The Smiley Smile Message Board

Anyone else think these gals are criminally underrated?

Never really listened to the band, but..

When I went and saw the Three O'Clock down in Santa Ana, they finished out the show with an encore that had Steve Wynn (from the Dream Syndicate) and Vicki Peterson (from the Bangles) come up on stage for "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," "There She Goes Again," "Time Will Show the Wiser" (Vicki sang).
There's a terrible quality video of it up on YouTube, but you can't see me in it because I'm on the other side of the stage (right up front  :)). Anyway, this is where they get introduced and then play together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ajb413nlwQ#t=3588

Some girl took a bunch of pictures of my hands for some reason.

Your future is in hand modeling? :)

Great clip! Thanks much!

Susanna Hoffs was a babe.

There I said it.

..and still is!

(https://s1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/YCDpAVu9ft5_tkQHsPLQhA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTtzbT0xO3c9NjMw/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/music/2014-01-17/eb9e32d8-d41a-4269-961c-adff6e7c0fd7_170079135.jpg)

Oddly enough, I just watched their Behind The Music last night. I forgot how many great songs they had. Had no idea that Prince wrote "Manic Monday".

Susanna Hoffs makes the world go round.  She's 55.  FIFTY FIVE GLORIOUS YEARS OF HOTNESS

She does such a good job at being Hot i'm completely willing to agree that her band is really good. 

I can't objectively say whether or not they actually ARE good, though, because I believe her hotness possibly has clouded me into thinking they're good, when they may or may not be good. 

I CAN say that I enjoy all their music.  Whether or not that is solely because she's so smokin' hot though I'm not sure. 

When I hear their music, usually the first thing I think is "Man... Susanna Hoffs is hot.  Very hot.  I need to go google pictures of her to assure myself that even at 73 or however old she is now she is still hot".

Then I typically get into the melody of the song, because all of their melodies are great... but then after that, I usually find my mind wandering back to thinking again about how incredibly hot Susanna Hoffs is. 

I actually had more of a thing for Mickie Steele (bass player) back in the day.

(http://i61.tinypic.com/2u6nzhi.jpg)

One major reason Susanna looks so good nowadays (other than genetics) is because the poodle hair is gone ;)

I don't know Mickie Steele... is she hot?  Like, Susanna Hoffs hot?






I was at work earlier tonight, this guy comes in with his friend, and they're talking, and the one guy mentions his sister.  So the other guy goes

"Oh yeah... Susan.  Hey; did she ever get Hot?"

Go look up youtube clips. Mickie was the bassist. Not HOT like Susanna's hot but back in the day she was tall, long legs, lanky with the best style in the band. She looked kinda like the cute goth sister of a friend who you'd have a crush on.

I just checked her out, yes she was cute too.  Pretty cool.


On a serious note, I really like them as a band.  I'm a sucker for strong women, love me some strong women.  Here's a group that is the ultimate punk rock band.  I absolutely love it when somebody has the balls to rebel against normalcy but does it in a way that doesn't sacrifice their dignity or offends what is so great about normalcy. 

So here's a group of punk chicks... but yet they still want to be pretty.  Here's a group of girls who write all their own music, play all their own instruments... have that indy vibe to them but still want commercial success.  Flash forward 30 years later, and here's a group of mothers who want to prove that they can still rock and tour... but make sure to do it around their kid's schedules. 

They're the ultimate feminists, they're all about showing they can do anything a man can do but don't abandon their femininity to do it. 

it's impossible to talk about a band like the Bangles (there really isn't another band like the Bangles) without talking about that subject.  With all of that said, they wrote some damn good songs. 

I liked the Go-Gos better.

I love "Eternal Flame", just the way they did it is very interesting to me.  You could probably analyze any song this way, but I've thought about this one a lot.  I do a lot of listening driving in my car, and i've heard this song driving a thousand times.

Susanna isn't the greatest singer in the world.  She has a pleasant enough voice but if you want her to amaze you you're going to be disappointed.  So she co-writes this song, and it's a concept song; basically she's presenting this concept of an "Eternal Flame", a play on the literal eternal flames, like the one at JFK's grave-site, and the common romantic notion of a flame, someone you have long lost love for.  

So, if you listen to the track, every time it gets to that lyric, she really enunciates it.  "An. E. Ternal. Flame."  Somehow the way she chooses to state that lyric kind of emphasizes it.  It's like as a songwriter she's trying to sell that song, she wants you to get what she's takling about.  She's really invested in you understanding the lyric... when you sing somebody else's idea you try to get the melody right, when you've written the song, you try to get the meaning right.  

When we get to the guitar solo, somehow it's as melancholy as the lyric is.  The guitar sounds like it's having a bad night.

Then you get to the end, they're building, and Susanna gives her best power ballad high note.... which isn't much if you're Faith Hill, but if you're Susanna Hoffs that her all.  

it's really a class song because she really does the best she can, with her limited range.  If Brian Wilson would put that much care into all of the songs he's burped out over the last 30 years or so, we'd appreciate them a lot more!  You're not going to find Susanna Hoffs phoning one in.  

Also, Susanna has trouble pronouncing "R" 's.  


"Ammmmm I onlllly DEEEEE-MMMINNNNNGGGGG"

Check out this kick-ass video of them doing "In your Room" 4 years ago.  They're grandmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUtK9pfvC28


I like how Susanna's doing her best Kirk Hammett shredding imitation

Let us not forget that a certain Bangle is married to a certain Beach Boys Drummer

Great post!

Yeah, Susanna's not exactly Carl Wilson. but put her in a harmony stack, or on top of the Peterson Sister's whole genetic vocal/harmony magical thing, and she's all kinds of special sauce!

I like Susannah in the group, so I thought a solo album by her would really appeal to me. But it didn't. There's something special about a group that has more than one lead singer, and the change in voices from song to song. And the harmonies! Saw the Bangles a couple times back in their heyday, loved them, then the broke up, and their reunion was kind of under the radar. If they've played within a hundred miles of where I live, I am unaware.

Yes, The Bangles are underrated - have promised myself that next time they venture to the UK I must go and see them !

Hi all,

The Bangles, another great band!!!

as the boys would say when they get together....'yeah, she's doable'.....

Rickb

I've always really liked female rock bands and female fronted rock bands...Go-Go's, Runaways, Bangles, Heart, Joy of Cooking, etc. What I really love about the Bangles is they play straight up 60's style power pop and I just love that style of music. It makes me happy, what can I say?

And it is amazing how pretty Suzanna Hoffs is. 55! WOW!

First of all, the most beautiful Bangle was clearly Debbi Peterson. :o

(http://oi61.tinypic.com/2mh8xhg.jpg)



I got back into them a couple of days ago when I stumbled upon this great live bootleg:

(http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/100572817/Live+in+Berlin+2003+LiveinBerlin2003Bangles2003040.jpg)




Re-discovering them now album-by-album. :)

The Bangles kick ass!!

I dig The Bangles, although I absolutely hate 'Walk Like An Egyptian'. I've heard it too much!

Wow, who would imagine that? He has a different style big time than what I heard by this band, "Manic Monday" more so. It borders on lightweight.

Check out Susanna's Sid & Susie Under The Covers albums with that nice Mr. Sweet: the 60s one is stellar, and the 70s one is worth it for the Yes cover ("I've Seen All Good People: Your Move") alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMjYadg1Dsw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMjYadg1Dsw)

Thank me later.

Sweet produced the Bangles last album "sweetheart of the sun" a couple of years ago. It was very good although I did miss Michael's vocals in the mix.  "doll revolution" from 10 or so years ago was also good. Unfortunately most people that followed them in their heyday don't even know that they had 2 new albums over the last decade or so.

Best female harmony group there has been. Beach Boys being the best males of course.

I really love that first Bangles album, before they got caught up in '80s power balladry and were still making great '60s-inspired Paisley Underground power pop.  Their most recent album is a return to that style (but I also miss the bassist in the mix).

Definitely an underrated band.

Hi all,

I did enjoy The Bangels. 

I knew and liked them in the 80's, especially Susanna and her Rickenbacker guitars. What I didn't realize was just how much of a 60's psych/pop band they really were until sometime in the 2000's when I got a bootleg from an early show they played, off the top of my head I think it was from '83. I'll have to dig that one out to confirm. But they did all the right covers, and were very much the 60's Sunset Strip psych sound and vibe. That got polished out a bit for their major-label and MTV fame, but it was still there. Their cover of Hazy Shade Of Winter was a hit.

As also shown later by Susanna and Matthew Sweet's "Under The Covers", for one. I really, really enjoyed that album.

About Prince and Manic Monday, it all kind of fit in. He was obsessed with Susanna and was also going through his own bit of a pop phase, with Sign O' The Times and others, songs like Kiss, Raspberry Beret, Pop Life. So it was a pretty good fit for that general time.

Mark me down in the Debbi was the hottest Bangle camp.

I freakin' LOVE Susanna's singing voice!! Love it. She's one of my all-time favorite female singers. She's like Stevie Nicks but minus that annoying wavering I'm-singing-this-on-a-vibrating-bed quality that Nicks has.

You're right, she was a hottie too.

She was also the youngest in the band. Was only about 23-24 in this video. The others were 2-6 years older than her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj7OJeyhq2Q

In fact, they're all pretty hot. :)

Vicki Peterson for me.  Great band.

And Vicki Peterson was in the Dwight Twilley band , back in the day, with her future husband's sister, Susan Cowsill.