Considering that Belinda Carlisle fessed up to a bout of Y2K-bug paranoia when she spoke to RollingStone.com last summer just before the Go-Go's reunited for a short summer tour, she probably wasn't looking far enough in the future to imagine a second go-round with the pop-punk quintet a year later.

And really, who could blame her? The Go-Go's are notorious for start-and-stall reunion attempts that never seem to stick. But this time, it seems they may really, really mean it. Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine may have committed to only a handful of dates on last year's blink-and-miss-'em jaunt, but this summer the group will undertake a twenty-two-date, co-headlining tour with the B-52's (the Psychedelic Furs open) beginning July 7 in Detroit and extending through an August 6 stop in San Diego.

The band will also appear on network TV; on July 21, the day their tour hits New York, the Go-Go's will perform on NBC's Today Show's Summer Concert Series.

What's more, fans can expect to see no shortage of the group on VH-1 this summer, where the girls have finally earned their Behind the Music close-up. "All of the elements are there," laughs bassist Valentine. "It's got the rise and the fall, and the continual rising. It's pretty racy and saucy and sassy, all of that good rock & roll Eighties stuff."

The women have also taped an upcoming episode of The List, in which Carlisle hosts and the other band members weigh in on the world's "Sexiest Male Performer." "It was so funny, the things that came out of our mouths," says guitarist Caffey, who confesses that she put the unlikely Thom Yorke on her list. "We were being typically irreverent, just a pack of girls. What can I say?"

There will also be an accompanying Behind the Music soundtrack album, a first for the series. "We're going steady with VH-1," says Valentine, adding that, partly because of this soundtrack, the band scrapped plans to release a live album from their 1999 tour.

"In true Go-Go's fashion, we had only taped one show from the tour, when most people would tape all of them," Valentine says. "And so we were at the point where there wasn't enough quality there anyway. And when Behind the Music wanted to make ours the first that they would do a record with, we decided to do that instead. We already have all these songs on a greatest hits and a retrospective, so there's way too many records with the same stuff anyway, so let's focus on the new record instead."

Indeed, perhaps the biggest Go-Go's news is the group's plan to enter the studio this fall to record their first new studio album since 1984's Talk Show. Fans skeptical that said album will ever see the light of day may take heart in the fact that dozens of new songs have already been written.

"We've tried to write together again over the last ten or fifteen years, but it never really felt right," Caffey says. "Now everyone is in the same place, the same time, the same mindset. By the time we get to rehearsal in mid-June, we should know which songs survive. It's always changing now. We have no definitive list of what's going to make the album, but we will play three to four new songs on the tour. And we'll write songs on tour. My philosophy is that we're not finished writing 'til the last day of recording.

"We're not trying to rewrite 'We Got the Beat' or 'Our Lips Are Sealed' -- that's been done," she adds. "We recognized what the classic Go-Go's sound was -- upbeat, melodic, harmony-laden, with the lyrics dark and the music up, and it's all the things we've ever done, except fifteen years later. It's different, it's the same . . . and we're just a little bit wiser."

The dates for the Go-Go's summer 2000 tour are:

7/7: Detroit, MI, Pine Knob Amphitheater
7/8: Pittsburgh, PA, Star Lake Amphitheater
7/10: Cincinnati, OH, Riverbend
7/11: Chicago, IL, World
7/12: Milwaukee, WI, Marcus Amphitheater
7/13: Cleveland, OH, Blossom
7/15: Baltimore, MD, Merriweather Post Pavilion
7/16: Holmdel, NJ, PNC Arts Center
7/17: Camden, NJ, E-Cetner
7/18: TBD
7/19: Atlanta, GA, Lakewood
7/21: Wantaugh, NY, Jones Beach
7/22: Boston, MA, Tweeter Center
7/25: Dallas, TX, Starplex Amphitheater
7/26: Houston, TX, Cynthia Woodlands Pavilion
7/28: Denver, CO, Red Rocks Amphitheater
7/30: Reno, NV, Reno Amphitheater
7/31: San Francisco, CA, Shoreline Amphitheater
8/2: Concord, CA, Chronicle Pavilion
8/3: Los Angeles, CA, Greek Theater
8/4: Irvine, CA, Irvine Meadows Amphitheater
8/6: San Diego, CA, Chula Vista Amphitheater

RICHARD SKANSE and JENNIFER VINEYARD
(May 10, 2000)