X Ray Spex
Oh Bondage Up Yours!

Punk promised that you could become a new person. You could live a new life in a new world—and living in it required a new name.

It was the end of 1976 in London when 15-year-old saxophone student Susan Whitby responded to an ad placed by an aspiring "punk" band in the now-defunct Melody Maker.

The band turned out to be X-Ray Spex, led by a Poly Styrene, who had left "Marion Elliott" on the sidewalk. Susan Whitby became Lora Logic.

This is what Google Translate can do when left to its own devices.

I love it to death like that, so I won’t change a thing...

Really, it’s perfect...

And that business of the new name is one of punk’s keys: Johnny Rotten, Captain Sensible...illusion of freedom and irony to withstand the crazy (and for a moment so real) attempt to say the impossible...

The impossible is a simple thing, but, precisely, impossible...

That was punk... But I completely missed it; I was late to the party.

I was little, I belonged to a prog/singer-songwriter crowd, and my idea of rock was somewhere between Edoardo Bennato and "Prisencolinensinainciusol".

Yes, all right, there was that time, during Carnival, when Maria Elena did her makeup like Bowie on the “Aladdin Sane” cover...

But she didn’t even know who Bowie was; she’d seen a photo in a magazine, liked it, and off she went.

But we did know...he was, in order of appearance, a buffoon, a Nazi jerk, and a f**got.

But we didn’t say anything to her; she was really very (very!) pretty.

Then there was the vampire. A guy who, even though he went to Communist youth camps, did things like walking on school roofs or parked cars...

But he was preparing to become a cross between a dandy and a mod, not a punk...and among his readings was even "In Praise of the Tie..."

Anyway, I saw my first punks in Parma in seventy-nine at an Iggy Pop concert...

Yes, Iggy Pop...I had made some progress, you’ll admit...

And anyway, I’m one of those who heard the P.I.L. before the Pistols.

And besides, I’m a Syd Barrett fan...What's that got to do with it?

It’s got everything to do with it. "I’ve never met a single punk who didn’t like Syd Barrett," wrote Rob Chapman one day. What’s special about this phrase? That the punks were onto something and had taste. And even if they unjustly hated most of the sixties kitsch, Syd Barrett was Syd Barrett, end of story.

So, back in those years, I was starting to listen to music. And if initially, the punks seemed ugly, dirty, and mean to me, their incredible taste gradually won me over. Not so much, or not only, their music, but what they liked (Barrett, Bowie, Eno, Velvet Underground, Iggy) and that idea of urgency, spontaneity, and instinct.

In short, I love punk...but in reality, I know little about it...

I know the Pistols, of course. And I think they were great, really... And I believe that “Anarchy” is one of the most powerful and greatest songs ever.

And that very few things have reached Rotten’s sneer. Someone thought that all the heresies of the world converged into that sneer, and let’s admit it, it’s a bit too much.

But without that sneer, we would have missed many things. Starting with this "Oh bondage up yours," which is one of the greatest rock songs of all time (at least for me).

And I’m referring to both the 45 rpm, and the version recorded at the Roxy in the early months of ‘77, the one you can find in the legendary (yes, legendary!!!) live collective. where besides X-ray spex, Adverts, Wire, Buzzcocks plus other fabulous meteors appear...

The track is introduced by the mischievous childish voice of Poly Styrene, a different kind of punk girl (chubby, colorful clothes, strange headdresses, and braces): "Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard, but I say..."

Then a furious attack, with Lora Logic’s sax coming in like a derailing train.

Lora Logic, 16 years old, recently runaway from home, with only the regret of not bringing the little pink schoolgirl dress that would have looked so good on stage.

Just before starting with X-ray spex, she had played for two weeks with a folk group...

Do you want some legend? Here it is: "At the Roxy, Lora Logic wanders through Poly Styrene’s songs as if she had never performed them before and would never perform them again. She seems to drift away, yet she manages to push the music to its center, at once totally lost and incredibly confident." (Greil Marcus)

Well, I assure you, that’s the effect...

Previously, the only decent sax in rock (don’t tell me Van der Graaf, that’s not rock) I had heard was only in Fun House by the Stooges.

And of course the shrill, powerful, unruly voice of Poly Styrene...

Then another key: about our Lora Logic, Google Translate gives me something like "raised the raven and the dove together with X-ray spex".

But this time it’s me who read it wrong...it was written horn and dove...

But I think it couldn’t be better said than raven and dove...

The problem is this: X-ray spex at the Roxy are sublime, on the forty-five less so, on thirty-three, where Lora has already left, even less.

This goes for the Pistols as well...listen to the chaos of the performances and listen to the record, there’s no comparison...

Punk lasted only a few months...

And already contained within itself, like all the most interesting things, its own destruction...

And it will never happen again...in fact, pretend it never happened...

(and anyway also the flip side, "I’m a cliché," is fabulous...and so is the album)

(and anyway 2, Lora Logic will form the Essential Logic, but that deserves a separate discussion)

In any case, nothing happened...even though punk promised that you could become a new person...and that you could live a new life in a new world...