MOG

"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think: oh bondage, up yours!"

So kicks off X-Ray Spex's visceral debut single, released in 1977 after the band's formation in summer 1976 and some shambolic live shows (check out the Live at the Roxy album). "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" wasn't included on the band's classic 1978 debut album Germ Free Adolescents until its CD release. But that album is a killer full of such dynamite cuts as "The Day The World Turned Day-Glo" and "Identity."

X-Ray Spex were an untypical punk band in two respects. They featured saxophone. And in Poly Styrene, they featured a female vocalist, and one of partly Somali parentage at that. (The original sax player Lora Logic, who left the group in 1977 to form Essential Logic, was female as well.) X-Ray Spex weren't the only female-centered British punk act, but they were arguably the best. They were also a not particularly angry or fast band. In her lyrics, Poly Styrene articulated sophisticated, funny views on consumer society. She had a distinctive, not-exactly-harmonic vocal style that has been described, e.g., as a "screech powerful enough to drill holes through sheet metal," but that doesn't mean she was an untutored singer just belting it. As she recounted in a recent interview for The Big Takeover (issue 58), she had been taking lessons in operatic singing and used those techniques in developing her own style. Poly Styrene left already in 1979 (to join the Hare Krishna, of all things), and the band pretty much just collapsed without its driving force. The only problem with the legacy of X-Ray Spex is that they didn't record enough music.

Here's a video for "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" (sadly curtailed at the beginning to leave out the opening salvo):

And a promo video for "Identity" (with good sound quality):

This is a Filling in the gaps post.

This is also a Kudos! to women who rock post.