The Bangles started out as a rock'n'roll band, like there were four of them and one played drums, another played bass, and two played guitars. They were a
real band, a pop
1/
psychedelic guitar thing, around
1982-
1983. They were part of the "
paisley underground" scene with the
Rain Parade and the
Dream Syndicate (sense two, not the
LaMonte Young outfit with
John Cale twenty years earlier).
They released an
eponymous six song
Ep on some godawful obscure label that went bankrupt ten minutes later, and then an album called
All Over the Place, which is now back in print on
CD and worth a listen. Guitarist
Susannah Hoffs is now making top-40 records and apparently turned up on a
Lilith Fair (a.k.a. "women in music as long as they know their place") tour. Lead guitarist
Vicki Peterson is now in the
Continental Drifters with fellow 80's guitar psych refugees like
Peter Holsapple and bassist
Mark Walton, who joined the
Dream Syndicate as that band shambled into ignominy and irrelevance in the wake of
Kendra Smith's and
Karl Precoda's respective departures.
As a band, the Bangles did nothing of interest after
All Over the Place.
1 That's "pop" in the record-collector sense (the sense that applies to
the Ramones), not the usual sense. I regret the inevitable confusion, but there's no other word that covers it.