A vacation is hard work. No matter how enjoyable my ventures into the greater world may be, they are rarely relaxing, even when pure relaxation is the goal. And when the destination doesn’t involves time in a hammock rocking in synch with cool oceanic breezes, but is instead dominated by energetically traversing an urban landscape for miles of foot travel, well, it can leave even the heartiest souls a little ragged. And I am hardly the heartiest soul. So as I return to the personal digital screens for the first time in many days (the items that took up successive daily occupancy in this space, often stealthily pertinent to my travels, were pre-loaded), my mind can only fire so many synapses on the way to determining a selection for our annual musical commemoration of the end of the traditional work week. The flickering, faulty neon sign in my brain keeps blinking “Vacation.”

Hence, we come to the song entitled “Vacation” that existed before the song that everyone knows entitled “Vacation,” which is really the same song, more or less. Before Kathy Valentine was in the Go-Go’s, she was a member of a band called the Textones, cofounded with her old Austin punk rock cohort Carla Olson. Among the songs she penned was a brisk (under two minutes) number called “Vacation,” which asserted, among other things, that two weeks was an inadequate amount of time to heal after the end of a relationship. The Textones recorded the track for the Chiswick label, releasing it in early 1980 to colossal disinterest. At the end of that year, Valentine was recruited by up-and-coming band the Go-Go’s to fill in for their bassist, Margot Olavarria, who’d contracted hepatitis A. Valentine, though new to the bass, became a permanent member of the band just in time to be part of their surge to chart-topping fame with their debut album, We Got the Beat.

When it came time to record the all-important follow-up, Valentine (who had a songwriting credit on the debut with album closer “Can’t Stop the World”) reached into her bundle of songs and pulled “Vacation” back out. She reworked it a bit with bandmates Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, and the group recorded a new version. The track provided the album with its title and was tagged as the lead single. It became the second straight Top 10 hit for the Go-Go’s and the second highest-charting single, behind only “We Got the Beat” (amazingly, “Our Lips Are Sealed” peaked at a comparatively feeble #20). It is so well-known that listening to the original version is more like finding an odd cover than listening to the song in its nascent form. Yes, it’s the Go-Go’s version that springs into my head whenever the word “vacation” is uttered, but the first take by the Textones has its charms, too.

Listen or download –> The Textones, “Vacation”

(Disclaimer: That part above about my cognitive abilities existing in a well-tenderized state today means I’m less confident than usual about the lack of availability of the track shared here as a physical object available for purchase. There are weird little Textones compilation CDs abounding, though the ones I checked out lacked this song. Similarly, it’s entirely possible that the song has been salvaged from the mists of rock ‘n’ roll time to be placed on a Go-Go’s collection as a curiosity, but I can only dive so deeply into my research today. I place this track ever so gently in this digital nest with the belief that there’s no good way to purchase it in a manner that will duly compensate Valentine as the songwriter, the Textones as the artist, and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. Go buy Vacation by the Go-Go’s. That should assuage any guilt.)