On April 25th, 2011, Marianne Elliot-Said, better known to the world as Poly Styrene — the singer for classic UK punk rock band X-Ray Spex — died after a bout with breast cancer. Her third solo album, Generation Indigo, was released to shocked fans the following day. X-Ray Spex has stood the test of time and taste to stand out from the English punk rock mid-late ’70s era. Their initial handful of singles and debut album – Germ Free Adolescents – some 16 songs total – still stand as strong statements in a field of often now-faded thrashers.
So why was Poly Styrene awesome? She was a chubby, mixed-race (Somali/Scottish-Irish) teenage girl with braces in awkward, brightly colored clothes who could barely hold on to the tune. And despite the mentions of this by the critics of the time and later, and the insistence that she was the antithesis of a rock band front person, she was, in fact, the perfect front person for X-Ray Spex. She was just awesome. What she did was brilliant, and it was popular. X-Ray Spex were a chart success in the late ’70s: they were on Top of the Pops, and recorded sessions for John Peel.
Poly would go on to release some very different solo material shortly after X-Ray Spex broke up the first time around, before vanishing into a Krishna-tinged haze for a bit. X-Ray Spex re-emerged in the mid-’90s to release the little known album Conscious Consumer. The Spex did not get far after that after Poly was run over by a fire engine. Poly came back strong during the last decade with two solo albums, an X-Ray Spex reunion (the Roundhouse reunion show was released on CD/DVD in late 2009) and the holiday singles “City of Christmas Ghosts” with Goldblade in 2008 and “Black Christmas” in 2010. She will be much missed.
X-Ray Spex Live at the Roundhouse, London in 2008.
Revisit and remember Poly:
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