I loved them because they loved the same bands as me – Razorcuts, The Pastels, (early) Soup Dragons, Buzzcocks, Ramones, Girls At Our Best!, Marine Girls, Altered Images, Shop Assistants, (early) Primal Scream, The Shangri-La’s, The Ronettes, Trixie’s Big Red Motorbike, Dolly Mixture. I never knew this at the time … except for the first three or four, obviously … it was just an unspoken understanding.
I loved them because they were always ready to burst into a quick chorus of “ba ba ba ba” at the drop of a hair-slide.
There's an unintentionally hilarious piece on Contact Music, which talks about the C86 scene as if it was on the edges of living memory:
The band are said to have formed after Price met Amelia Fletcher in a club in Oxford, bonding over the fact that they were both wearing Pastels badges.
"Some old timers claim they had devices called geetars, which they would somehow use to make twanging noises. Other tales tell of unusual hair shapes, sometimes coming down to the eyes..."
You've got to love the person who scraped this together, thinking that people might struggle with the idea of Talulah Gosh but would automatically understand a reference to "Pastels badges".
Before long, they found themselves spearheading the twee-pop sound of the 1980s.
That might come as something of a surprise to Orange Juice.
Of course, no indie band of that time was worth their salt unless they’d recorded a session for the BBC’s John Peel show and sure enough, that was broadcast in 1988.
Someone wrote that sentence.
I know what you're thinking: perhaps this piece was written by someone who was stronger on art than music, and so understandably struggled trying to make sense of a band much of whose history is locked in poorly-photocopied fanzines. Is that the case? Does the article get better when it gets on to the Turner Prize?
Price, the former member of Talulah Gosh, now joins the ranks of Gilbert & George and Damien Hirst – both former winners of the prize and major players in the British art world.
If you're in London - and chances are you're not, so, sorry - Amelia Fletcher is guest dj tonight at How Does It Feel To Be Loved? Canterbury Crescent, Brixton from 9pm.
Thanks to Simon T for pointing out that this week's episode of Alan Johnson's Failed Rock Star series on BBC Radio 4 is this:
Ex Home Secretary Alan Johnson goes in search of the life he thought he nearly had: as a rock star. In the 1960s Alan Johnson was in a band ("The Area") that cut a single but couldn't get it released. He gave music up for a career that took him from Postman to Union Leader to The Cabinet. So what has he missed out on? Does the fame of being a senior government minister compare in any way with that of being in a successful band.
In this series he meets five people who tasted the fame he craved. Each of the warm and engaging interviews reveal something different about life in music and the truth behind the myths.
In Episode three Alan meets Amelia Fletcher - singer with a number of successful indie bands in the eighties and nineties. She's still in a band today, whilst simultaneously holding down a serious office job - as chief economist with the Office of Fair Trading. Amelia and Alan talk about the joys and perils of combining the rock life with a demanding job. Did Alan make a mistake by thinking the two don't mix?
Amelia Fletcher on Radio 4. With or without a former Home Secretary, that's got to be a treat, surely?
“I wanted to write a story that would be good fun for young girls to read and which they would hopefully find inspiring too. And it was a sheer joy to write!
“There’s no escaping the fact that Tallulah and the Teenstars is semi-autobiographical insofar as it’s based very loosely on the early days of being in Altered Images. I regard Tallulah and the Teenstars as a book for girls like I was as a teenager – girls who are more into Siouxsie and the Banshees than homework. It’s something that I’ve thought about doing for some time.
“I think there’s an old-fashioned quality to the book, but within a hip setting. In some respects it’s an antidote to the mounting volume of teen fiction dealing with drugs, child abuse, violence and unwanted pregnancies. Not all childhoods are like that and, whilst hip and, hopefully inspiring, Tallulah has no truck with the over-sexualisation of young girls that’s taking place in the UK right now.
“Tallulah and the Teenstars is more lipstick and guitars than G-strings and alcopops.”
We're not sure that - unlike Madonna's books - there's going to be much of a market for a spin-off clothing line with this one.
Given that it's based on Clare's "rise to pop fame", book two in the series will doubtless be a painful read and book three will never see a release but be locked in a vault somewhere instead.
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