Poly Styrene – vocals
Jak Airport – guitar
BP Hurding - drums
Paul Dean – bass
Lora Logic – saxophone

It’s spring 1977 and the UK punk scene is filled with manic-eyed Rotten-alikes and scowling Sid Vicious clones spitting out their faux working-class lyrics with mock-cockney accents over two-chord melodies and undeveloped drumbeats.

Then X-Ray Spex play their first ever gig at the dingy Roxy Club in Covent Garden, London. Suddenly, everyone couldn’t get enough of the saxophone, the out-of-tune yelping vocals, the anti-consumerism lyrics and the abrasive, opinionated and egotistical Poly Styrene.

Briefly, Poly (born Marion Elliot) became punk rock’s most recognised face. She was unattractive, she dirty hair, braces on her teeth and spoke her mind.

“If anyone calls me a sex symbol, I will shave my head tomorrow. Girls that go and flaunt themselves are using the oldest trick in the book. I'm just me. I just do what I feel like. Do anything you wanna do. Individualism. That's what it's all about isn't it?”

She revolutionised the way people saw female musicians (not just as girls up on stage, but credible performers), and was a highly respected person (despite some tabloid scandals). She saw punk in a different light to her contemporaries; “Look what happened to Sid Vicious. They got into the age old thing of getting drunk, smoking, taking drugs and ruining their health, doing exactly the same things as the generation before them. They weren’t that much different from their parents.” She saw punk not as a way of rebelling, but instead she said she was “looking for a solution, for positive messages to incorporate into my music. I was looking for a philosophy that was beyond punk.”

One of the most popular female-fronted bands to emerge from the UK’s punk scene in the late 70’s, X-Ray Spex existed for merely three years before energetic and foul-mouthed frontwoman Poly Styrene left the band. During this three years the band released five singles and one album. ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ reached number 30 in the UK album chart in 1978. Their first and most widely recognised single, ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours’ became an anthem for Britain’s youth as well as ‘Identity’ and ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’.

After Poly Styrene left the band in 1979, she released two solo albums, ‘Translucence’ and ‘Gods and Goddesses’ and then joined the Hare Krishna movement with Lora Logic. The band reformed briefly in 1995 to record second album, ‘Conscious Consumer’, however, rather appropriately, it wasn’t a commercial success and the group disbanded soon after it was released.

A momentary blip in the 1970’s punk radar, X-Ray Spex caused more shock and confusion in complacent Britain than any other snotty boy-band punk with spiky hair and a vocabulary of swear words could ever imagine.

by Robyn.

Links

• Poly's Punky Party - official X-ray Spex site
• X-Ray Spex - fansite

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