Sneak of the Week: The Bloods, “Button Up”

The first “out” lesbian band’s only single is a punk-funk banger.

In late ‘70s/early ‘80s New York City, the musical underground was all about moving past the punk rock ethos that had been birthed just a few years earlier at CBGB and spread its wings around the world. Whether you called it No Wave, New Wave, or post-punk, the scene’s primary purpose was to say something fresh.

Part of the plan involved hanging on to that feral punk energy but applying it to ideas outside the rock realm. That might mean experimental variants of jazz, reggae, modern minimalist composition—you name it, somebody attached a punk prefix to it. But one of the most fruitful pairings matched punky grit with funky grooves. Today, that era’s NYC punk funk scene is best remembered as the domain of edgy, beat-savvy bands like ESG, Liquid Liquid, Konk, The Dance, Defunkt, and The Bush Tetras, and tiny but mighty local labels like Ed Bahlman’s 99 Records.

But one band that’s often unfairly absent from the punk-funk discussion, probably because they only ever released one 45, is The Bloods. Fronted by Adele Bertei, formerly the keyboardist in New York’s (and possibly the planet’s) first punk-funk crew, The Contortions, The Bloods only lasted for a couple of years. But the sound they laid down went deep enough that its reverberations can still be felt if you put your ear close enough to the ground.

The A side of The Bloods’ lone single, “Button Up” is an impossibly infectious, hook-festooned bit of dancefloor dynamite. Released in 1982 on UK post-punk band The Au Pairs’ own label, it was probably made on a microscopic budget, but it moves on a million-dollar groove that makes immobility impossible from the moment it kicks in.

Brenda Alderman’s bustling bass is at the center of it all—as is only right and proper for any self-respecting funk tune—growling, prowling, slapping, and popping beneath Bertei’s uber-cool but super soulful vocals. Kathy Rey’s strategically placed guitar interjections dice the groove up in just the right proportions, and Annie Toone’s keyboards pick their spots even more judiciously, chiming in only when needed but providing just the right push each time. And when drummer Kathleen Campbell authoritatively lays down that all-important beat, it stays down.

For all its street-level urgency, “Button Up” leans more funk than punk and has a fair amount of polish for a record presumably produced amid modest circumstances. And when the whole thing lifts at the end of the chorus with the line “I’ll drive you home,” it’s tempting to wonder whether this could have been a crossover hit on R&B stations, at least in New York, if it had been on a label with a wider reach.

As it stands, the majority of those who know the tune today probably found it first on the 2003 UK compilation New York Noise. But even there, The Bloods eventually ended up hidden—for some reason, their track has been disincluded from all subsequent reissues of the collection. Either way, the band’s first single was also their last. It made some noise in clubs around town, and the band toured abroad, but longevity wasn’t in their forecast.

Decades later, looking back at the brief run of The Bloods, who had built up a rep as enfants terrible and are reckoned to have been the first “out” lesbian band, Bertei told The Guardian,“…after that [first single], I think because of our reputation and the fact that we were all pretty much out of the closet as lesbians, no music people would touch us with a bargepole in terms of recording or managing us. Eventually, we broke up because there was nowhere for us to go.”

After The Bloods, Bertei’s career took a surprisingly mainstream turn. She duetted with Thomas Dolby on his 1984 hit “Hyperactive,” and released big-production straight-up pop solo material on Geffen and Chrysalis records. She eventually ventured into writing and directing for TV and film as well as authoring several books, the latest being 2026’s No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene.

-Jim Allen

Photo: The Bloods (public domain)