Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (52 page)

X-RAY SPEX

Jean Smith, Mecca Normal:

I thought [X-Ray Spex singer] Poly Styrene was such a great singer. Her songs were really full-flight, with soaring vocals. The topics just mystified me, like
Warrior in Woolworths
, the weird alliteration of this loopy kind of line, with her accent and this rich flowing vocal. That was really a stylistic attraction. That would’ve been my ideal, but physical limitations prevented me from it. I just connected with the power and energy and determination and tried to bring it out of myself, and what came out of me I realized was as valid as what came out of anyone. I really trusted that.

Though X-Ray Spex produced only one album of note, it was enough to inspire entire movements. Though her time in the group was short, Lora Logic’s blaring saxophone would prove a notable precursor to future female-led, sax-driven bands of the ‘80s such as Romeo Void and the Waitresses. But X-Ray Spex’s main contributions came from their lead singer, Poly Styrene. With her combination of youth and awareness, girlishness and nasty wit, strength and joyousness, Styrene realized punk’s potential for expressing the frustrations and displaying the intelligence of girls, just as it had for disaffected boys. Her voice – bursting with enthusiasm and giddy shrieks – provided a model for female punk singers everywhere.

Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill:

[People said] “Oh, you sing just like Poly Styrene.” And I was like, “Yeah! Great!” A lot of girls had never heard of Poly Styrene; maybe they’ll hear me and then buy an X-Ray Spex record... I don’t care if I sound like Poly Styrene – I think Poly Styrene is great! [from Angry Women In Rock]

While the first rumblings of England’s punk-rock explosion were led by white males, they effectively empowered social misfits of all sorts to express themselves. Among the scores of kids inspired to action after seeing a Sex Pistols gig was a chubby, brown-skinned (half-Somali), 15-year-old girl with braces named Marion Elliot. What she lacked in rock star looks made her a perfect antihero, while her muscular pipes and precocious wit made her a compelling new voice in punk. After putting out a little-noticed solo single, Elliot adopted the nom-de-punk Poly Styrene – an expression of dual interests, in mass culture and artificiality – and set about forming her very own punk band.

Along with an all-male back-up band consisting of guitarist Jak Airport, bassist Paul Dean, and drummer B.P. Hurding, Styrene recruited another powerful female presence in skronky 16-year-old saxophonist Lora Logic (Susan Whitby). Named for a kitschy toy Poly received from her cousins in America, X-Ray Spex hit their stride very quickly; by their second gig, the group was playing London’s top punk club, the Roxy. When a song from this show was included on the 1977 compilation Live at the Roxy, X-Ray Spex began to receive press attention, which led to their recording a studio version of the song and releasing it as a debut single.
Oh Bondage! Up Yours!
– a powerful statement of girl rebellion delivered fearlessly by an actual teenager – became a huge punk hit. With its defiant opening line – ”Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard. I say, Oh bondage! Up yours!” – and the sarcastic submissiveness of the lyrics, Styrene virtually invented riot grrrl attitude.

Alec Empire, Atari Teenage Riot:

X-Ray Spex influenced us a lot, especially [ATR singer] Hanin Elias. She was influenced a lot by the way Poly Styrene sings and the energy. When Hanin and I had our first punk bands in the ‘80s we wanted to do things like X-Ray Spex.

With follow-up singles such as
The Day the World Turned Day-Glo
and
Identity
, Styrene began to confront topics only hinted at with
Bondage
: the devastating effects of consumer culture on girls’ self-images and the artificiality of the everyday world. In early 1978, Lora Logic quit to return to school (she later formed her own band, Essential Logic) and was replaced by Rudi Thompson. By fall, X-Ray Spex had released their debut,
Germfree Adolescents
. The record, whose cover showed band members dressed in day-glo, trapped inside large test tubes, was an early manifestation of the bright colors and futuristic imagery that would carry over into new wave. And though the music was catchy and fun enough to compete with the best pop, its heart was undeniably punk. Full of bratty intelligence and wit, songs like
Art-I-Ficial
,
Warrior in Woolworths
,
I Am a Poseur
, and
I Am a Cliché
tempered Styrene’s articulate search for identity with the screaming glee of youth and freedom.

Kate Schellenbach, Luscious Jackson:

The fact that they had a 15-year-old girl singer with braces was really appealing and exciting as a teenager, to think I could do this too, and make these incredible statements. To hear her singing with this incredible confidence and voice was so inspirational. Listen to Bikini Kill and it’s like a carbon copy of X-Ray Spex.

As quickly as they had risen, though, X-Ray Spex came undone. As Styrene matured (though still barely 18!), she felt uncomfortable continuing with the brashness and squealing intensity that had defined her. Not only did she want to move the band toward slower, more acoustic songs, she was searching for a more stable – and in her eyes, more meaningful – existence. The release of their
Highly Inflammable
single marked the end of the band.

While Styrene thought she’d found some peace through joining the Hare Krishnas and leaving the music business, she returned to singing in the ‘80s with sporadic solo records and guest appearances on albums by Boy George and the Dream Academy. The other former X-Ray Spex members continued to make music, and Paul Dean (believe it or not) formed Canadian ‘80s cheese rockers Loverboy. Following a 1991 reunion show in London, the original band – featuring Styrene, Dean, and Lora Logic – re-formed and in 1995 released a new album. Though few noticed their return,
Germfree Adolescents
(finally made available in the U.S. in 1992) had by then become essential listening for girls (and boys) in revolt.

DISCOGRAPHY

Germfree Adolescents
(Blue Plate / EMI, 1978; Caroline, 1992)
; the one and only X-Ray Spex album in its original incarnation, a Brit punk classic.

Live at the Roxy
(Receiver [UK], 1991)
; recorded at a live show that predates their debut album, this import features Lora Logic on sax.

Conscious Consumer
(Receiver [UK], 1995)
; a new record by a reunited X-Ray Spex, featuring Poly, Lora, and Paul Dean.

THE SLITS

Kate Schellenbach, Luscious Jackson:

When I first saw them I was in the Beastie Boys, and Adam Yauch [of the Beasties] had a Slits poster on his wall. We were all really into them, but it was extra – special for girls.
Cut
is still in my all-time top ten, I would never want to be without it. If they came around now, people would understand them so much better. They brought out the dub bass and scratchy guitar, which was originally Luscious Jackson’s approach. For me, Jill [Cuniff], and Gabby [Glazer, in Luscious Jackson], they were seriously heroes. When some girls would be playing Barbie, we would play dress-up like the Slits.

With a name that evoked both punk’s violence and – in the crudest terms – womanhood, the Slits offered a female version of first-generation British punk bands that appeared in the late ‘70s. But as they came into their own musically, the group transcended punk and shaped an adventurous post-punk sound that celebrated femininity in more abstract and complex ways. In a short career that produced only two studio albums, the Slits presented a unique musical vision. And, along the way, they inspired musicians across the entire spectrum: from riot grrrls, with their feminist polemics, to P.J. Harvey and Mecca Normal, with their more metaphysical approach, to anyone – regardless of sex – interested in pushing the boundaries of punk.

Before forming, members of the Slits had been part of the inner clique of British punk kids surrounding bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Fourteen-year-old Arianna Forster had recently left boarding school to move to London with her mother, a German heiress named Nora, who through her daughter’s punk connections would meet and eventually marry the Pistols’ Johnny Rotten. Forster befriended Paloma Romero (renamed Palmolive by Clash bassist Paul Simonon), a 22-year-old Spanish woman who’d been living with the Clash’s Joe Strummer. Before they’d even tried to play their instruments, would-be guitarist Arianna – renamed Ari Up – and drummer Palmolive recruited guitarist Kate Korus and bassist Suzi Gutsy to form the Slits.

In the time between forming and actually playing a gig, Korus and Gutsy were replaced by Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollit, two young punks who’d spent some time in Sid Vicious’s pre-Pistols band, Flowers of Romance. Like many of the punk bands forming in 1976 and ‘77, the early Slits were more of a social unit that called themselves a band than an actual music group. Appropriately, they appeared at the time in Derek Jarman’s punk fantasy film Jubilee as a street-roaming girl gang. And their lack of ability was made even more clear when they debuted as the Clash’s opening act in March of 1977. A sort of punk version of the
Shaggs
, the early Slits teetered at the brink of falling apart with songs like
A Boring Life
and
Once upon a Time in a Living Room
. Live, the band banged along in cacophonous abandon while members stopped occasionally to yell at each other.

Amy Rigby:

They were just a mess, and I really like that about them. The way they dressed, and covered themselves with mud and were naked on the cover of their record. They were very powerful females and they weren’t afraid of flaunting their attractiveness, but it was in a way they wanted to do it and to their own purposes. It wasn’t some art director who took them and said it would be a cool idea.

Within the year, though, the Slits had perfected punk’s standard fast riffing style and worked up enough material to record for radio DJ/producer John Peel. By the time they signed a record contract in late 1978 the group had moved beyond punk and developed a more rhythmic, reggae-inflected style, with surprisingly complex vocal parts and song structures. When Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren attempted to assume management of the group, Palmolive’s opposition to McLaren – as well as other artistic differences – led to her departure. Months later, she reappeared as the
Raincoats
’ drummer. In the midst of recording an album, the Slits called in their friend Budgie (Peter Clark) to sit in on drums.

Though it was their first record, 1979’s
Cut
documents the band at a rather late stage in its evolution. By then, the group had fully come into its own as a strong – and distinctly female – post-punk voice. The provocative album featured the young women posed against the backdrop of a pleasant English garden, but topless and covered in mud. The photo confounded notions of sexuality and civility, and positioned the group as modern primitive feminist rebels – girls not afraid to be natural, sexual, and formidable.

Even more powerful than the photo was the music, which reinvented punk rock as a forum for young women. In opposition to the driving aggression of male-oriented punk,
Cut
was more rhythmic and textural, while the lyrics to songs like
Spend, Spend, Spend
,
Shoplifting
, and the single
Typical Girls
, alternatively celebrated the liberation of girl delinquency and confronted consumer culture’s manipulation of female self-esteem. A post-punk classic,
Cut
set the standard for all female-oriented punk to come.

Jean Smith, Mecca Normal:

I went out and bought
Cut
and tried to figure out what the hell they were trying to do. It was my first close look at really wondering about a band, because the whole focus was on the women in an inviting way. It seemed much more open. And I felt I had the go-ahead to see what came out of me in much the same way that these people seemed very genuine in their own noisemaking.

As Budgie left to join Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Pop Group’s Bruce Smith took over as fill-in drummer, the Slits continued to incorporate reggae music and consciousness into their music. Between
Cut
and the 1981 follow-up,
The Return of the Giant Slits
, the group released a series of singles such as
In the Beginning There Was Rhythm
that explored their growing interest in rhythm as a sort of life force. Songs like
Earthbeat
on
The Return
took their richly drawn primitivism and mother earth vibe even further with more subtle and organic music. The record was a worthy successor to Cut, but its foray into esoteric structure alienated fans of
Cut
’s more pop-oriented music, and the album failed to earn much attention. By the end of 1981, the Slits had called it quits.

Ari Up has continued her involvement in reggae music with
Adrian Sherwood
’s New Age Steppers and Prince Far-I & the Arabs. She now lives in Jamaica with her family (and remains John Lydon’s stepdaughter). Viv Albertine also appeared in the New Age Steppers, and was more recently involved in the Courtney Love-directed soundtrack to the film Tank Girl.