Maybe Best Thing All Year, Maybe a Train Wreck

Today, X-ray Spex (I know Poly Styrene and Paul Dan are in, I'm assuming Rudi Thompson, and no clue who else) will play at the Roundhouse in London. Part of me desperately wants to believe that it will be every bit amazing as X-Ray Spex was when they originally existed. The other part of me is terrified that it is going to be a horrifying example of cashing in. I'd still be there if I had any way of doing so.

X-Ray Spex, for me, are one of those bands that when you first here them, right that very instant, you either fuckign hate everything about them or instantly fall in love with them and realize that no one will ever be quite as completely what they are as they are themselves. They're sort of impossible to imitate, because you only get the shock value of being something new and amazing and completely out of left field once and that's no small part of what they were. Poly Styrene was this manic, day-glo thing in a fucking army helmet in the midst of mohawks and bondage gear and Lora Logic's sax was something nobody had thought to bother with since The Contortions, which weren't nearly so outright punk as the Spex.

So if any of you out there make it tonight, let me know what this is, because right now, it's pretty much taking up all the space I've got devoted to wishful thinking in my brain