Teenage Daydream: We Are The Women Who Play In A Band by Debsey Wykes
Printed by: New Fashionable
Launch date: twenty fifth September 2025
Debsey Wykes, bassist and singer with post-punk woman group Dolly Combination, has written an pleasing and insightful memoir telling the story of the band.
In March 1980, the NME carried a serious cowl characteristic about “Girls in Rock”. Dolly Combination weren’t interviewed or photographed however they did seem – cited for example of what to not do. Their “cutesy” picture wasn’t thought-about feminist.
The truth is, as Debsey Wykes’s memoir makes clear, the all-girl trio (Wykes, Rachel Bor and Hester Smith) had been as genuine as any indie rockers. They appeared younger and naive as a result of they had been younger and naive. In spite of everything, the three buddies had been solely youngsters after they shaped the band in 1978, and nonetheless of their early twenties when it stopped (they by no means formally broke up).
They usually had been equally severe about their music, a undeniable fact that was maybe disguised by the best way they appeared. They turned up for his or her first ever recording session in “full Dolly Combination finery: spotty attire and pinafores with vibrant leggings and stripey tights, platform sneakers and boys’ boots.”
Dressing up wasn’t a pose; it was all the time a part of their character, the “make-believe and home-made enjoyable” shared by schoolfriends Debsey and Hester. The outline of their pre-band years is a really recognisable image of teenage woman life within the mid Nineteen Seventies: discovering bands, experimenting with garments, and “a deep eager for one thing ‘different’.”
Diary extracts from the time give an immediacy to the story, with a newly-written narrative increasing on them with extra element and distance. And in 1976, Debsey’s diary data that, midway by listening to Led Zeppelin’s Bodily Graffiti, she instantly thought: “I’m going to play the electrical guitar and be in a rock group.”
Two years later, Dolly Combination performed their first gig. Six years after that, they performed their final one.
Many books about bands describe a predictable rise and fall. This one is completely different, however in all probability extra typical of most teams working at a selected degree: a gentle rise adopted by an extended plateau, adopted by an ending. For the six years of the band’s existence, they gave the impression to be on the verge of “making it” nevertheless it by no means fairly occurred.
There was no apparent motive. Their post-punk tackle woman group fashion was interesting, and lots of people preferred them: their followers (evidenced by the fan letters included within the e book) in addition to influential musicians (Captain Smart, Paul Weller, the Undertones). The music press, principally, didn’t. The report labels that launched their singles didn’t appear positive, both.
It might simply be that they had been in the best place on the flawed time. As Debsey recollects ruefully: “This was now the ’80s and the transient window of punk and its phantasm of freedom to simply ‘be’ and behave the way you wished had disappeared… We had failed to attach with both the mainstream world of pop or the choice underground scene.”
It’s additionally true that being taken significantly within the music enterprise is more durable for younger girls. After assembly John Peel, the band had been dissatisfied to search out they had been the butt of a operating gag in Sounds About Peel and “helpless younger women”. (This was at a time when no-one thought it bizarre that Peel’s Sounds column would typically make jokes about schoolgirls.)
This fed right into a normal preconception that the band had been “intentionally enjoying at being coy and cute” one thing that didn’t endear them to feminine music writers.
Ultimately, historical past might report that they had been finest generally known as backing singers for Captain Smart (the 1982 primary hit Comfortable Discuss received them on High Of The Pops). What’s much less properly remembered is that Dolly Combination had their very own songs, their very own concepts and their very own followers. And that’s recorded for posterity on this participating and really relatable e book.
Oh and, by the best way, they had been by no means known as The Dolly Mixtures.
Teenage Daydream is out there in any respect good e book shops.
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Phrases by Penny Kiley. You’ll be able to learn her Louder than Struggle opinions at her creator profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.
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