Scream of the Week

After last week's existential bellow, I thought it would be a good idea to get a little more traditional with the screaming. Starting with the first cry of the title sans band, Poly Styrene lets forth a a continuous, adolescent, slightly whiny scream of defiance and anger for the entire performance of "Oh, Bondage, Up Yours" that is more punk than punk.

With the passing of some 30 years since this record was made, it's pretty easy to hear X Ray Spex as classic early British punk, but in many ways the band were a scene unto themselves. The Ramones and the Sex Pistols both excelled in a kind of bratty, sarcastic shock tactic that was really at the core of a lot of early punk, celebrating child abuse ("Beat on the brat with a baseball bat"), tearing down idols with biting sarcasm ("God save the Queen. We mean it, man!"), even celebrating Nazism with a shallow, meaningless, our-parents-are-going-to-HATE-this nihilism (I won't offend readers by posting the image here, but I will post the link and let you decide - this is Siouxsie Sioux in her usual club hopping outfit circa 1975 or so: http://images.newstatesman.com/articles/2008/1026/026_p22.2.jpg). But there is no winking here: Poly Styrene, at the time she recorded "Some say little girls should be seen and not heard," was a little girl trying desperately to be seen and heard. Instead of terrorizing the old guard with the threat that she might be trouble, she's trying to BE trouble, to really break the shackles of English polite society. It's barely even a metaphor.

Saying it better than I can, from some documentary I haven't seen but need to track down soon: