The Go-Go's: Beauty and the Beat (IRS)
Toby Goldstein, Musician, November 1981
IT HASN'T been easy to be a fan of groups like the Raspberries during the past few years. What those minions of white-suited quartets and quintets sang was pop music, in its truest sense meaning popular. By the mid-1970s, that label became synonymous with insubstantial schlock littering the top ten, or even worse, the dreaded "power pop" blitz, by which record companies tried to make x-dozen third-rate corporate new wave bands sound original. But if a Barry Manilow or a Paul Anka makes pop music, then what do we call those classics by the Shangri-Las, or the Ronettes, or the Shirelles, or, for that matter, the Go-Go's?
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