Back at the end of 2003 I had a look at my 'old' videotape collection. I go through this small collection without fail every couple of years, catching TV series' that I taped believing that I would watch them again. I was shrewd in my selections, and I can enjoy repeats of The Sandbaggers, Danger UXB, I, Claudius, or Brideshead Revisited until the tapes wear out. Some of these videotapes were made on a RCA Victor VCR with the top loader and enough electronics to give you a sore back if you tried to move the machine without thinking about what you were on about.

Whilst delighting in Emperor Clau Clau Claudius' I happened upon a piece of 'older tape' that an upcoming vid. was taped after that yielded far more of a reward than did the outcome itself, which was a bit more Jacobi mutterings. It was the closing credits of a pop video program and the song was Eternal Flame by The Bangles. I don't remember the song having made any sort of impression on me back when it came out, but here it was, fresh as it will always be, a platinum song.

Thrilled with Eternal Flame, I copied the unbelievably low rez LP speed Bangles song into a WAV file and I listened to it on the computer, using Media Player to loop it continuously, volume adjusted by yours and co. according to mood. I found that applied liberally, the song improved most of what other sounds there were invading my head at any moment around the TV, particularly bad television advertising.

The last time I got thrilled by a song delivered to me over TV was when I hear Sarah Michelle Gellar sing for the first time. If a movie of Gellar the pop star is ever made, I propose that Sarah Harmer play Sarah.

Although I have not gone on to purchase the Buffy Soundtrack, I did decide to take the step that record company types hope that I will take in instances of such obvious fandom after my Bangles experience. I went down into the city and visited Mr. Sam The Record Man and purchased some carrier with the song. I had hoped to find the definitive CD of all three Bangles albums, but no deal. What I brought home turned out to be an excellent second option, as it is a consolidation of their singles onto one piece of plastic.

Greatest Hits compilations vary in greatness from the indisputable to the descriptive, such as Beatles 1 and the Bangles CD that I purchased. What works most for me is an album that meets its description but lets in some of the details. In this instance, I'm interested in what this CD offered me that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else to my knowledge. I wouldn't have been exposed to Be With You (which tanked as a single) or Everything I Wanted (incredibly, it was left off Everything, their third album). This would have made all of the world of difference to me in my subsequent inquiry into the life and times of this band.

You see, The Bangles didn't make much of an impression on my when their music was on the radio. How a song like Eternal Flame would have passed me by is beyond me. It has all of the elements that make a song platinum and I never miss these kinds of things. Actually, I do miss... I missed on Paula Abdul with Blowing Kisses in the Wind. I listened to the song a little while ago and I still puzzle on how it could not have been a hit.

On the other hand, tiny gem Be With You should never have been issued as a single. Doubtless the management knew it. It is a great power rock anthem-song and I'm sure it went over well live. Since its production values are so straight, it should have been treated as a B side and recorded live. The live bit would have appealed to the Japanese who would have treated it as a double A side. Plus, most importantly to those who know something about The Bangles' painful past, it would have helped put to rest the stupid idea that they couldn't play their instruments.

It takes little reading to discover that the Bangles had a tortuous relationship with their producers. I had only visit Google's #2 rated Bangles site to discover how cruel the music business gets on the other side of the Payola door. Talk of robbing the lead vocal role from Debbie Perterson (Walk Like an Egyptian) chilled. Suddenly record album making goes to hell and, sorry. I have been around recording enough to see the good and the bad sessions. I have seen bands fight over how much time should be spent on what. But in my experience of things, it was always a band fight. The Bangles look to be victims of machismo producer weight lifters and I would knock the filthy lot all the more but for my certain understanding that often the producers are right and by all indications, there's platinum here. Does this mean that I think Walk Like an Egyptian wouldn't have been a hit without Suzanna Hoffs and Michael Steele? Yes. There's just something about the cops hanging out in donut shops being sung so coyly by Sue.

The Bangles released three albums in the 1980's, the first being titled All Over The Place. I didn't listen to the radio much in 1984, so Hero Takes A Fall, the opening track, was completely fresh to me. Although it is described as being part of a first edgy phase, I hear nothing but the production finesse of David Kahne who owns a slice of Walking Down Your Street, track 4 of Greatest Hits, less than a hit, but platinum, platinum... Am I missing something here? Walking Down Your Street at the very least belongs on the soundtrack of a romantic comedy somewhere.

Going Down To Liverpool was the first slice of Bangles that meant something to me. I was familiar with the song, having met Katrina Leskanich and bandmates the waves when her band toured Montreal in 1984. I was employed by PolyGram then, and it distributed the label that katrina and the waves' album Walking On Sunshine came out on, Attic Records. Some of the braver, younger PolyGrammers ventured out. Katrina, like the majority of the members of The Bangles', is tall and leggy. As this writer is six foot two, Katrina was not too imposing. She thought I was fine looking, and I felt the same.

But you need only listen to the waves version to understand how it would be the template, on the one hand, but every bit an indication that it was an unfinished song compared to the version that the Bangles put out. There is just something about four part harmony. Four voices have it over one every time. On the other hand, there are time's when Katrina's boyish edge gets to me, so maybe it's a toss-up. The sparer version wins some of the time.

The great value to popular music culture of artists like the Bangles, or The Beach Boys, with five-six-seven part harmonies, is the richness of voice assembled. One of the most rewarding attributes of American pop today is the proliferation of vocal ensembles. It wasn't quite the same back in the 1980's when The Bangles were popular. At that time, lead and backup was far more literal when applied in the recording studio. A Capella and Barbershop are all over the place now, but back in 1990 you could only find it on The Bangles Greatest Hits, most especially for the "electric" Everything I Wanted. Think angularities like the Beach Boys' Friends, 20/20, or Sunflower, a window from 1968 to 1970. You could take the song and slice it in to the Beach Boys' catalogue and say it was a Dennis Wilson solo recording right down to the point where my audion-based sound system's 100dB plus dynamic range gets through to me...

Only the daughter of an analyst could sing about Monday with manic attached. I can think of two less attractive word when combined with work. Ugh. The exact opposite of Friday night, which is expressed by Everything I Wanted. I listen to the song, which didn't catch my attention much when it came out (radio or lack of), but I certainly heard it. It is such a despondent song, one where the singer shares her weariness, and in a sense, lack of preparedness in facing her first work day. The work day in turn, is hitting her like a manic person. That hurts.

If I imagine myself Prince and I am writing Manic Monday for the Bangles, I might have been inspired by listening to the group perform Where Were You When I Needed You? There is such a congruence to the range that the band brings to this song. There is something about the way that Sue sings "you couldn't wait" that makes me want to write a song that is a complaint. Like Satisfaction but far more detailed, Manic Monday gets pulled by a leering Davies, who sings You Can't Win.

Often when I am about to play Greatest Hits, it is because one of the songs, If She Knew What She Wants happens to be playing on my cranial system and I think, that's fun, and I flick the switch on my one-of-a-kind tube amp that amplifies the Quad ELS electrostatic loudspeakers that were manufactured in 1957, around when the future Bangles were being born. It is a momentous event, signaling that the four channel ambient system that is powered by Scott solid state is being supplanted by life consuming thermionic energy and it's worth it.

Were I to have met The Bangles, I think I would have gotten to know Michael the most readily. There's something about the way she smiles that tells me that her collection of spirits would coincide well with my own. There's also the matter of Following, a song that has as much to do with The Bangles as Eternal Flame does, and that's great because that flex got it on to Greatest Hits where it makes it as an interlude and as a moment to be drawn into Michael's quiet, complicated life. I suppose I find some strong links to my own music, when I listen to Following.

If Everything I Wanted is Friday night, then In Your Room is certainly Friday evening, on the way over. It is, like Everything... the antithesis of Manic Monday; a role reverser. For if Manic Monday is an expression of the weariness that can come from dealing with somebody else's exuberance and impatience, In Your Room is filled the jump on your bed excitement that you get the night before your trip to El Dorado. Throw in a bit of an organ trill and you end up with a song that will trip the light fantastic in a spin alongside Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting, or, Crocodile Rock by Elton John.

One clear miss on Greatest Hits is I'll Set You Free. Had I been the executive in charge of the producer I would have called him up and told him to redo the beginning to "take out the opening refrain." It's a very bad idea to do a song this way. It's an incredible risk to do a refrain opening, especially with lyrics. Songs have to segue with others, and songs need to start. I'm tempted to edit the song, but not sufficiently. (Confession. I do it often. I 'eq' bad recordings and fix bad mixes. My audio strategy eschews tone controls. Abdul's Blowing Kisses... has a saturated treble, it hazes the soundfield, etc. The cassette's analog attenuation negated these issues, but at the expense of the soundstage, as even the best cassette transcription will suffer from wow and flutter. So, for aesthetic reasons, a digital remaster and recut was called for, and the song sits on one of my pop-disco mix cd's from yonder. It's full of ABBA and Bee Gees and it is the disc to spin when the dancing starts.)

I'll Set You Free is filled with a gentle chagrin that The Bangles handle so well. Their protagonists aren't the winners, but are rather those more ordinary people who have plenty of time for introspection and perhaps to empty rooms say good-bye, long after its occupants have left. Hazy Shade of Winter seems as much a Bangles song as it does a Simon and Garfunkel song because its motif finds such resonance in the other songs on the band's playlist.

There aren't that many all woman bands out there that recorded in what I will call the rock "era" that started in the mid 1950's and stretched into the 1980's. The Bangles were a "mod" band and at parties I'm sure there was a feminist coterie that crowded the DJ to see to it that he played a song and in addition to Lene Lovich, there would have been a Bangles coterie. It isn't really necessary to do so any more, since women dominate in pop today and there are many remarkable singing teams out there thanks to hip hop and rap. But for all of the excellence of the artists of the moment, none are really any better at singing together than the Bangles are on Greatest Hits, and I don't expect that they should want to be, because there's plenty of room at the top, and being great is good enough.

The Bangles do the four-part harmony thing again these days. The band went its separate ways back around the time Greatest Hits was released, but were rebanded by Hoffs to do film work. During the past couple of years The Bangles have spent time on stage being appreciated in Europe and Japan.

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