The Bangles started out as a rock'n'roll band, like there were four of them and one played drums, another played bass, and two played guitars. They were a real band, a pop1/psychedelic guitar thing, around 1982-1983. They were part of the "paisley underground" scene with the Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate (sense two, not the LaMonte Young outfit with John Cale twenty years earlier).

They released an eponymous six song Ep on some godawful obscure label that went bankrupt ten minutes later, and then an album called All Over the Place, which is now back in print on CD and worth a listen. Guitarist Susannah Hoffs is now making top-40 records and apparently turned up on a Lilith Fair (a.k.a. "women in music as long as they know their place") tour. Lead guitarist Vicki Peterson is now in the Continental Drifters with fellow 80's guitar psych refugees like Peter Holsapple and bassist Mark Walton, who joined the Dream Syndicate as that band shambled into ignominy and irrelevance in the wake of Kendra Smith's and Karl Precoda's respective departures.

As a band, the Bangles did nothing of interest after All Over the Place.


1 That's "pop" in the record-collector sense (the sense that applies to the Ramones), not the usual sense. I regret the inevitable confusion, but there's no other word that covers it.