We got the beat
September 19, 2013 10:11 AM   Subscribe

The Go Go's bill themselves as "The Most Successful all female rock band of all time." Unfortunately, they've had some bumps in the road recently when bassist Kathy Valentine filed a lawsuit against the rest of the band. There is analysis and a band rebuttal. The Go Go's also had a controversial party video come to light within the past few years (NSFW) And, what happened to Jane Weidlin?
posted by josher71 (47 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
On the topic of The Go Go's and debauchery ... does anybody remember a magazine article from several years ago (I want to say it was Spin), a list of the most disgusting stories in rock and roll, and the story about The Go Go's was about how after a show, they would try to find the filthiest part of their dressing room and lick the floors?
posted by jbickers at 10:23 AM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Oh, I'm telling my wife about this.
posted by grubi at 10:23 AM on September 19, 2013


And, what happened to Jane Weidlin?

I'm really glad to know she's doing well after that incident at her previous job.
posted by griphus at 10:27 AM on September 19, 2013 [14 favorites]


I remember that same article (or one similar) where they'd stop at gas stations and do the same thing in the restrooms, licking the floor, just to annoy their manager.
posted by dukes909 at 10:28 AM on September 19, 2013


Married by Jane Weidlin? Could somebody please make sure the man I will probably marry someday never see this unless you have $1500-$4000 you can donate to the cause?

(I say this as if I don't like the Go Go's, which should be the implication at all.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:28 AM on September 19, 2013


That anecdote about the "corner cleaners" was included in the book Rock Confidential: A Backstage Pass to the Outrageous World of Rock 'n' Roll, by Coral Amende:

"The most disgusting thing we got up to was the Corner Cleaners. Kathy started this thing where we would go into rest stops on the freeway and say, 'Let's be corner cleaners,' which involved getting into the corners and sucking up the filth with your mouth. It was always in dirty bathrooms with shit everywhere. Just repulsive." --Gina Schock
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:28 AM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


they would try to find the filthiest part of their dressing room and lick the floors?

My recollection was that they would do this at rest stops on the highways, and lick the corners--which they called "corner cleaners." Give it a google, you'll find the story.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:29 AM on September 19, 2013


Wow. That video... that sounds like rape to me.
posted by queensissy at 10:30 AM on September 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


Sad about the rift among the members of the band, but GOGOCO is an awesome corporation name.
posted by xingcat at 10:31 AM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


"Follow my updates in Twitter?" Oh, Jane.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:32 AM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


I lived in Hollywood last year in an apartment going by the unfortunate name of the Artiste. But it wasn't the Artiste, and that's why I moved in there. It was The Canterbury, which was ground zero for 1970s punk rock. It's also where the Go Go's formed, right in the basement.

I'd console myself with this story when it turned out the guy across the hall was a drug dealer who was living there illegally, there was a drug-addicted squatter in the basement, indigents lived on sofas outside my window and screamed every single night throughout the night, rats inhabited the walls and their mitesinfested our apartment, wasps inhabited an entire wall of the top floor and flew down through the spaces between the walls to emerge through our light fixtures, a neighbor let their dog shit in the hallway, and the manager turned out to be a compulsive liar who was probably stealing from the tenants.

I told myself: Well, this is probably exactly what it was like when the Go Go's lived here.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:33 AM on September 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


It did seem unusually clean.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:38 AM on September 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


I'm really glad to know she's doing well after that incident at her previous job.

She got off easy there compared to what happened to her in 1431.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:40 AM on September 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


Man that lawsuit and especially the rebuttal have a lot of obfuscation around the core issue, which is that the rest of the band set up a new company to receive the touring revenue and used their controlling interest in the old company to license the rights to the new company. I have no idea if that is legal or not, but all of the stuff about badmouthing the band at corporate shows and twitter memoirs and whatnot is all irrelevant.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:40 AM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


She got off easy there compared to what happened to her in 1431.

Oh shit I just watched that movie for the first time in like a decade. I had no idea that was her!
posted by griphus at 10:43 AM on September 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Now I know what "We got the beat" meant.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:44 AM on September 19, 2013


My recollection was that they would do this at rest stops on the highways, and lick the corners--which they called "corner cleaners."

but WHY

WHYY
posted by elizardbits at 10:51 AM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


NO DON'T TELL ME TO GOOGLE IT
posted by elizardbits at 10:53 AM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


WHYY

Yeah, like, I mean I can understand how drugs and booze can be fun and stuff, but licking bathroom floors? It doesn't seem like a fetish thing either, so I just don't even get it.
posted by kmz at 10:54 AM on September 19, 2013


Wow, I'd heard about the video but never seen it — I'd just heard it was some of the Go-Gos having sex with a roadie. If that description is accurate, it's fucking rapey as hell and what the fuck, anonymous camera dude?
posted by klangklangston at 10:57 AM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Speaking of the We're No. 1 series, my favorite Internet comment of the day comes from the REO Speedwagon entry: That picture up at the top looks like they gave some guitars to the cast of Steel Magnolias.
posted by mykescipark at 10:59 AM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Yo, the tone of that "controversial party video" article is fucking disgustingly moralizing, and doesn't even seem to realize that it's a video of sexual assault. God damn.
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:02 AM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I thought that Jane Wiedlin link was going to be about her comic book.
posted by cazoo at 11:03 AM on September 19, 2013


Wow, I'd heard about the video but never seen it — I'd just heard it was some of the Go-Gos having sex with a roadie. If that description is accurate, it's fucking rapey as hell and what the fuck, anonymous camera dude?
posted by klangklangston at 1:57 PM on September 19 [+] [!]


I'm going to throw out a warning for anyone who wants to read that (it made me nauseous). It's a pretty graphic retelling of a night that includes acts of sexual intimidation (one of them violent), as well as the rape of a man too high to consent, done 'as a joke', for the sake of 'art'.

posted by FirstMateKate at 11:04 AM on September 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


The filthy-corner-licking thing makes sense once you realize the person suggesting it is only pretending to do it.
posted by Scram at 11:06 AM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Yeah, count me as someone who had heard of the video and was very curious, and who is now no longer curious at all.
posted by MoxieProxy at 11:07 AM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


This lawsuit seems similar to the one between Cheap Trick and their drummer Bun E. Carlos. I can't say if there is a corresponding Cheap Trick sex tape, though. I'll leave that for someone else to investigate.
posted by Quonab at 11:16 AM on September 19, 2013


So I've been hearing about this video ever since Film Threat days, and figured it was bullshit (Film Threat had a real thing for making up scandalous stories and giggling when busted). But... Has anyone seen this? I'd heard it was Kathy and Belinda raping David, but this piece says it was the cameraman, with Kathy egging him on. Has anyone actually seen it, or does it remain rumor?
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 11:21 AM on September 19, 2013


I just watched that movie for the first time in like a decade. I had no idea that was her!

As noted previously on the blue, she also played the Singing Telegram Girl in Clue. And the "alien communications officer" in Star Trek IV.

I loved The Go-Go's. Back in the '80s MTV used to show this concert video of theirs that looked like it was shot in a high school auditorium. Too bad about the subsequent acrimony.
posted by Gelatin at 11:43 AM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sometimes I hate the Internet, telling me awful stuff I can't ignore about artists I love. I got all excited to see a FPP about the Go-Gos because I recently saw them perform and came away with a renewed appreciation of how much ass they kick musically and otherwise, but this makes me very sad. (And to be clear, that's not a ding on the Internet or josher71, but humanity.)
posted by rhiannonstone at 11:46 AM on September 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


I like Sparks.

I like Jane Weidlin.

Why the fuck does the Sparks/Jane Weidlin collab make me break out in a rash?
posted by pxe2000 at 12:06 PM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Wow, I knew that Fun Boy Three (with Terry Hall) had recorded "Our Lips Are Sealed" but I didn't know the Hall-Weidlin connection.
posted by tommasz at 12:08 PM on September 19, 2013


Is this "Twitter Memoir" archived somewhere? @kvmemoir is inaccessible.
posted by mkultra at 12:30 PM on September 19, 2013


The Go Go's bill themselves as "The Most Successful all female rock band of all time.

the bangles don't think so
posted by pyramid termite at 1:37 PM on September 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


I dunno what "happened" to Jane, but she still looks goddamn adorable, so my guess it involves a portrait in her attic.
posted by uberchet at 1:42 PM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'll tell ya what happened to Jane. She went blonde and I had to switch my crush to Annie Clark. That's what.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:39 PM on September 19, 2013


Jane Wiedlin is selling her loft in Downtown LA. (The writer of the blog clearly has no concept of what real estate is like in DTLA - he says a place with 98% occupancy is "not exactly wildly popular"? But the pics are great.)
posted by rednikki at 2:51 PM on September 19, 2013


Jane Wiedlin is selling her loft in Downtown LA.

I'm guessing the bathroom is particularly clean?
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:39 PM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Just the corners
posted by wabbittwax at 4:08 PM on September 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Our case is sealed.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:19 PM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Apologies...above link to Jane Wiedlin's role in Star Trek IV should go here.
posted by Gelatin at 5:04 PM on September 19, 2013


"The Most Successful all female rock band of all time"

We talking musically successful? Cause, sorry, gals, but that'd be The Shaggs.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:07 PM on September 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


In 1980, British ska band Madness invited The Go-Go’s to England for a punishing three-month tour that left the band dispirited, broke, and exhausted

Partially due to my brother-in-law, who was that tour's drug dealer.
posted by Val_E_Yum at 11:56 AM on September 20, 2013 [2 favorites]


Eponygogo-ical.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:34 PM on September 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


Partially due to my brother-in-law, who was that tour's drug dealer.

I feel like I need to know more. This is a pretty big thing to drop in the thread.
posted by josher71 at 2:29 PM on September 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I feel like I need to know more.

That might be just about all OP is at liberty to say at this time...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:26 PM on September 22, 2013


Well, this is my sock puppet account. I can say a few more things.
My sociopath of a brother-in-law was a dealer who hung out in clubs in LA and SF in the late 70's/early 80's. Apparently he was infamous enough to sell to both the bands and the patrons. I have no details of his trip to the UK, just that it happened.
posted by Val_E_Yum at 11:23 PM on September 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


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