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Fuzzbox- Big Bang! Press Release -About the band

THE HISTORY

Three years ago, Fuzzbox was a quartet of eccentric teenage punk queens with day-glo hair from Birmingham, England who charmed the press by being quirky and quotable. Boasting the cleverest name in music (the full-length version: We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It), they topped the U.K. charts with a #l independent single, "XX Sex," and a Top 3O hit, "Love Is The Slug."

But surely Fuzzbox was not to be taken seriously, right?

Fast forward to 1989 and blonde Maggie; impish Tina; axe hero Jo; and redhead beauty Vickie have reinvented themselves for mainstream pop stardom. They are now a proper band -- all-singing, all-playing, all-writing, all-girl. Sexy, outrageous, cheery pop stars.

Which means, of course, that they are not to be taken seriously.

Ah, but appearances can be deceiving. After all, the band's second album, Big Bang!, has reached the seriously Top 5 in the U.K. and the single "International Rescue" went Top 10, while "Pink Sunshine" charted in the Top 15. And what Fuzzbox has to say about life and about pop music is serious indeed.

"Pop is not bland mamby-pamby to us," Jo says. "Accessibility is not acceptability. We're definitely not harmless. In fact, we're rather subversive I think. We quite enjoy that we can happily be four girls standing around with a big smile but that what we're giving people is not what they want or think they're getting but they're getting it anyway."

Yes, Big Bang! (referring to the band's evolution) is filled with irresistible pop -- hit-driven melodies and catchy lyrics. But beneath the surface of "Self!" is the subject of women being abused, beneath "International Rescue" the idea that we need more than make-believe heroes to deal with the world's problems, beneath "Do You Know?" the pain of incest, beneath "Pink Sunshine" the irony of true love...

"We're trying to get our ideas over without blasting people with them," says Jo. "If certain magazines want to know what our favorite colors are and not what we think about the destruction of the rain forests, that's okay. We want to do those interviews because maybe if someone becomes interested in us they'll read other things where we talk about what we want."

Fuzzbox then is alternative pop, hard pop -- wrote one reviewer, "pop Nietzsche would have been proud of." That is if he had a sense of humor, because Fuzzbox believes that an all-girl band can be taken seriously and have fun. Pop, the Fuzzies propose, is not a sanctified entity to be approached with reverence but rather with tongue planted firmly in cheek -- whether it's four blokes in a band or four women.

So, in a recent British music magazine advertisement for the band's latest U.K. single "Self!" (the first single from Big Bang! in the U.S.), Vickie is seen giving the middle finger. So, dressed in tuxedos and tiaras at a very proper music awards presentation earlier this year, they stood up and called one major pop star a "Wanker!" Not to mention taunting a member of a well-known heavy metal band with "Show us yer bollocks!"

So, when a tabloid accused Vickie of not wearing knickers on a television show, she shot back, "I had on flesh-colored tights, so they obviously don't know what one looks like."

Raunchy. Funny. over-the-top. Just like the video for "Self!": Vickie wriggling about in a bikini and satin sheet getting friendly with a microphone while Jo does guitar histrionics on manuscript paper. Says Vickie, just in case some overly-serious type misconstrues the band's intentions, "It's a bit of 'up yours.' We're taking the mickey out of the pop business." (Translation: Making fun of, a spoof.)

A band this expert and incisive with self-parody, who manages to play pop music and yet turn pop upside down (its titillation, its simplicity, its ephemeralness, its expectations of women) and have this much fun, should be taken seriously.

Jo agrees. "We are very determined and have great faith that we can achieve something. It should not be unusual to see an all girl-band with something to say. We think Fuzzbox goes another small step along that line."

The band's improbable first step was taken in the summer of 1985 when the four got together for a once-in-a-lifetime, one-off gig to open for a friend's band at a local club. Just like many punk bands, Maggie, her younger sister Jo, and Jo's schoolmates Vickie and Tina, had never played before, together or separately.

"We had about two hours rehearsal before the gig," remembers Maggie. "We were amazingly awful, but we got an encore." Foolhardy or prophetic, their friends invited them back to open another show.

"We needed a name, so we called ourselves "We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It" because we used a fuzzbox in most of our songs (a fuzzbox is a distortion pedal for guitar and bass).

This double-entendre was the perfect symbol for the band, which was more than a little surprised when after the show the boss of independent Vindaloo Records wanted to sign them to a contract. They did and, in the spring of 1986, they released their first single, "XX Sex."

The disk earned high praise from the normally jaded English rock press, prompting one reviewer to call Fuzzbox "perhaps the freshest, brightest, real pop band to emerge this year."

Two EPs in 1986 followed, both scoring high on the alternative charts, and earning Fuzzbox tours of England and Europe. Later in the year, A&R exec Michael Rosenblatt signed the group to Geffen Records in the U.S. Their album We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It!! debuted the band in the States, where it also came to tour.

Says Jo, "We're about four friends who want to have a good time together and music is our way to do that. At first, our intention was more about doing something and music wasn't necessarily the end-all and be-all. But then our role changed. Maggie was a civil servant, working in an unemployment benefits office, and she gave that up, and we were going onto higher education but gave that up. It became serious."

It was a baptism-by-fire for the four girls (three of whom were 16 when they started and Maggie 20). Says Vickie, who with Maggie does the majority of the writing, "We did most of our learning on stage, where you learn very quickly. We grew up quickly, too. We were career women at 16."

When they returned to England from America they decided to change their image.

"It was a big risk we took," says the least-talkative Tina. "But we felt we had to. We felt we'd gone as far as we could as we were. It gets boring doing the same thing all the time."

Their musical proficiency had taken a leap forward, their musical tastes had broadened. Having had one #1 alternative single, they began to look to pop music as their alternative.

The first album they had banged out in a rehearsal situation. But for Big Bang!" they set up a writing studio, and brought in veteran producer/songwriter Liam Sternberg (The Bangles' "Walk Like An Egyptian") to work on pre-production. Sternberg co-wrote four of the songs with the band and, most importantly, introduced them to working with a computer in the studio so they could sample instruments they could not play.

"You can't play everything in an orchestra," says Vickie, "but the computer allowed us to have the music the way we wanted it, not how a studio musician we brought in might want it. It gave us more control."

Control was also crucial in their selection of a producer, an arduous task which took almost two years. They searched not only for someone who could capture the energy, enthusiasm, and spontaneity of Fuzzbox but who also respected their judgment.

Recalls Jo, "We had a situation where we told a producer what we wanted to sound like and he gave us something we knew was wrong. But he insisted. If there had been four men in that studio, he would never even have tried to pull that."

Finally, the band met Andy Richards, who had produced hits for Pet Shop Boys and Holly Johnson (of Frankie Goes To Hollywood). They had found their man -- someone who was aware that Fuzzbox knew what it was up to.

"People assume," Jo suggests, "that because we're female that we're not in control of what we do."

"Because we're women," says Maggie, "people seem to take the intelligence away -- like with 'XX Sex,' which was quite a serious song about people's expectations and exploitation of women."

Fuzzbox is so defiantly feminist that they even have the temerity to believe that being sexual is not degrading to women.

"We've been accused of selling sex and have to defend ourselves in every interview," says Jo. "But everybody's sexual. Quasimodo was sexual. It's an undeniable part of everyone. Most male bands don't have to react to that criticism but we have to justify our existence first-off."

"Why is it that when Prince does it it's brilliant and a woman does it and she's a hussy?" Vickie questions. "ours is a positive view of sexuality. It's not available or submissive. We just won't have the bimbo thing. We're very strong-minded women. I'm the most apparently sexual of the group but it's just that I'm very natural. Wearing clothes depresses me."

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying life," she continues. "But we're not frivolous. It's shameful when people who have everything, like some music stars, act like they're miserable when there are people out there who really do have shitty lives. We enjoy life and we show it."

When seriousness is put aside, these girls just want to have fun.

"That's why we dress the way we do," says Vickie. "That's why we just use first names. Not only to protect our privacy a bit but our last names are boring. It's funny to have Fuzzbox as our surnames."

"I think at last people are seeing that what we're up to isn't about being stupid, it's about having a sense of humor -- it's about pop music."

Maggie, Tina, Jo, and Vickie. They have a Fuzzbox...and they're using it. 1