A Little Less Day-Glo, or Goodbye Poly Styrene

Miranda — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:41:55 +0000

I was just waving goodbye to sixteen when I discovered X-Ray Spex, and I discovered them in the least cool-cred of ways: via a covermount CD I got with Kerrang! magazine, which I bought semi-religiously at the time.

This CD was part of the Kerrang! Hometaping series, in which various leading lights of the hard rock scene, invariably men (do shout me if this has changed, as I have since given up on K!, but my optimism’s economy-size) compiled mixtapes of their favourite tracks past and present. This one, compiled by Casey Chaos of parental-guidance-sticker-collecting Cali-punk-metal outfit Amen, wasn’t a bad mix, looking at it now. For the most part.

But it was the presence of I Am A Cliché on the tracklist that put the CD on regular rotation on my Discman. That track stood out, sparking nicely off The Distillers and The Adverts (the sum total of female input, there) and kicking defiantly against the roll-your-eyes-or-lose-your-lunch misogyny of Let’s Fuck by the Murderdolls (at least the CD had range). And the more I listened to Poly Styrene‘s life-affirming shouts, the more alert I felt to the complete shit that passed (passes!) for acceptable attitudes to gender in some of the rest of the bands on the CD, in the mag, in my music collection, in general. (For that jarringly educational juxtaposition, Casey’s at least to be thanked.)

From there it was a short leap to the rest of Germ Free Adolescents. Nobody forgets the first time they hear the crisp, sing-song pronouncement that opens Oh Bondage, Up Yours! : Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think… (when I set up this blog, I entered it as the mousefloat text description for the Music Box category on the sidebar). Every time I hear it, I feel that emphasis on but I think… reverb through me: powerful, unabashed and instantly compelling. And funny. “Playing with words and ideas, having a laugh about everything, sending it up”, as Poly herself put it to the Independent in 1998 (this approach was arguably worlds away from Amen’s bloodied-up on-stage histrionics, so it’s perhaps faintly ironic she made Casey’s list of hometaped heroes, but anyway).

Poly passed away this morning, having, as her site team have aptly put it, “won her battle to go to higher places”. For me, it’s the loss of a personal hero – she formed the Spex in 1978 by throwing an ad in Melody Maker with a header demanding the attention of YOUNG PUNX WHO WANT TO STICK IT TOGETHER.

She’s on record, in a recent interview with 6Music quoted in her BBC obituary, as saying, “I know I’ll probably be remembered for Oh Bondage Up Yours!… I’d like to be remembered for something a bit more spiritual.”

For me, the impact of X-Ray Spex actually was akin to something spiritual. Poly threw into stark, uncompromising relief the lack of female voices normally in play in mainstream rock, in Kerrang!, and so on. She made me wonder, for the first time, what I thought about that. (Clue: it ends in “up yours”.) So I think in a way, although the Spex’s one album probably will always be her most famous music, that’s okay.

Cheers, Poly. Here’s to you. Rest in peace. (Say hi to Ari Up for us.) The world’s a little bit less day-glo now, and much the worse for it.

Listen to Germ Free Adolescents on last.fm
Visit Poly’s official site and find out about her solo projects – her newest album Generation Indigo came out last month
Poly Styrene Remembered: a photo set on NME.com

Team BadRep is currently on holiday and will return to the usual posting schedule next week

Silence Is A Rhythm Too

Sarah Jackson — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:30:12 +0000

In 1994 I was 12. I was also spending most of my time in the late 70s. Surely the only punk in my small Cornish town, I’d got a short back and sides, a pair of docs and a blazer prickling with safety pins. I’d got my Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Buzzcocks, Undertones. And I wanted to tear everything to pieces. I was all set.

Then one day while rifling through my parents’ (excellent, though I hated to admit it) record collection I pulled out a sleeve that looked like a B Movie soundtrack. There was an exploding volcano, a pterosaur and three women dressed as bedouin from hell. It was Return of the Giant Slits.

When I put the record on it was like nothing I’d heard before. It was as if The Slits had stolen their beats from the gaps in other peoples’ songs. The rhythms seemed alien but I felt something click into place – next time I had the bus fare to get to Truro I found and bought the magnificent Cut and fell in love. Here was something truly radical, with the chaos and creative destruction that I loved in punk but with irony and humour and WOMEN.

Ari Up onstage at Alexandra Palace in 1981

The Slits were true musical innovators, drawing as much from reggae and dub as from the punk scene. They were funny, aggressive, embarrassing, chaotic, and sexual without trying to be sexy. From the name of the band onwards they played with gender and with ideas of what women were and were meant to be.

The Slits’ lead vocalist Ari Up (aka InnoDBnna Forster) died yesterday aged 48. She was only 14 when she formed The Slits with drummer Palmolive (anyone else feel kinda old? Are you even allowed to form a punk band after you’re 20?) and was still gigging this year. Her music means a lot to me and to many others, and the importance of The Slits for women in punk and, well, most alternative music really is difficult to convey. They cracked the mould.

Rest in peace, Ari.

Watch The Slits play Typical Girls on the bandstand in what I think is Regent’s Park
Listen to the whole of their debut album Cut online for free (with ads sadly, but less annoying ones than Spotify)

(Post title is from In The Beginning)

rip – Bad Reputation

A Little Less Day-Glo, or Goodbye Poly Styrene

Silence Is A Rhythm Too