Girls at Our Best! "Go For Gold"

I've been pouring over the records that I brought home with me from Scotland still somewhat in shock due to all of the rather incredible finds I uncovered. I thought about noting them all in one post sort of laundry list style. Then I thought it would be more fun to listen to the records one at a time, and write a few words about why I was so excited about finding whatever record it is I happen to be writing about that day. It's mostly just a nice excuse for a few weeks of pre-determined channels for my geeky obsessiveness. I'll start with the 7"s then work my way onto the longer records as I go along.

First up, Girls at Our Best! There have been many times in my life when I've walked into a record shop, and dug through every 7" in the place muttering "please, please, please" under my breath hoping that I would turn up something from this band. I've looked on Ebay, and seen decent deals, but the timing was never quite right on any of those. So when I found this one, absent mindedly flipping through the G drawer at Elvis Shakespeare in Edinburgh, I almost yelped. I forgot that I was meant to be looking for it, and in a way that kind of made it more exciting. Sometimes you hear a band that seems to be a living embodiment of everything that you know to be fantastic and cool. There might be bands that mean more to you, and you know that there are definitely bands that are, in fact, more cool. Still sometimes you hear something and think "If all music sounded exactly like this, I'd probably be o.k. with that."

I'd heard of the band many times before I actually heard them, and I probably heard them many times before I knew what I was hearing. I'm pretty sure that "Getting Nowhere Fast" was the one that finally caught my attention enough to put it all together. That song had a cool female vocal part, a cool guitar lead, a cool bass line. Everything in the song was perfectly in place so that you knew it had plenty in common with other post-punk songs, and other rock songs, but there was just something a bit lighter about it that made it seem that much more fun. The 7" that I now own, for example, has an Old Western theme as it's basis for the A-side which is carried out in the context of something of a disco song. The b-side "I'm Beautiful Now" is probably one of the best showcases for singer Judy Evans' unique, high pitched singing voice. And it's impossibly catchy with a build up towards the end that has the potential to leave you out of breath. This is most likely because it's almost impossible to hear the song and not want to dance.

I had some pretty good record finds on my trip, but this one might very well be the biggest stand out.

Here's a rather interesting video that someone put together for "I'm Beautiful Now." I'd not heard of this show "Lazy Town" before coming across this video, it definitely seems to have gotten a strong response from people commenting. Still, it's a way to hear the song, so that's good...