2023/4 Albums Thing 430 - X-Ray Spex “Germfree Adolescents”
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There is an argument to be made that of the first wave of Punk bands and their debut albums (in some cases their only album) that this is the best of them. I’m not claiming that it is, I’m just saying that that argument could be made. When you think of “Never Mind The Bollocks…”, “The Clash”, “Damned Damned Damned”, “In The City”, “Another Music In A Different Kitchen”, “The Scream”, “Crossing The Red Sea…”, “Generation X” well, “Germ Free Adolescents” is right up there with all of them.
In the summer of 1976, being excited by the new Punk scene that was happening in London after seeing the Sex Pistols in Hastings, Poly Styrene, or as she was known then MarionJoan Elliott-Said, placed an ad in the Melody Maker looking for
“YOUNG PUNX WHO WANT TO STICK IT TOGETHER”.
Marion/Poly had already released a single of her own earlier that year, a trite pop/reggae thing called “Silly Billy” on GTO Records which thankfully disappeared without a trace but will these days set you back around £100 for a 7”. She had seen what was going on with the Pistols and other early Punk bands in London and wanted to get involved.
Her advert brought to her guitarist Jak Airport (a close friend of the then Glam band Japan), bass player Paul Dean, drummer BP Hurding (who I met many years later when he was working as a drum tech for 10,000 Maniacs, a lovely fella) and initially 15 year old Sax player Susan Whitby aka Lora Logic. This line-up played their first gig after 6 rehearsals in manager Falcon Stuart’s living room, part of which (the gig not the rehearsals) can be heard on the compilation album “Live At The Roxy WC2 (Jan - Apr 77)”, a rather ramshackle careen through “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”. Publicity around that album led to a “residency” at the The Man in the Moon pub on the Kings Road in Chelsea, record company interest and ultimately them signing to Virgin Records for whom, on 30th September 1977, they released their debut single, “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”, just 6 months after playing their first gig.
A demure young girls voice intones “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, But I think…” and then Poly Styrene lets rip with “Oh bondage, up yours!…One-two-three-four!” followed by a rattling drum fill and the rest of the band crashing in, joined after 4 bars by Lora Logic’s piercing if rudimentary saxophone and Poly proclaiming
“Bind me, tie me, chain me to the wall, I wanna be a slave to you all
Oh bondage, up yours!, Oh bondage, no more…”
It’s not on this album but we bloody loved it and it deserves mention. Poly was just 20 at the time, shrieking a strident feminist anthem at us while at the same time pointing out the dangers of consumerism (a running theme in her songs). Spice Girls…Girl Power…PAH! they’d have wilted like spinach in Poly Styrene’s presence…though I suspect she might have had a grudging admiration for them.
As Lora Logic was only 15, still at school and the band was really just a hobby for her she left and was replaced by fan and male model (!) Rudi Thompson. He saw the band live regularly and when he heard Lora was leaving managed to say hello to Poly at a gig, told her he played sax and he was in. It’s Rudi that plays on this album and the Sax was an unusual (it was only really X-Ray Spex, Wolverhampton’s Neon Hearts and later The Ruts who used it in the Punk world) but integral part of the X-Ray Spex sound, a kind of Punk/Metal topped of with piercing saxophone.
Poly had a knack for pointing out and ridiculing the absurdities and dangers of the plastic, chemically enhanced, consumerist world we lived in, all while the band thundered along behind her. We’re surrounded by images of perfection that we can never hope to attain but this piece of plastic tat or chemically enhanced stuff can move you closer to that image of perfection, if you just buy it… and then someone might like you. Just listen to opening song "Art-I-Ficial" or the single "Identity", it's all in there.
“Identity is the crisis, can't you see ?…When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself ? Do you see yourself on the tv screen ? Do you see yourself in the magazine ? When you see yourself, does it make you scream ?”
The song titles tell a story of their own “I’m A Cliche”, “Genetic Engineering”, “I Live Off You”, the terminally groovy (just listen to that riff and tell me it’s not) “Iama Poseur”. The whole album builds toward its final track (and #23 chart hit), the towering plastic sci-fi nightmare that is “The Day The World Turned Day-Glo”. All Poly’s worst fears about the chemical/plastic world we live in come tumbling out in one terrifying fever dream of what we could (have ?) become. Their TOTP performance was incredible, this charging sax driven Punk/Metal assault on Thursday evening suburban living rooms with Poly grinning like a loon and dressed more like your Nan with a tea-cosy on her head than any Punk Rocker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKaxfc03Fqk)
“The X-rays were penetrating through the latex breeze, Synthetic fibre, see-through leaves fell from the rayon trees…”
We saw X-Ray Spex at Birmingham Odeon in December 1978 on the tour to support this album. They didn’t have a lot of material, the 12 tracks on this album plus a couple of B-sides (“I Am A Cliché” and “Age”) so their set wasn’t much longer than about 40 minutes. They went off for a time as people down the front were spitting at them (a disgusting side product of the Punk thing) but came back on, finished the set, went off and came back for an encore at which point Poly told us we haven’t got any more songs, so they just started the set again !
X-Ray Spex were a breath of air at the time and I still play this album regularly. Nothing I have written here has convinced me that this isn’t the best of of those debut albums…
Iama Poseur - https://youtu.be/JOS-8MlVl4I?si=laIW5WC0BuLQGtwt