Talulah Gosh was a pop star for a day, 1986
“Talulah Gosh are very nearly the best pop group alive today! Why not examine the evidence… remember excitement? Remember freshness? Remember spontaneity? Remember ENTHUSIASM? Remember all those times when you used to wander into your local park at 12 in the night to bawl aloud your very favourite songs and it didn’t matter who heard you, who was out there, only the fact that you were young and singing and glad to be alive? Remember FUN? Talulah Gosh do.” (Unabridged Legend! notes on the first Talulah Gosh concert in London, Chalk Farm Enterprise, 25.5.86)
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…if I was female I’d’ve fallen in love with their companion group, the Razorcuts – as I’m male, it’s Talulah Gosh for me. I’m not ashamed; how can anyone resist such an inspiring pop/noise cacophony as this?
…already their detractors point a gnarled fingertip at the two girls who sing in high (not girly, surely? Oh my GOSH!) voices and don’t dress down, a drummer who wasn’t born until after The Beatles split, the laughter, the obvious enjoyment Talulah Gosh derive from playing live. “TWEE!!!” they scream at the top of their righteous lungs, completely missing the point… (Additional Legend! notes with the first Talulah Gosh interview, NME, 5.7.86)
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VELOCITY GIRL It strikes me that the time has come to avoid theorising – LOOK, IF I WANTED TO CHANGE THE WORLD, I’D’VE GOTTEN A FEW BEERS IN FIRST, RIGHT? – floundering around without a direction to go in, people always searching for leaders to betray them, “What do you like Legend!, oh I’m sure they must be good!”, fanzines which all read like the writers have no wit or imagination present (WHY MISUSE IT – IF YOU’VE NOTHING TO SAY SAY NOTHING!!), about four too many bands on the C86 who sound like Orange Juice (it’s a lot easier to get away with jumping on a wagon of pop than a wagon of noise – even a half-blind goth can learn four chords, switch to an anorak and smile sweetly. How pointless – your scope is so limited)
If I had to call a halt to all this it’s be with the awesomely fresh-sounding TALULAH GOSH who, in embracing accusations of tweeness, femininity (how shocking!) and disrespect for their elders, overcome all that BRILLIANTLY and make you fall in love all over again for the Nth time.
It’s tempting to try and explain (it’s so obvious! It’s so obvious!) just WHAT makes Talulah Gosh, for RIGHT NOW, so wonderful. Futile, but tempting (stop! REVERSE!) for that’s be missing the whole instantaneous idea – futile, yet fun. Still, a few of you would-be pop stars out there could do with a few lessons I reckon, so listen…
(i) INSTINCT! Forget the guitarists, look to the drummer and singers. No rubbish attempts at being deep and meaningful here, just COLOSSAL slabs of raucous melodies, tunes which enter(tain) into medleys of guitarnoise, slow sad tremulous numbers, smiling faces and…
(ii) FUN! Y’know, funfunfunfunfun. Mmmmm.
(iii) TASTE! ‘The Day She Lost Her Pastels Badge’. Covering a Razorcuts song. Remember the guitarists and jump for joy! The best hand-painted guitar in the world. Two singers who both look like Aggi Beri-Beri. A bassist who (apparently) used to go to my school (er, taste?). The ‘O’ in the middle of Hobgoblins. Primal Scream, the Marine Girls, NOISE. Taste! You got it? They have!
(iv) STYLE! Imagine if the star of Bewitched had ever formed a pop group, or Girls At Our Best! hadn’t consisted of three musos and one punk, or that every group in the world had taken the lessons of Mary Chain, Shop Assistants, Soup Dragons et al to HEART (and not to HEAD) and were good because they didn’t know how else to be. No prima donna coolness here.
(v) DIVERSITY! GET SMART! (why dontcha’?) – nothing’s ever gained from copying others ideas wholesale. My attention gets easily distracted, must be this age of the television span they talk about or maybe sheer laziness – having proved a few things to myself I find difficulty in finding motivation amidst all the grey that surrounds me – Talulah Gosh are fab! Ain’t that enough for ya?
(vi) HOPE! Look to me children and I’ll laugh exactly the way you want me to laugh, paint the way we all paint, so don’t come round here looking for no scapegoat. The sign over the door reads FAB FAB FAB and the sign of the floor reads DANCE YOU BASTARDS DANCE and if you can’t get down to this and find the concept nauseating, then I guess you’re due for a serious going-over (carwash, I mean!).
(Excerpted from The Legend! #5, 1986)
Illustration: Vincent Vanoli
