The Go-Go’s – Swim with the Go-Go’s
Counting those no longer in use, there are between 218,000 and 470,000 words in the English language. Spotify reportedly has over 11,000,000 artists and creators on the service. Considering this ratio, the not unlimited ways in which those words can be combined and the inherent limitations in naming something (special shout-out to The The for finding a clever workaround), it’s no surprise that there are a lot of situations where two bands have the same name.
I happen to love the 1980s version of The Go-Go’s, but I’ve lately developed considerable affection for their early 1960s doppelgänger. The band is pretty unknown even for an active hunter of the obscure like me: most of what I know about them comes from the fantastic podcast “Bizarre Albums”, which describes how they became hired guns on an album aimed at capitalizing on the television hit “The Munsters” (some decent tracks, but the charms of its conceit quickly wear thin). Both records were released in 1964, and both are on Spotify and barely listened to.
“Swim with the Go-Go’s” is an absolute hoot. Although the sound and themes are pure surf pop, the lyrics delight in pricking the bubble of SoCal surfer dude narcissism that marked the hit tunes of the era. “(They Call Him) Chicken of the Sea” is about a guy who spends his time at the beach but can’t swim. The homoeroticism of young fit shirtless men spending all their time together is (possibly unintentionally) brought to the fore when they sing “If it weren’t for the girls, we’d have a lot of fun” in “At the Beach”, while at the same time the song plays up their aimless peacocking for those girls’ attentions. And “Peek-A-Boo Swimsuit” highlights the objectification of women in the genre, with the girl merely a vessel so the narrator “can be alone with your skintight polka dot peek-a-boo swimsuit”.
The highlight is “Goodbye Winter”, which satirizes surf music’s incessant male gaze eight years before John Berger and then Laura Mulvey wrote about it. The narrator is overjoyed because he has found the accessory he needs to bring back the highs of summer: a girl who will “wax my surfboard” (that could be a euphemism), “watch me swim”, cook wieners for him (another euphemism?), listen “to every word I say” and basically bury her entire personality in order to “join in everything I do”.
I don’t know if these guys were feminists, but they were definitely swimming in a different pool than the Beach Boys and others of that ilk, so the fact that the album flopped despite having great harmonies, the backing of a major label and the services of a multiple Grammy-winning producer is maybe not all that surprising. And that’s unfortunate: just like Emily Lou in “Goodbye Winter”, listening to either version of The Go-Go’s can chase away the gloom of a cold day.
PopNotes 