X-Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene r.i.p.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFq3anDYEqM&feature=related

Grouping together Chrissie Hynde, Debby Harry, Viv Albertine, Siouxie Sioux, Poly Styrene and Pauline Black has a long history, literally

http://wewantnothing.tumblr.com/post/4951581733/divas-chrissie-hynde-debby-harry-viv-albertine

Ha! - I was listening to Silly Billy this morning. It was mixed in with a load of X-Ray Spex tracks on my ipod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGROSJbCPV8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQm8eCfDKrI

this woman was able to project so much emotion through her voice, it leaps and bounds off of the records. so inspirational.

RIP

Agreed about one of the great voices obv, but also 1 x great LYRICIST to my mind. A thing I was surprised by when finding teh ilx @ abt 2001-2 was that people seemed to think maybe she was a bit urm "didactic" about what she thought and ideology and stuff -- while me I'd cherished the songs for being open-ended in any meaning, twasnt clear to which degree did she pose herself as an opponent vs part of what she (surely, possibly or not at all) railed against? I wanna be a frozen pea! Maybe "irony" was just a given in 1978 and/or 2001?

That were many words; in few words: great great LYRICIST.

Um I see I wasn't extremely clear there... Example:

Genetic engineering
Could create the perfect race
Could create an unknown life-force
That could us exterminate*

Introducing worker clone
As our subordinated slave
His expertise proficiency
Will surely dig our grave

Interpretation a) oh no genetic engineering is scary and bad!
Interpretation b) hi dere I just wrote a hopefully fun scifi pome to go with a song hurrah!

... and I would tend twds b).

*) This is a bit of a clunker I must admit.

Think you are otm, Ole.

Why does no one ever talk about Translucence? I get that it pales in comparison to her more famous work, but it's really lovely, although the energy is the polar opposite of her work with the Spex. I have yet to dig any further into her solo work, but I'm glad I discovered this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OsuSShRmSY

RIP

Just watched that BBC broadcast from '79, "Who Is Poly Styrene?" (on YouTube). I found it difficult to pick up on all the voice-over commentary. Great document, but I did find it all a little depressing.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/05/lets-submerge

I contributed to Kickstarter a few years ago for a documentary involving Poly Styrene's daughter. Still waiting--hope it didn't get derailed.

*sigh*

clemenza, this article mentions your documentary being still in production. Seems like an interesting approach. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidchiu/2019/10/14/poly-styrene-punk-icon-biography-dayglo/#4d2f69ef3685

Meanwhile, a documentary about Styrene directed by Paul Sng (which involves both Howe and Bell) is currently in production. “Its angle is more of a communication between daughter and mother,” Howe says of the film, “with the story unfolding via letters from Celeste to Poly amid interviews threaded throughout. Some of the interviewees appear in both projects, some exclusively were for the book. The letters also appear in adapted or expanded forms in the book, too.”

Yama yama yama!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXVEEwBEDcY

Would like to see this doc living online, growing changing grooving over the years---would it get too set in its ways, and/or break sideways, become something xtreme, come home again--? This and/or another doc.

Seems plausible enough:

Introducing worker clone
As our subordinated slave
His expertise proficiency
Will surely dig our grave

Maybe not dig it all, but at least take the handle for a while.

Great! I contributed to that, and have been getting updates for what seems like almost since she died. Now it's a case of getting to see it.

Cool! Plus I didn't even know the 1979 BBC profile you mentioned above existed till today!

Got the same e-mail today some of you probably got:
----------------------------------------------------
POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ is on release across the UK/Ireland from Fri 05 Mar via Modern Films online cinema platform and will be broadcast on Sat 06 Mar at 9pm on SkyArts (available on Sky channel 122, Freeview 11, Freesat 147, and Virgin Media 123).

You can pre-order the film and support local independent cinemas using this link: https://www.modernfilms.com/polystyrene

If you are outside the UK you will be able to watch the film very soon; we are working with international partners to bring the film to the US, Europe and beyond. As soon as we have more information on international screenings as well as DVDs and Bluray DVDs we will let you know (an email will be sent to check we have your current address). The film will also be screened at several film festivals around the world throughout 2021, the first of which will be SXSW, March 16-20. We will announce the full festival line-up very soon.

Had not seen that. Thanks

10 minutes...

Excellent photo/video coverage - but unfortunately I found it a bit ponderous and slow.

certainly not enough actual music

liked what they played of the solo stuff even though it was nothing like x ray spex

what was the book she was reading?

(ha, it's her own book)

Daughter looks very young for 40.

Did they skip talking about Lora Logic leaving until the krsna era. Was wondering what the story on that was during the band era so did I miss it earlier or was it glossed then touched on later.

Sad to hear about her in Gunter Grove. But do think I had heard dodgy stories about there before. & Sid could be an oaf.

Otherwise yeah really moving.
Is there a full Musikladen of them surviving or was that a more than one artist edition. Not sure what there is of them live visual in any form of long form.
Don't remember coming across that if it is in circulation.

Is Translucence any good?

I just downloaded Translucence because I realised I'd never listened to it, but have heard her 2 solo albums from this century - Generation Indigo has some great songs on it.

It was nice for me to see the Hastings footage, and the other period footage in general. I thought they got the amount of music about right really.

I went to the reunion gig, nearly didn't because I think it sold out, I bought a ticket off a tout, for less than face value though. That in itself was an experience, he threatened me because I'd offered to buy a ticket off someone on his "patch" I guess. In the end I paid the same because he insisted he bought the ticket off the bloke for a tenner and sold it to me for £20 which is what I said I'd pay in the first place. After that he literally whipped his cock out and just stood pissing into the street.

After watching the film I downloaded the ‘Translucence’ album...one of the tracks’Sky Diver’ was used in the film that sounded great...will have a deeper listen tomorrow but sounded really nice

Translucence is quite good. She had a gift for melody, very much present in X-Ray Spex but it also translates to other settings.

Yeah liked that garagey element to the Spex sound, noticed that the narrator used the term Power Pop at one point but don't think it totally fitting.
But melody + drive may get you to something adjacent I guess.

Do people think of X Ray Spex as a punk band. I know they played festivals in Blackpool etc in reunion years. & played the Roxy but seems they don't fit the later imposed template. Sui generis possibly which should have remained a punk trope I would think inherently by definition and so on. Did she say she thought punk was just a label.

Thinking about a press release that was shown at several points. Dayglo logo on green paper or to that effect. Looked d.i.y but was that possible at the time.
Either white border around the logo was printed on green which I'm not sure is easy or green is printed on rest of paper.
Just thinking that effect seems to have taken more artifice than would first appear. No computer printing. & typing legible on top of that green.
Not a print expert but not sure that's something that could be done on a xerox machine. Which is odd. Stood out though.

Yeah, I'm guessing that was a Virgin Records promo sheet.

Daughter looks very young for 40.

And also sounds exactly like her mother.

She does, yes.

Dayglo logo on green paper or to that effect. Looked d.i.y but was that possible at the time.

Definitely was possible, and it was a time of graphic creativity and experimentation. I follow the work of Barney Bubbles, thanks to the great curating work of Paul Gorman and others, and there's an interesting cross-over from his graphic work with the hippie/radical newspaper Frendz and Hawkwind to design work on punk and new wave records.

Do people think of X Ray Spex as a punk band

Did at the time ( I was in my early teens and not going to gigs, but following music papers)...And I do now really; they were part of the wave that was inspired by seeing the Sex Pistols early on.

Even at the time there were 'purists' saying that the punk scene was already over by the time X Ray Spex had their residency at the Man in the Moon in the Kings Road.

The definitions around punk were always a bit fluid and frisky. I think Mick Farren observed at the time that the route from hippie to punk was often shorter and more common that people realised.

xp press release To be multiply printed?
Would think that white printed on green would wind up not looking great.
& green printed around white and then having the press release actually legible on it would seem to be a little difficult.
Could have this wrong but at a atime before computerised printing I would think it wasn't that easy.
Presumably this is something that is being produced to be sent to a number of different media outlets which I would have thought was costly.
BUt maybe it was a project that the art department liked so got behind. I'm just thinking looks like there's a lot more work gone into it than would first appear. & presumably isn't the only press release being worked on at any one time.

That is, dayglo logo had a white border. Dayglo yellow on green might not look so odd on its own , probably less noticeable since green/yellow border in other forms of colour creation. White printed on green going to wind up with distinct greenish tinge.

I wonder if press releases and ornate letter heading graphics were more important in the 70s, perhaps because of the lack of digital social media to promote bands.

One thing I've noticed from the Barney Bubbles estate is that just how many people on the music scene, even on the fringes, had their own logo. Ok - the one below is a bit earlier....

https://assets.bigcartel.com/product_images/228894620/F3604650-3CF9-4D11-88BC-084F4F87B13C.jpeg

blue on blue might look a bit blue

I'm a massive Barney Bubbles fan and a Stacia fan. Had never seen that love from Miss Stacia print. Most excellent!

well you're goingto want to have some kind of recognisable tag. Were people graffiting band names in places at teh time?
THink I was seeing mod revival names getting tagged in places or at least things like bus stops.
JUst adds a little something when you're doing your best to get noticed.

Though you do want to not look gimmicky and you also don't want to look like you sold out to the man by it all looking too utterly professional.
Underground artists are useful and can add credibility not that you're own shouldn't be enough. Badge of honour and the company being kept. Also presumably the understanding taht an underground comic artist isn't selling out to the man by doing that.

I definitely think of X-Ray Spex as a punk band, their noise and velocity and Poly’s immortal yawp all very much scan as punk (as opposed to, say, Essential Logic, who seem post-punk even tho “Aerosol Burns” is indisputably a punk classic).

never heard Translucence before, this is wonderful

X ray spex are/we're punk because they split before they 'moved on' with their sound, "Highly Inflammable" excepted

They're somewhere between punk and new wave without really being post-punk.

they are 100% "class of 77" punk to me, the LP is a bit more filled out in sound but all the lyrics are like ur-punk Rosetta stones

can I watch this now btw? where?

I guess the (excellent) title song of their first album is sort of new-wavey, but I count them as ground-zero punk, just like everyone else on the The Roxy London WC2 album, even if some of them like the Buzzcocks and Wire proceeded in different directions.

xpost upthread:

If you are outside the UK you will be able to watch the film very soon; we are working with international partners to bring the film to the US, Europe and beyond. As soon as we have more information on international screenings as well as DVDs and Bluray DVDs we will let you know (an email will be sent to check we have your current address). The film will also be screened at several film festivals around the world throughout 2021, the first of which will be SXSW, March 16-20. We will announce the full festival line-up very soon.

That said one wonders if VPNs could help with this:

https://www.modernfilms.com/polystyrene/watch

Sky Arts showed it last night in the UK which might mean it gets a repeat in the middle of the night over teh next couple of weeks, Might not. Worked with the Rob lloyd film anyway

it's on again friday (along with the Rock against Racism thing that was shown after it which also features Poly and was worth a watch if you needed reminding how racist the late 70s were)