructed conventional femininity, love, sex and romance, and which analysed social and cultural pressures on women or the tensions of personal relationships in implicitly political ways.

There is far more to post-punk, and many more women within it, than I have space for here. The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook provides a good starting-point to other women and bands in the movement, but here are ten from me to kick off:

1. ESG

ESG, from South Bronx, based their pioneering sound on a love of James Brown, Motown and disco. Spotted at a talent contest, they began to play New York’s cutting-edge clubs, where their sound dovetailed neatly, if unexpectedly, with that of the No Wave scene, and went on to share billing with PiL, Gang of Four and A Certain Ratio.

ESG’s blend of hip-hop and girl-group lyrical sensibility was sampled incessantly by acts from Miles Davis to Tricky and Public Enemy to Liars – although the lack of royalties received antagonized the band, who addressed the issue with typical panache in the 1993 single ‘Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills’.

2. Raincoats

The Raincoats attempted an unsweetened exploration of the social and sexual experience for women, mapping a landscape previously foreign to mainstream rock – a female-centred one of self-consciousness and self-doubt. Their debut’s self-effacing musical communalism has seen it described as the first ‘women’s rock’ album.

3. Slits

From the art-student squats of London’s Ladbroke Grove via Germany, Spain and English suburbia, the Slits made slippery and spacious dub-punk hymns to sex and shoplifting. ‘Love und Romance’ burlesques the banality of boy-meets-girl, ‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ analyses retail therapy as addiction, and ‘Typical Girls’ castigates conventional femininity as a profit-driven invention.

For more on the Slits I’d recommend Zoe Street Howe’s Typical Girls? The story of the Slits.

4. Bush Tetras

There’ve been whole essays written on this song as key to life in late-70s crisis-riddled New York, but Pat Place’s stabbing guitar and Cynthia Sley’s vocal darting between grouchy imperious disdain and incipient panic are more than enough to recommend it.

5. Lydia Lunch

The infernal anti-Blondie, or perhaps the sub-par Patti Smith. For Lunch, the extent of her musical ability ‘wasn’t the point. I developed my own style, which suited the primal urgency I needed to evacuate from my system’ (quoted in Simon Reynolds’ Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984).

Lunch’s performances were, according to contemporary music writer Roy Trakin (quoted here) ‘very influential in freeing people from the idea of technique as being somehow prerequisite to talent’.

6. LiLiPUT

Surrealistic in their Swiss-German and English lyrics, rudimentary in their technique, and the subject of a 40-seconds-long Yummy Fur song (Why don’t you listen to Liliput / Where punk rock starts and ends?), but great for all that.

7. The Bloods

New York’s finest queer anarcha-feminists. ‘Button Up’, their only single, is absurdly ahead of its time kink-funk.

8. Mo-dettes

Sharp-tongued and stylish Anglo-Swiss outfit. Had a complicated relationship with the partisan feminism of some of their contemporaries, but their arch, insouciant music was less ambivalent. ‘White Mice’ giddily champions female sexual agency, ‘Two Can Play’ dramatises relationships as struggles for autonomy and control, and ‘Foolish Girl’ catalogues the misadventures of a girl who renounces feminism for an unhappy marital ending.

9. Au Pairs

At the intersection of left, feminist, queer and antiracist politics, Birmingham boys and girls the Au Pairs made radical, slyly danceable music. A good introduction to them from the Kitchen Tapes’ Rupinder Parhar can be found here.

10. Linder Sterling

Muse to Buzzcocks and Morrissey, a visual and performance artist whose work critiqued cultural expectations of women and the commodification of the female body, an unequivocally militant feminist and occasionally a musician with the band Ludus. Ten post-punk points if your response in 2010 to Lady Gaga’s meat dress was to sniffily point out that Linder did it better at the Hacienda nearly thirty years ago.

For more on the background, careers, music and politics of these and other girl groups, and a look at the history of women in music from Ma Rainey to Pussy Riot – please consider buying the book!

[WARNING: this post contains controversial opinions. Those of a sensitive nature may wish to look away now.]

Photo: Ron Baker

If I asked you to hum a song by The Bangles, you could probably do it, right? Perhaps this one. What about Bananarama? This might pop into your head. What about The Go-Go’s?

Perhaps you can think of a song, in which case: good work! Gold star. But over and over again I’ve found that people know nothing about them, even though they were one of the most successful girl groups of all time and – quite frankly – better than the other two. (I warned you…)

Here are my top reasons why I love The Go-Go’s and you should too:

1) Perfect pop

Just listen. My favourite is Head Over Heels (I like to think of it as the voice of the girl in Devo’s Out of Sync) but other hits include Our Lips Are Sealed, We Got The Beat and Vacation. Stupendously catchy choruses, simple lyrics, they’re like a revved-up 60s girl group. I guarantee you, one of these tracks will be stuck in your head all day.

Sorry for the terrible sound quality by the way – I thought you’d like to see the videos. There’s another great video for Vacation but the sound was too awful so you’ve got the karaoke version instead.

2) They played their own instruments and wrote their own songs

I’m not dissing The Bangles or Banarama, I love them too. I’m just saying they’re The Monkees to the The Go-Go’s Beatles.

3) For all your 1980s style needs

Think The Bangles or Bananarama have the last word on 80s fashion? Think again: The Go–Go’s may not have had as much hair but they did have VOLUME.

At one point they even looked a bit moody ‘n’ punk. Check out the braces! (Early on they toured with Madness…)

And guitarist Jane Wiedlin has sported some amazing looks:

• Anticipating the 1990s with fairy dress and pixie crop
• Dungarees!
• Top hat!
• …Russian folk chic? She has cool red tights, anyway.

4) Retro ironic album and single covers

Wheeeee! Anne Taintor eat your heart out.

5) Kicked ass in the charts

As someone with a lot invested in her ‘alternative’ identity (and a diehard contrarian) this doesn’t matter much to me. What I find surprising is that they aren’t better known given their chart success. They had a number one album and four Top 20 singles in the US. I read somewhere that they were the first all female group – who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments – to reach number one in the Billboard chart.

6) Better pop patron

I may lose some friends over this one. While The Bangles’ biggest hit, Manic Monday, was written for them by Prince, The Go-Go’s first hit, Our Lips Are Sealed, was co-written by Terry Hall of The Specials. I know who’s cooler. And I think, in your heart, you do too.

7) They get geek points

Because Jane Wiedlin played Joan of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Communications Officer Trillya in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Win.

I don’t understand why The Go-Go’s are so often overlooked. Hopefully there will soon be an end to this injustice as they’ve been recently been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right outside The Masque club where they played their first gig. They’re also doing a reunion tour, celebrating the 30^th anniversary of their first record, Beauty and the Beat.

Of course it doesn’t matter which was the best 80s all-girl pop group¹ – the important thing is that they were all there, blazin’ a trail for the next generation to follow. If you’re interested in the history of women in pop and rock I recommend reading Lucy O’Brien’s She Bop II, and if you’re interested in what’s happening now head over to the cracking Wears The Trousers music blog².

1. It was The Go-Go’s
2. Ed’s Note: Should you need further encouragement, our very own Rhian’s assistant ed over there, too. So really you can’t go wrong, eh.