She’s Got the Beat

THE GO-GO’S WERE USED TO HAVING THEIR STORY WRITTEN FOR them. It’s happened to any band that has weathered a press junket: the same handful of anecdotes, origin myths, and quotes trotted out in every interview, profile, and concert preview. Let’s get that out of the way quickly, then. When the Los Angeles-based five-piece first began gigging at clubs on the Sunset Strip in the late ’70s, most of them were novices. “Every story mentioned how the Go-Go’s could barely play when they started, and look at them now,” bassist Kathy Valentine, an

Austin native, would write years later. “It gave