Sunday 1 May 2011

X-Ray Spex' Poly Styrene, aka Marianne Joan Elliot-Said, RIP.



Bank holiday weekends are usually relatively quiet ones on the blog, so we try not to get too theoretical and wordy, as Damo and Ivor (previous post) will attest.

So perhaps it's a good time to celebrate original punk band X-Ray Spex, featuring the unique vocal talents of Poly Styrene.  Poly was a true punk and founder of her pioneering band, who were unusual in terms of their genre in having a prominent saxophone sound. 

Sadly, Poly died of cancer last Tuesday, aged 53.  I was in my early teens when she was in her pomp, but when I heard my first X-Ray Spex record (The Day the World Turned Day-glo / I am a Poseur) I knew I hadn't heard anything quite like it before.

I'm going to have to make some kind of tenuous Irish connection in order to put this one up on Gombeen Nation.   So, erm.........

Let's have a song called Identity -  a subject close to the Irish heart and something that led us to see many a crisis in our history.

Well, I did say it was tenuous.

RIP Poly.

xxx



Back to Gombeen Nation main page

3 comments:

Ella said...

Hi GM, yes Poly was great and may she RIP. I'm only getting to read this now, what with the Britsh Royal Wedding and the Beatification of Himself, I've been very busy!

Anonymous said...

choooooonn!!!!(tune) as we agressivley sqwak down here in limerick when something agrees with the ears . Identity crisis for us indeed , not wanting to have to deal with the queen mum but yet enthralled by will and kates wedding , and then will confuses it all more by wearing the irish guards uniform on the big day , which features the Harp of Ireland, accompanied by the regiment’s forage cap, which carries the eight-pointed insignia of the Star of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick, featuring the regiment’s motto of Quis Separabit? (Who Shall Separate Us).Il tell you who william ,the gombeenmen will seperate us when we all have to emigrate because of them .

The Gombeen Man said...

Yes, respect to Poly, Ella, Anon.

True Anon... and emigration has been a fact of this so-called republic since 1922... with just a brief interruption around the Celtic Cod era.

And where do most Irish people emigrate to? The land of HRH, who is attracting such vitriol.