Shampoo (band)

History

Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew were best friends at Plumstead Manor School, a secondary school for girls in Plumstead, London. In the early nineties they started writing Last Exit, a fanzine for the Manic Street Preachers, and later appeared in the video for "Little Baby Nothing". They also wrote a fanzine for Fabulous.

During this time they formed Shampoo, the name deriving from their schoolyard nickname of 'the shampoo girls', for claiming to be 'washing their hair' when turning down date requests.

Their first single "Blisters and Bruises" with the b-sides "Paydirt" and "I Love Little Pussy" was released by Icerink records (a short-lived label created by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs) on 7" pink vinyl in 1993. This and their following single "Bouffant Headbutt" received favourable reviews in the music press, such as the NME and Melody Maker, but sold few copies.

Whilst their first two singles were typical of the Riot Grrl bands then coming to notice, the following year saw the release of "Trouble" and the album We Are Shampoo which displayed a much more radio friendly sound, but still with much of their previous abrasiveness: "Dirty Old Love Song" panned Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston (whose "I Will Always Love You" had been the previous year's biggest selling single in the UK). "Shiny Black Taxi Cab" about a night on the town gone wrong (ending with a spoken section by the 'taxi driver' complaining to a new passenger about two drunken girls who had thrown up all over his cab the previous week). We Are Shampoo sold over a million copies, with the majority of sales in Japan and the rest of Asia.

"Trouble" reached No. 11 on the UK charts, landing the group on Top of the Pops and the cover of Smash Hits magazine. For the remainder of 1994 Shampoo did well, finding fans in both the mainstream and alternative music scenes – boosted in part by their links to Manic Street Preachers fanscene; however they also drew scathing comment from those within the small UK Riot Grrrl scene who saw the band as a repeat of We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It's "sellout" to commercialism – future artist Lucy McKenzie (then in the short lived Riot Grrrl band 'Batfink') wrote scathingly in her schoolgirl fanzine Poppy/Violet that "Shampoo = Miss June And July of the Paedophile Calendar".

The band became moderately successful in Japan. "Trouble" was included in the soundtrack to the Angelina Jolie movie Foxfire and the film Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. "Delicious" is played in the movie Casper: A Spirited Beginning. The song "Don't Call Me Babe" was included in the soundtrack of the 1996 movie Barb Wire.

However, by the time they released their next album Girl Power in 1995, their sales were in decline, and the third Shampoo album Absolute Shampoo was released solely on the internet in 2000, due to an inability to acquire a recording contract. The duo disbanded shortly afterwards.

Shampoo often cited their main influences as being the Sex Pistols, Gary Numan and the Beastie Boys, whilst also claiming to be huge fans of East 17 and Take That.

In May 2007 the album We Are Shampoo was re-issued in the UK with bonus tracks of the B-Sides.

Discography

The discography of Shampoo consists of four studio albums, two compilation albums and ten singles.

Singles

Video

Books

Use of audio in other media

Covers by other bands

"Trouble" was covered by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, and can be found as a B-side on their "The Young Offenders Mum" single. It was also sung by the cast of the 2007 film St Trinian's and featured on the film's soundtrack. In 2009, Japanese rock band Vamps included a cover of the song as a B-side to their single "I Gotta Kick Start Now". In the same year, Zebrahead also included a version on their 2009 cover album, Panty Raid.