MetalClassic Rock
Cleopatra Records · 6 November 2026
On 21 January 1982 Girlschool played Tokyo. According to Cleopatra Records, which released the show on 6 November as “Tokyo Breakdown 1982”, they were the first all-female British band to perform in Japan. The label notes that the opening tape, with its aircraft noises and sirens, bleeds into the audience screaming ahead of “C’mon Let’s Go”.
Most of the set comes from the two albums the band had out at the time, “Demolition” and “Hit and Run”. From the first comes “Race with the Devil”, which Kim McAuliffe introduces to the crowd with “this was our single over here”. There is also the B-side “Tonight” and two songs that were still unreleased, “Don’t Call It Love” and “Don’t Stop”, which would appear later that year on the “Wildlife” EP, and the CD closes with ZZ Top’s “Tush”. The digital and CD editions run to sixteen songs and around fifty-eight minutes; the vinyl, the first-ever pressing of the show, leaves four out: “Midnight Ride”, “Breakdown”, “Nothing to Lose” and “Tush”. The lead single was “The Hunter”, released on 6 October.
The same sixteen songs, in the same order, had already come out on CD in 1998 as “Race With The Devil Live”, on Receiver Records, which Discogs places in Tokyo, 1982; Cleopatra’s notes don’t mention it. The album is part of the label’s ongoing series of Girlschool live shows: before it came their 1981 Reading Festival set, “Nothin’ To Lose In Reading”, and the label has announced material from the band’s first US tour, in April 1982, for 2027.
Text by Roger Estivill