the backing harmonists on "Want You". Music industry veteran Craig Leon served as the record producer. Leon was already well known in rock and indie circles for his production work with the Ramones and Blondie. Leon also played piano on "Mary Street" and "The Real World", and the latter song includes additional piano work by Ethan James. The album cover art was designed by Ewa Wojciak with photography by Bob Seideman. Shortly after the EP's release, Annette Zilinskas left the band and was replaced by former Runaways bassist Michael Steele. Musical style The Bangles' early years were informed by a 1960s garage rock sensibility, and the 1982 EP maintains a stylistic link between the "Getting out of Hand" debut single and the band's first full-length album, the critically acclaimed All Over the Place (1984). Music critics often note the irony of their subsequent rise from guitar-based rock devotees to "one of the most successful chart groups of the '80s with their slickly produced synth pop". In his book Music: What Happened?, Scott Miller names "The Real World" as one of the top songs of the 1980s, and remarks of the EP: "Those who know only 'Eternal Flame' might be amazed at how inventive and together they were in their relative infancy". The Bangles themselves consider the early material, lesser-known though it was, to be vital to their own story: as Susanna Hoffs told Billboard in 2014, "I think it's as representative of who we really are and as authentic as anything the Bangles have ever done. There's a kind of architecture to those songs – three-part harmonies, guitar-driven, jangly over a kind of garage rock rhythm is who we are now, still, as much as we were back then." Release The original EP was released on vinyl in 1982 by Faulty Products (catalog #FEP 1302). The label folded at the end of the year, and Copeland's major label, I.R.S. Records, rereleased it again in 1983 (catalog #SP-70506). In 1988, A&M/I.R.S. Records released a three-song CD Mini Single CD3 with "Mary Street" and "I'm in Line" from the original vinyl EP release, and a very different mix of "The Real World" remixed and remastered by David Kahne prior to his producing the first Bangles album. The full five-song set, however, remained out of print since its initial vinyl release until 2014, when it was included on the album Ladies and Gentlemen...