The Go-Gos Hit Middle Age (And Are OK With It)

If you're (however reluctantly) middle-aged now, the 1980's were probably a big part of your young adult life. The Los Angeles Times today says "The 'Dynasty' decade is back, and features articles on the Go-Gos, Blue Velvet (they say "still strange"), and Mr. T.

The Go-Gos piece is a VH1 "Behind The Music" episode on paper, with success, excess, then the destruction of the band. Now -- yes -- middle aged, the band members have come through to the other side:

When they are together, it's easy to forget all the "high drama," as Schock puts it, that the Go-Go's have endured.

There is baggage, to be sure, but they have learned when to speak their minds and when to hold their tongues. They have become, Caffey says, "a sisterhood, a marriage, a family." The roller-coaster success of the Go-Go's, Valentine adds, was "a hard-core education in relationships — I'm a better wife and a better mother and a better friend because of the Go-Go's."

"We really do love each other," Carlisle says. "There's a chemistry and a magic, and it is not normal ... there has to be some sort of karmic reason for all of that."

Today, the Go-Go's are infinitely comfortable with who and what they are, individually and collectively. They operate as a five-woman comedy crew, as bawdy as you'd expect from women who once dressed in garbage bags but more like wacky moms when kids are around.

All in all, not a bad place to be.

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The LAT today also has a nicely selected 16 page photo flashback of '80's icons such as Max Headroom, the original MTV VJs, and "Dallas," among others.