Talulah Gosh

There was a time when I hated Talulah Gosh. I think it was because somehow all the people who were into them at the time seemed to think they were somehow more credible than the rest of the chart nonsense at the time (okay, maybe more credible than Belouis Some) when perhaps the point of them was that there was nothing to them; just helium pap of the highest degree sung by people who wore too many hairclips and dressed like the audience in Ready Steady Go.

Or maybe it was because a girl called Talulah turned me down at the school disco on the grounds that I 'took too long to ask; smacks of desperation' (i'm paraphrasing, but not much...the theme is burned into my unconscious like an abusive parent).

Of course, if I'd known they were as ugly as this:



Then I probably would've liked them earlier. Never before has a band sounded so sexy and light (and smugly beautiful) but looked so, well, the boys look like they just lost the annual thumb wrestling at the War Games / White Dwarf Society picnic while the girls look like the slightly plainer cousins of radical dead playwright Sarah Kane, herself never the biggest babe in the bunch.

Whatever, Beatnik Boy is a fantastic song and you really want her to find her beatnik boy by the end, on any number of levels.

And it's short.

Some of the band later became Heavenly and they were pretty good too. In fact, it's fairly difficult to see the join. I think Amelia dyed her hair.

Space Manatee