Germ Free Adolescents

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Thompson, Dave (2000). Punk . Ontario: Collector's Guide Publication. p.102. ISBN 1-896522-27-0. It was a tremendous record… Whatever else X-Ray Spex might achieve, Oh Bondage had already done more than most groups manage in an entire career Christgau, Robert (26 February 1979). "Christgau's Consumer Guide". The Village Voice . Retrieved 23 October 2020.

Strong, M.C. (2003). The Great Indie Discography . Edinburgh: Canongate. p.184. ISBN 1-84195-335-0. In July of 1976, Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, a Scottish-Somali girl from London’s inner-city Brixton district, celebrated her 19th birthday by going to see the Sex Pistols. Marianne dropped out of school at age 15, and had spent the last few years drifting between music festivals, crash pads, and recording studios in an attempt to get her music career off of the ground. She had even released a single, a novelty reggae song called “ Silly Billy,” with Donna Summer’s U.K. distributor, GTO Records. But she was frustrated—frustrated with not being taken seriously as a musician, and frustrated by the racism, sexism, and classism that seemed to make achieving her dreams impossible.Hiljaiset Levyt: PUNKNET 77 - 100 Best Punk LP's". Hiljaiset.sci.fi. 4 March 1996. Archived from the original on 22 November 2007 . Retrieved 29 June 2014. Styrene was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, and was told it had spread to her lungs and spine. Despite undergoing treatment, she gave numerous interviews in recent months to promote her latest solo album, Generation Indigo. In an interview with the Guardian in March, she was described as "ironically upbeat" in spite of her health. Dolan, Jon (May 2001). "The 50 Most Essential Punk Records – 5. X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents". Spin. Vol.17, no.5. p.108 . Retrieved 23 October 2020.

Staunton, Terry (May 2009). "X-Ray Spex – Germ Free Adolescents: Deluxe Edition". Record Collector. No.362 . Retrieved 5 September 2016. Hiljaiset Levyt: PUNKNET 77 - X-Ray Spex". Hiljaiset.sci.fi. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012 . Retrieved 29 June 2014. The album was not a large commercial success, and never charted, however it was critically praised, with the prolific Robert Christgau of the Village Voice regretting the fact that Poly Styrene’s “irresistible color” was not released in the US, rather released only in Britain by label EMI. The album was also produced by Falcon Stuart, who also housed all the band’s members, advertised, and even photographed for them. Stuart would also go on to spawn Adam Ant’s career, and others. The moment I heard that Marianne Elliott-Said, AKA Poly Styrene, had died, I was at band practice. We put on X-Ray Spex and jumped around, screaming along to Identity, Oh Bondage Up Yours! and Germ Free Adolescents. On that day in 2011 we lost one of punk’s greatest heroes and one of the few who really looked and sounded like me. She broke the mould of UK punk stereotypes. She was brown, chubby, weirdly dressed and had braces on her teeth. Even in an era when quirky, abrasive style was all the rage, she stood out. X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents". Uncut. p.132. [T]he heat and intensity of this debut has never been repeated. Nearly 30 years after it was recorded, Germfree Adolescents is as timely as ever.

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BOFH: Oh Bondage Up Yours! (article demonstrating the use of the song title as a catchphrase)". The Register . Retrieved 23 May 2008. In keeping with its subject, the new film Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche is not your average music documentary. It shows Poly struggling to deal with fame at a young age, disbanding X-Ray Spex and abandoning the limelight to live in a Hare Krishna commune. It thoughtfully reflects on themes of creativity, identity, spirituality, motherhood, loss and mental health. The central voice is that of Poly’s daughter, Celeste Bell, confronting the difficulty of mourning the loss of a mother who had been so loved, yet so complicated. Through archival footage and interviews, the film examines the uneasy line between how the music press categorised and celebrated Poly Styrene as a rebel and a figurehead, overlooking the vulnerability of Marianne Elliott-Said. a b Larkin, Colin (2002). Virgin Encyclopedia of 70s Music . London: Virgin Books. p.503. ISBN 1-85227-947-8.

In late September 1977, a studio recording of "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" was released as a single. Today, the 45 is regarded as their most enduring artefact, both as a piece of music and as a sort of proto-grrrl catchphrase. [26] [27] Opening with the spoken/screamed line, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think— oh, bondage, up yours!", the song could be interpreted as a premonition of the riot grrrl movement 15 years later, although Styrene herself insists it was more intended as an anti-consumerist/ anti-capitalist jingle, and was not exclusively feminist in nature. Dimery, Robert, ed. (2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (revised and updateded.). Universe Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7893-2074-2. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 354 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. [23] Cover versions and cultural references [ edit ] Poly Styrene died of spinal and breast cancer on 25 April 2011 in East Sussex, England, at the age of 53. [38] Documentary and biography [ edit ] In 1994, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music named Germfree Adolescents the eighth best punk album of all time. [19] Seven years later, in May 2001, Spin magazine ranked the album at number five on its "50 Most Essential Punk Records" list. [20] In March 2003, Mojo magazine ranked the record at number 19 on its "Top 50 Punk Albums" list. [21] Germfree Adolescents is listed in the reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. [22]In an age of burgeoning A.I. and rampant outsourcing, the sci-fi poetry of “Genetic Engineering” is even more prophetic, as Poly declares that “genetic engineering could create the perfect race… could exterminate/introducing worker clones/as our subordinated slave.” Her grim propositions have lost none of their daunting edge. Punks were screaming “NO FUTURE,” and fair enough, but Poly went further, deeper; her songs dared to imagine just how bad hellish normalization could be. And here we are. Du Noyer, Paul (1998). Encyclopedia of Albums: 1,000 Best-Ever Albums . Bristol: Dempsey Parr. p.89. ISBN 1-84084-031-5. They aimed their fluorescent bile at the vapidity and sterility of the modern world, specifically the increasingly consumerist nature of society, in classic sax-drenched anthems Live @ the Roundhouse London 2008 (November 2009: Year Zero, YZCDDVD01); CD and DVD of live recordings from September 2008 MercuryPrize (15 September 2014). "FKA twigs Q&A – 2014 Mercury Prize". Archived from the original on 13 December 2021 – via YouTube.

Christgau, Robert (26 April 2011). "Poly Styrene, Punk Pioneer, Dies at 53". NPR . Retrieved 23 October 2020. The Guardian (November 2007). 1,000 Albums To Hear Before You Die . London. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link)X-Ray Spex played at 'Front Row Festival', a three-week event at the Hope and Anchor, Islington in late November and early December 1977. [24] This resulted in the band's inclusion, alongside the likes of Wilko Johnson, 999, The Only Ones, the Saints, The Stranglers, and XTC, on a double album of recordings from the festival. Then, in February 1978, before the release of their second single, X-Ray Spex recorded the first of two sessions for John Peel at BBC Radio 1. [31] Their profile was further enhanced by playing a fortnight's residency at New York's CBGB's, even though the album Germ Free Adolescents was not released in America until 1992. On 28 April 2008, Poly Styrene gave a performance of "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" in front of more than 10,000 people at the Love Music Hate Racism free concert in Victoria Park, East London. [ citation needed] a b c Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p.612. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.