Bossy

This Best Of Bossy record dares you not to play it again and again. 9 tracks at 45rpm, it zips by on wit, sass, punky venom and girl group swagger. Vivian Girl Cassie Ramone was in Bossy, which may explain why their recordings have been posthumously released; what’s less clear is why Bossy never got the breaks unlike the Vivian Girls.

Bossy are far less garage than the VGs and more DIY pop; their sound is cleaner, too – well, as clean as a snot-nosed Shangri-Las playing at CBGB’s in 1977 would have been – and free from reverb swamp: this album would wipe the bathroom with a VGs best of. If John Hughes were alive, you get the feeling he’d option the rights to the tongue-in-cheek high school hustle of Walk Around.

This release is limited edition, natch, but without the marketing power of the VGs it’s readily available.