Much more so than the contemporary New York or London scenes,
California punk
was very open to female
singer/songwriters
. From
Penelope Houston
of
the Avengers
to
Exene Cervenka
X
, the San Francisco and Los Angeles
punk
scenes were emphatically female-friendly, treating women as active, leading participants rather than novelties or pretty faces. It was no accident that
the Go-Go's
and
the Bangles
, from Los Angeles, succeeded where so many New York- and London-based female-fronted bands failed.
Singer/songwriter
and keyboardist
Bonnie Hayes
was the leader of
the Punts
, one of San Francisco's best
bands, but
Hayes
had more on her mind than the usual three-chord ramalama. Coming from a musical family well-steeped in
jazz
,
blues
, and
soul
(
Bonnie
's brother
Kevin
' drummer, later joined
Robert Cray
's band; another sibling,
Chris
, was lead guitarist and a major songwriter in the
R&B
-laced
pop
powerhouse
Huey Lewis & the News
) and clearly fond of
Spector
-style '60s
girl groups
took
in a more melodic and musically varied direction; renaming themselves
Bonnie Hayes & the Wild Combo
, the group signed with LA's
Slash Records
and released 1982's
Good Clean Fun
, probably the finest album of the entire early-'80s California
girl pop
scene. Yes, even better than
Beauty and the Beat
or
All Over the Place
. First and foremost, the songs on
are almost embarrassingly catchy. The first two tracks,
"Girls Like Me"
"Shelly's Boyfriend"
(both used to fine effect in
Martha Coolidge
's 1983 cult film
Valley Girl
), are three-minute classics with more vocal and musical hooks than many whole albums. While the other eight tracks are slightly less immediate, every single one of them has a catchy chorus or appealing riff that imprints itself in the listener's memory. The
siblings, along with guitarist
Paul Davis
and bassist
Hank Maninger
, also have the instrumental chops to pull off considerably more sophisticated tunes than anyone was likely to find on, say, a
Josie Cotton
album. Able to slip from the restrained turmoil of the surprisingly non-whiny
indie
band lament
"Coverage"
to the impassioned
hard rock
of the devastating closer
"The Last Word,"
also reveal an unexpectedly
-influenced bent on the extended instrumental sections of
"Dum Fun"
"Raylene."
Aside from the musical heft of the album,
is an acute lyricist with a knack for both clever
Elvis Costello
-style wordplay and vividly realistic imagery.
is a sympathetic portrait of the frustrations of teenage love, but the immediacy of the lyrics lifts it above similar tunes. Other songs, like
"Inside Doubt"
"Separating,"
deal with more complex emotions without losing the
power pop
bounce that makes the album so instantly appealing.
works brilliantly on every level, and only
' limited distribution muscle -- and possibly the unfortunately cheesy cover art -- kept it from being a hit. As it stands,
is a neglected '80s
masterpiece. ~ Stewart Mason