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[miko2]

Today's Song: Should Have Been Mine by the Catholic Girls

My high school Salem Academy was directly across from the biggest mall in Salem, Lancaster Mall. It was only natural to hang out at the mall on a regular basis after school with my friends. Favorite haunts included the gaming store, the video game arcade, and the music store. As a kid on a budget I didn't own a lot of music back then but I was always looking at the records on sale and wondering what the bands sounded like. There was a lot of stuff that I just never heard on the radio.

One record that caught my eye was The Catholic Girls. All-girl bands were rare back then -- this was around the time the Go Go's were just hitting the scene. I was really curious about the band, and I remember even wondering if the band was really an all-girl band, or if it was some kind of stunt. You know, they might be just a bunch of guys with that name and thus placed some girls in uniforms on the cover as a joke. With the lead singer's blonde hair and bright red lipstick, I even wondered if it was possible it was a guy in drag. But I was hoping it was just a girl band, because that would be new and different.



And... I realy never found out, until I decided to look them up today. As it turns out, the Catholic Girls were indeed an all-girl band from New Jersey -- and were indeed Catholic girls -- who toured the country in their plaid skirts and schoolgirl uniforms. Amazingly enough they were a self-built band and not anyone's idea of a media stunt. They even got a song (God Made You for Me) banned by the Archdiocese in Rhode Island because it suggested that God was a woman.

Unfortunately they didn't find enough success and broke up after the one album, but in 1999 they got back together and have been making music since -- still in their schoolgirl uniforms.

I kind of think they were just slightly ahead of their time. They had a sound not too different from the Go Go's, wore schoolgirl uniforms before Japanese anime turned that into a trend, and played around with Catholic and religious imagery long before Madonna made that cool. I wonder what might have happened if they'd stuck it out a couple more years.

The song featured here is from their recent cd, but the other two videos I've linked are from back when they were first active in the early 1980's.

The Catholic Girls -- Should Have Been Mine

The Catholic Girls -- Young Boys (1982)
The Catholic Girls -- C'est Impossible (1983)