Biography
In the shadow of the brooding post-punk wave that dominated London by 1979, with Gang of Four often singled out in the press, the vocal-and-bass work of Debsey Wykes, Hester Smith’s drumming, and Rachel Bor’s guitar lines stood out as a bright pop trio. What began as an inside joke among three friends who simply pretended they belonged to a band turned serious once a February 1978 gig offer forced them to pick up instruments. Their shared affection for glam, the melodic directness of 1960s pop, and the Undertones coalesced into an infectious style they themselves labeled post-punk, a sound later recognized as foundational to indie pop. Chrysalis A&R staff, drawn by the surrounding buzz, attempted to recast the group as a conventional girl group through a version of Betty Everett’s “Baby, It’s You,” yet the single stalled. The band then moved to Paul Weller’s Respond imprint, where Captain Sensible and Paul Gray of the Damned produced the resulting “Been Teen.” Its follow-up, “Everything and More,” captured the trio at their breeziest, sassiest, and most incisive. Riding that modest momentum, they crisscrossed England, taped multiple John Peel sessions, and served as backing vocalists for Captain Sensible on Top of the Pops renditions of “Happy Talk,” “Wot!,” and “Glad It’s All Over,” an association that left them ambivalent as audiences began to know them chiefly as sidemen. In 1983 they issued the “Remember This” single on their own Dead Good Dollys Platters imprint; its B-side, assembled from fragmented voices, Wykes’s piano, and Bor’s strings, unsettled fans accustomed to their brighter pop. That experimental thread extended into the 1984 The Fireside EP, released on Cordelia. Their sole long-player arrived the same year on Dead Good Dollys Platters as a set of demos—both self-penned numbers and covers—issued just before the group dissolved; the double album appeared in a facsimile of the Beatles’ White Album jacket, each copy signed and numbered. Among its notable cuts were Mott the Hoople’s “Foxy Foxy,” the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” and the original “Dead Rainbow,” offered as a tribute to Gary Glitter. After the split, Wykes and Smith formed the pop-dance outfit Coming Up Roses, which continued until November 1986; Smith then stepped away from music while Wykes launched Birdie alongside Saint Etienne’s Paul Kelly. Bor remained active with Fruit Machine through 1999.
Albums
