11. Girls Go Zonk!!
A label called Impact released a few girl group compilations in the eighties, which put me onto this sound, and I was obsessed with it. I was probably a bit backward for a 21-year-old, and these keening teenage lyrics really moved me, I found them entirely relatable. One of the comps was called Stop Look Listen which had a photo of the young Tracey Emin on the cover. For once, I’m not going to pick the first album I heard – Girls Go Zonk!! came out around ten years ago, and I didn’t think I’d ever hear such a great collection of 45s I didn’t know. The (kind of) title track – Donna Loren’s ‘So, Do The Zonk’ – is weirdly lazy and aggressive; there’s a Harry Nilsson song called ‘The Next Day’ by Debbie Burton about a schoolyard fight, and Jamie Carter’s ‘The Boy With The Way’ is terrifying, Shangri-Las intensity times five, she sounds so obsessed.
