We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Going to Use It's Fuzz and Nonsense

The first thought that comes into my head when confronted with this collection of "demos, stuff that didn't make it onto vinyl and various Fuzz and Nonsense" is "Why?" No one even knew who this gang of cheeky, lippy, energetic, fun-seeking Brummie girls were while they existed (loosely speaking, between 1985 and 1989). Who's going to seek out a bunch of their unformulated, crap recordings?

Guitarist Jo from Fuzzbox already has an answer to this one. "We were four young things without a clue about the music business and even less of a clue about being dishonest," she writes in the sleeve notes to this 15-track collection. (Of course there's the obligatory final track from the current lineup, the rather appalling kitsch disco link between Norman Greenbaum's hippie anthem "Spirit in the Sky" and Jo and Jo's sister Maggie's own "Out of this World.") "We did, however, have a bloody grand idea of fun, energy and attitude-a-plenty. If you thought we weren't aware, think again. Sarcasm ruled in the Queendom of Fuzz."

So there's one answer: Fuzzbox were fun?pure, unsullied fun, untainted by any of the evil machinations of the patriarchal music business, at least during those first few heady months of 1985 when they'd journey down south to support mentors and lippy art punks the Nightingales at some London dive. Early shows with Fuzzbox were like watching a wonderful, free-spirited amalgam of early Go-Go's and that all-girl band from the Best Rock and Roll Movie Ever, Official!?Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Add to that Fuzzbox's legendary sarcasm, lashings and lashings of fuzzed-down guitar (it was the easiest way that Jo could make it sound pro) and random shrieks and screams, and hell. It was enough for us punk kids, thrashing wildly at the front to songs like "Love Is the Slug," "Console Me" and the suspiciously Dolly Mixture-sounding "Aaarrrggghhh!" All three songs are represented here in all their original demo-tastic finery, and very smug and satisfied they sound too, squealing their way down through the years.

So yes, you could say Fuzzbox were like Birmingham's answer to the Shaggs, or proto-Riot Grrrls in an age of bad bouffant haircuts and bandannas, except that Fuzzbox became crap alarmingly early on, so rapidly that most folk didn't even realize they'd once been brilliant. The quartet sold out?mainly due to the vanity and determination of lead singer Victoria Perks?to become just another bottled drone by the time they'd released their second or third single. Barring the original four demos, everything here sounds outrageously retro-80s: like watching The Wedding Singer with your finger on the pause button. And just to remind us of how awful fun can sound when forced, there's the sub-Visage disco of 1987's "What's The Point?" preceding a demo of the dodgy 1987 Thunderbirds tribute "hit" single "International Rescue."

Then there was "Self!," a song that saw the four girls all glammed up and writhing around shamelessly in a video that recalled both the seedier aspects of the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" and even bloody Belinda Carlisle. Oh jeez! How could it all have gone so wrong so soon? Still, you have to admire any group who follow up their one moment in the spotlight with a cover of a Yoko Ono song ("Walking on Thin Ice"). Buy this for the original four songs, and dream of what might have been.