When word leaked out this week that Elizabeth Price won the 2012 Turner Prize, an annual honor given to British visual artists - some eagle-eyed readers noticed that she'd previously been involved in the UK indie music scene. In the mid-1980s, Price attended Oxford University, where she met fellow student Amelia Fletcher and helped form the band Talulah Gosh. Both praised and damned as "twee," Talulah Gosh's short, raucous and deadly catchy pop songs wonderfully split the distance between the Shangri-Las and the Jesus and Mary Chain.
But if anyone was surprised that this former crash-pop crooner would turn up winning a prestigious award in another field, they were simply not paying attention. Member by member, Talulah Gosh may have been the biggest group of overachievers in history, giving even fellow Oxonians Radiohead some serious competition. Not in terms of record sales: Talulah Gosh achieved some notoriety in the U.K., but was always a cult favorite here in the States. Indeed, the band never made it to America until Price left to form The Carousel, and the other members regrouped as Heavenly. But each band member has excelled in other fields, from media to economics. It turns out that Talulah Gosh was, in its own microcosmic way, a band of Brian Mays.
Besides Price, here's the classic Talulah Gosh lineup. While you're reading, please enjoy the band's theme song via YouTube.
1) Amelia Fletcher: lead singer/songwriter Day job: Chief economist and Senior Director of Mergers, Office of Fair Trading
While leading Heavenly, Fletcher was simultaneously working toward a economics degree at Oxford. She completed her degree in 1993 and worked as a consultant before joining the Office of Fair Trading in 2001. She became the chief economist in 2008. Dr. Fletcher has continued to pursue a low-key music career despite this pedigree, going on to form Marine Research and her current project, Tender Trap. 2) Rob Pursey: bass Day job: Television producer The only other permanent member of Tender Trap besides Amelia, and partners from way back when (they have two children together), Pursey has worked in the field of TV production and direction since the early 1990s. His IMDB page lists numerous productions for the BBC, ITV and other British television.
