Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I say...
Oh Bondage! Up yours!
X-Ray Spex
In 'Shadow Selves and Artifice' the most recent episode of Projections podcast (a dialogue about film and psychoanalysis), Mary Wild and Sarah Kathryn Cleaver discussed the 2011 Marie Losier directed documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. This controversial film charts the couple’s Pandrogyne project where each undergo a series of cosmetic procedures to merge their identities, becoming figures of a third gender. Both Cleaver and Wild were critical of the fact that all the agency of the film was driven by Genesis P Orridge of Psychic TV, with his wife Lady Jaye’s contribution being significantly mute. Similarly, Cleaver recalled how irritated she was on watching When Punk Broke, a documentary featuring the band Sonic Youth’s tour of Europe in 1991. ‘Thurston Moore just talks and talks’ she says, whilst Kim Gordon, Moore’s wife and bass player ‘says practically nothing. I just could not watch it in the end’.
Punk was a moment when everything changed for women in music, however it is only perhaps in the last 10 years that the voices of those revolutionary women active in the movement are increasingly being rediscovered by latter day feminists and heard, though books, films and talks, such as this one at the British Library.
Vivien Goldman music journalist, documentarian, former member of new-wave bands Chantage and The Flying Lizards and now Adjunct Professor teaching Punk was the talk’s eminent convener. Describing her recently published memoir Revenge of the She Punks A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot, Goldman said ‘If it weren’t for punk I don’t know what my life would be. I am super thrilled that I came of age with punk. I wanted to write this book because people say that punk has become commodified, but it was in that moment that women finally found their voice and that punk spirt set fire to women around the world, with our work continuing to inspire women as far away as Columbia. The more revolutionary aspects of it were right here in London, making a new paradigm where the role of women was tremendously important’.
Explaining her fearlessness in dressing in outrageous fetish gear, ballet tutus and experimental makeup, Jordan said that she ‘always wanted to be a work of art’. In describing her journeys, thus attired, from her home in Seaford to London, she would ‘just avoid eye contact with the bemused commuters on the train. It was still a time when men whistled at you on the street and looked at you as a sex object’. Although Jordan claimed that ‘punk was a time of sexual liberation’ she also acknowledged that the gay world was still very much underground. Keen to applaud the role of gay clubs she said ‘In places like Tricky Dickies, which was a gay disco, I would feel most comfortable’. Punk for her was a time when she could be who she wanted to be, part of a community of people who ‘didn’t give a shit about what people thought of how you looked.’
It is easy to mythologise those times, yet all members of the panel admitted that aside from punk’s adoption of reggae, there were very few members from the BME communities visible within the movement. As Vivien Goldman stated ‘they had their own strong thing going on in reggae, perhaps this is why there were so few punks from those communities but this is also what makes Poly Styrene’s contribution all the more significant’
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, who sadly passed away in April 2011, was known by the stage name Poly Styrene. She was a British musician, singer-songwriter, and front-woman for the band X-Ray Spex. With a Somali father and Scottish/Irish mother, Poly was one of very few non-white punk musicians. Dayglo the Story of Poly Styrene is a book written by her daughter Celeste Bell in collaboration with Zoe Howe. With her un-ironed hair and braces, Poly did not fit into either a conventional mode of femininity nor punk archetype. Eschewing all stereotypical tropes Poly mixed twinsets with army helmets and designed her own clothes which she sold on a stall in Beaufort Market. Whether having a sly dig at bondage trousers in her rousing feminist anthem Oh Bondage Up Yours! or ironically singing 'I am a cliché', Poly was a true original who went on to join the Hare Krishna movement, making devotional music after she had left X Ray Spex. Vivien Goldman commented that ‘had she lived and continued to make devotional music I imagine that her music could have been seen in the same vein as Alice Coltrane.’
Speaking about the genesis of writing the book, Poly's daughter Celeste Bell said that for years she had many unopened boxes of her mum's stuff, ‘Diary entries from the 70s, notebooks, drawings, lyrics and letters’. For a long time Bell was not able to open these boxes, she was dealing with the grief of her mother’s death and also carrying out her request that her ashes be scattered into a holy river in India. It is only recently that Bell was able, with the help of Zoe Howe, to turn to her mother’s archive and publish the book which she wanted to be a ‘coffee table art book’. There is also to be a forthcoming documentary celebrating Poly’s life entitled I am a Cliché.
Jordan, who had been manager of Adam and the Ants, remembered Poly from when X-Ray Spex played gigs with the Ants, as ‘a modest yet very talented lady and a genuine person’. Goldman also remembered her as ‘a gentle person with no axe to grind. Poly was so unassuming yet one of the deepest artists we have’.
It is precisely in these descriptions of Poly Styrene as gentle and unassuming that I feel a more nuanced understanding of the majesty of She Punks lies. Both Poly and Jordan were around 19 at this time, Jordan herself for all her bravado still avoided eye contact with strangers on the train, Poly, we were told would get upset when the music press described her as not being conventionally attractive.
Revolutionary and provocative as these She Punks may have been they were still young women feeling the fear but doing it anyway, and for all the shy girls out there this might be more inspiring. Seeing past the pink hair and the outrageous clothes is the message that whatever you wear or look like, it’s the courage to do what you want to do in the way you want to do it; to be seen and heard, that is ultimately important.
Alex Michon
Queens of Punk: Poly Styrene and Jordan
Talk at the British Library, London
Vivien Goldman, Jordan, Celeste Bell, Cathi Unsworth & Zoe Howe
4 July 2019
Jordan and Cathi Unsworth, Defying Gravity Jordan’s Story (Omnibus Press, 2018)
Celeste Bell and Zoe Howe, Dayglo the Poly Styrene Story (Omnibus Press, 2019)
Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She Punks A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot (Omnibus Press, 2019)
It is easy to mythologise those times, yet all members of the panel admitted that aside from punk’s adoption of reggae, there were very few members from the BME communities visible within the movement. As Vivien Goldman stated ‘they had their own strong thing going on in reggae, perhaps this is why there were so few punks from those communities but this is also what makes Poly Styrene’s contribution all the more significant’
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, who sadly passed away in April 2011, was known by the stage name Poly Styrene. She was a British musician, singer-songwriter, and front-woman for the band X-Ray Spex. With a Somali father and Scottish/Irish mother, Poly was one of very few non-white punk musicians. Dayglo the Story of Poly Styrene is a book written by her daughter Celeste Bell in collaboration with Zoe Howe. With her un-ironed hair and braces, Poly did not fit into either a conventional mode of femininity nor punk archetype. Eschewing all stereotypical tropes Poly mixed twinsets with army helmets and designed her own clothes which she sold on a stall in Beaufort Market. Whether having a sly dig at bondage trousers in her rousing feminist anthem Oh Bondage Up Yours! or ironically singing 'I am a cliché', Poly was a true original who went on to join the Hare Krishna movement, making devotional music after she had left X Ray Spex. Vivien Goldman commented that ‘had she lived and continued to make devotional music I imagine that her music could have been seen in the same vein as Alice Coltrane.’
Speaking about the genesis of writing the book, Poly's daughter Celeste Bell said that for years she had many unopened boxes of her mum's stuff, ‘Diary entries from the 70s, notebooks, drawings, lyrics and letters’. For a long time Bell was not able to open these boxes, she was dealing with the grief of her mother’s death and also carrying out her request that her ashes be scattered into a holy river in India. It is only recently that Bell was able, with the help of Zoe Howe, to turn to her mother’s archive and publish the book which she wanted to be a ‘coffee table art book’. There is also to be a forthcoming documentary celebrating Poly’s life entitled I am a Cliché.
Jordan, who had been manager of Adam and the Ants, remembered Poly from when X-Ray Spex played gigs with the Ants, as ‘a modest yet very talented lady and a genuine person’. Goldman also remembered her as ‘a gentle person with no axe to grind. Poly was so unassuming yet one of the deepest artists we have’.
It is precisely in these descriptions of Poly Styrene as gentle and unassuming that I feel a more nuanced understanding of the majesty of She Punks lies. Both Poly and Jordan were around 19 at this time, Jordan herself for all her bravado still avoided eye contact with strangers on the train, Poly, we were told would get upset when the music press described her as not being conventionally attractive.
Revolutionary and provocative as these She Punks may have been they were still young women feeling the fear but doing it anyway, and for all the shy girls out there this might be more inspiring. Seeing past the pink hair and the outrageous clothes is the message that whatever you wear or look like, it’s the courage to do what you want to do in the way you want to do it; to be seen and heard, that is ultimately important.
Alex Michon
Queens of Punk: Poly Styrene and Jordan
Talk at the British Library, London
Vivien Goldman, Jordan, Celeste Bell, Cathi Unsworth & Zoe Howe
4 July 2019
Jordan and Cathi Unsworth, Defying Gravity Jordan’s Story (Omnibus Press, 2018)
Celeste Bell and Zoe Howe, Dayglo the Poly Styrene Story (Omnibus Press, 2019)
Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She Punks A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot (Omnibus Press, 2019)
Beautiful writing as always. The last paragraph is perfect!
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