Okay, here ya go,
this is a story on Golightly with relevant info:
Golightly's career is inextricably tied to garage rock impresario Billy Childish, one of Britain's most revered DIY entrepreneurs. For nearly 25 years Childish has mixed mod style with '60s primal sounds and '70s punk attitude, releasing nearly 100 albums under a bewildering assortment of band names and side projects, including the Pop Rivets, the Milkshakes, and Thee Mighty Caesars.
Early on, Childish concocted the Delmonas, an all-girl trio that acted as an auxiliary to Thee Mighty Caesars. When the Caesars morphed into Thee Headcoats in 1989, the Delmonas adopted the doppelgänger title, Thee Headcoatees. It was here, when Childish was casting about for more members of this new backup group, that Holly Golightly entered the picture.
Golightly had been part of Childish's "Medway scene" for several years, initially as a teenage fan of the Milkshakes and later as girlfriend to longtime Childish stalwart Bruce Brand. She was also friends with one of the original Delmonas, Ludella Black, and sang with her on a few occasions -- mostly as a way to pass a Friday night.
"One day, Bruce rang and said that he had this new band with Billy going," Golightly recalls. "It was just a three-piece, and they were going to do their first show, and did I want to go?" The show turned into an audition of sorts, and soon she was onstage instead of in the audience.
Golightly and the other women adopted mischievous stage names to accompany the group's retro image, with ex-Delmona Black joining Belgian expatriate Kyra LaRubia and drummer "Bongo" Debbie. Holly's pseudonym was predetermined by her mother, who had named her after the tragic-but-stylish would-be socialite in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
After initially singing backup for Thee Headcoats, the quartet took on a life of its own. In 1991 Thee Headcoatees released their first album, Girlsville, which became a landmark effort in the garage rock scene. Live, Thee Headcoatees stirred up their fans as only a girl group could, dressing in matching go-go outfits or horse-riding gear, and, in a clever switch, using Thee Headcoats as their backup band.
Hitting the scene several years before the riot grrls or kitschy popsters such as April March, Thee Headcoatees occupied a unique spot in the continuum of female rockers. Although the vibe of the band was brash and playful, its mockingly come-hither, femme-fatale lyrics placed it halfway between the enlightened punk crowd and backlashy teen-teases like the Donnas. For her part Golightly finds the issue of feminist presentation to be a moot point: She saw Thee Headcoatees as a killer rock band that happened to be fronted by four women with divergent tastes.
Good story in general, read it all. It's a few years old now, and Golightly now can say she has sung on a number one album in the States and the US (as that's her singing backup on at least one song on Elephant, which essentially is a total tribute to the Childish aesthetic among other things given the choice of recording studio, producer, etc.)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 01:46 (twenty-one years ago)