The Girls?

Do you hate that song, here comes the girls? You know the one, Boots and the sugababes saw a money spinner and covered it. Hold on they never covered it, they interpolated it, seriously it wasn’t a cover, it was an interpolation. I don’t even know what interpolation is!
But here come the girls, except they aren’t girls.

Girls at our best was a Leeds band that came to my attention via a different Leeds band, The Wedding Present. The latter covered the former on their debut album, George Best, well the cassette version. Girls at our best weren’t girls, well not all girls, they did have a girl, but on the whole they were boys and one of them boys was Paul Simon. No, tiny guitarist Paul Simon did not go through a new wave phase, it’s a different Paul Simon, this Paul Simon was in the Radio Stars and brother to Robin Simon of Ultravox and Magazine. This isn’t six degrees of separation though, so lets go back to Girls at our best. Getting nowhere fast is better than 99% of what Guns n Roses tribute act, The Wedding Present recorded, and one of the few songs by them I can listen to, The Wedding Present were masters of the cover, formulaic at times, take song play fast with rattling guitars, but their cover of this song is almost as good as the original and perhaps if it hadn’t been covered I would possibly have never sought it out, which I did as part of a Peel session in 1987.



Getting Nowhere Fast - Girls At Our Best

The Poison Girls were a part girl band that were very much in the anarchist vein, almost like an eighties sitcom parody, Vi Subversa, the girl element produced offspring that were in Rubella Ballet. A friend of mine, Alex played me Rubella Ballet once, he was also the man that introduced me as a pimply youth to The Wedding Present, I found Rubella Ballet to be unlistenable tosh, the Wedding Present less so. The Poison Girls then, not a girl band and not poison. What they did do well is create stupid names for the members like listeners to Terry Wogans programme, Lance’D Boyle, Richard Famous, Cynth Ethics, Bella Donna, Lucy Lastic. I made the last one up, that’s a listener of Wake up to Wogan.
The Poison Girls are described as anarcho punks, but you look at them and you conjure up this image of Dawn French in Girls on Top, I am sure that is not what they were aiming for. I am sure that at one point they protested against Greenham Common.



Persons Unknown - The Poison Girls

One band that I am pretty certain never protested at Greenham Common was Girl. A UK based glam metal band that had a misleading moniker in that they weren’t girls at all. Lead singer in Girl, Phil Lewis went on to take up lead vocals in an incarnation of LA Guns. Now I am not best equipped to pass comment on LA Guns but what little I do know is that like The Sweet, The Drifters and potentially every 60’s group out there, there was 2 versions of LA Guns, for my money and don’t get me wrong, I know very little, but for my money, if it didn’t have Tracii Guns in them, it wasn’t really LA Guns. I am happy to be corrected. But Girl the band, what do we know about them? Well Wikipedia tells me that although Girl were passengers on the NWOBHM bandwagon, their former members have rather impressive CV’s, outside of LA Guns, various members have been in the likes of Def Leppard, London Cowboys, Gillan, Spear of Destiny and Neo the latter contained Paul Simon of Girls at our Best. An hereth end the lesson of 6 degrees of separation.



My Number - Girl