“Go! Go! Girls”

“Aw, it’s just water. It ain’t piss!”

Comforting words from the guffawing owner of a shit-kicking redneck bar in Streetsboro, Ohio, as I reached out to shake his damp hand at 3 a.m and thank him for hiring our band.

Clearly, my knee-jerk facial expression betrayed my horror at his soaky grip.

I had just finished our band’s sweep of the venue we’d played that night, looking for cables, mics or gizmos we may’ve left behind. We took turns performing this odious ritual in spooky darkened clubs just after closing time while the rest of the band lugged gear back into their minivans.

It was business as usual for Arythmia, which we marketed as a “party band.” We agreed on the name, reasoning it was the condition we’d leave you in after hearing us play. We misspelled “arrythmia” to purposely riff off of “rhythm.” So, one “r,” not two, right? No matter. No one could ever spell it, in any case.

We played a ton of Motown covers and did dance-friendly rock/pop/country rock/oldie tunes as well. Throughout the ‘90s, we were regulars at yacht clubs and country clubs across Northeast Ohio, but since we never turned any gig down, you’d find us playing the occasional wedding, mall, community festival or questionable sleaze bar as well.

Our singer, Donna Robertson, was the only one of us who had never played in a band before. She was a work colleague of our drummer, Andy Fitiak, who’d regularly hear her belting out tunes a capella as she wound her way through their shop. When Arhythmia was coming together, Andy floated the idea of singing lead to Donna. She jumped aboard without hesitation.

Donna rocks. She has a wry, wink-wink sense of humor and bawdy presence that immediately wins over audiences, whether it was the effete Lacoste dockside set or leather biker-bar types. She parties hard and is always cooking up brow-raising personal plans.

“What’s up for the rest of the weekend?” I absently asked, making small talk as we loaded out of a late-night gig.

“Pajama party with my girlfriends!” she snickered.

“PAJAMA party?”

“Yeah, big girl P.J. party. Fun big girl stuff with fun big girl beverages!”

She chortled all the way to her car and sped off, leaving her innuendo racing around my brain.

The idea of what might have transpired at Donna’s big girl P.J. party unexpectedly surfaced all at once a few years later when I read an article about Japanese teenage pop phenoms, with the headline “Go! Go! Girls!” (not related to the white-booted 60’s phenom of go-go girl dancers who ponied and hully gullied their way through episodes of “Shindig!” or “Hullabaloo”). I loved the random! pointless! exclamation points! Seems they pop up in bad Japanese-English text translations whenever random Western excitement is assumed (!)

As soon as I read that headline, lyrics imagining events at Donna’s pajama party came out in a flurry, and I had “Go! Go! Girls” written:

(Go!)

When the joint starts a-rockin’

(Go, girls, go!)

Feel the hormones a-knockin’

(Go! Go! Girls)

Everybody’s talkin’

That’s just girls.

I was in an immediate P.J. party groove. I’m furiously writing about popping popcorn, pizza with crazy mountains of toppings, shaking up cocktails, playing Twister, doing the Watusi — even a peeping Tom ogling the festivities a la John Belushi snooping on that sorority pillow fight in Animal House.

Belushi’s peeping Tom bit also inspired a bridge for the tune:

Throws a P.J. party

With her girly-girl friends;

30-40-50 years old.

I may not be invited now,

But I can pretend,

‘Cuz I would do

Exactly as I’m told.

I demo’d the tune up and shot it Bob’s way for his signature drum and backing vocal treatment, and voila! We had a new Boho Zen tune. We upvoted the resulting track, adding it to the list of songs we wanted to re-record at Echo House Studios for our second self-release, a full-length disk we called “60 Watt Rock.”

We tweaked the demo only slightly, deciding we’d do back-and-forth vocals — a technique hearkening back to our 1980s recording work. I sang the verses, Bob sang the bridges; we both sang harmonies and added a 60’s-inspired clap track.

Oddly, this was the only time in our studio experience that we had no input into the mixing process, a chafing point for me even 25+ years later. Not sure how or why that happened. Echo House was kind of a project studio with pro gear located in the basement of the engineer’s house.

We finished all ten new tracks and tried for weeks to re-connect with our engineer to schedule mixing, to no avail. The next thing we knew, he sent us a completed mix, and that was that. At that point, we just wanted to move the project forward as we were already well into working up a new batch of Boho Zen tunes for our next go-round.

I don’t think I ever played “Go! Go! Girls” for Donna. Wish I could. Once Arythmia fried out around the turn of the century, I rarely saw her. I’ve reached out a few times over the years. Maybe we’ll get together one day, shake up a few cocktails, and crank the tune. I bet she’d think it’s a hoot — particularly my tortured rhyming of “slippers” with “liquor.” Shakespeare, I ain’t!

Go!

Dance in pink fuzzy slippers

(Go, girls go!)

Pour the next round of liquor

(Go! Go! Girls!)

Seance candles all flicker,

That’s just girls.

“Go! Go! Girls”

by Fencl/Walker

© 2001 It’s Yours? Music

from the Boho Zen LP “60 Watt Rock”