{"id":26656,"date":"2011-10-22T17:51:34","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T21:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=26656"},"modified":"2011-10-22T17:51:34","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T21:51:34","slug":"saturday-night-video-poly-styrene-and-x-ray-spex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2011\/10\/22\/saturday-night-video-poly-styrene-and-x-ray-spex\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night Video: Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex (from &quot;The Punk Years&quot;)\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2e_aaoqwZ2Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I posted on <a href=\"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/2011\/10\/01\/saturday-night-video-riot-grrrls\/\" target=\"_blank\">riot grrrl<\/a> a couple of weeks ago, so I don&#8217;t want to push my luck, but I only heard this week that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Poly_Styrene\" target=\"_blank\">Poly Styrene <\/a>of X-Ray Spex died of cancer in April at the age of 53. Poly was one of the few women who were part of the English punk offensive when it hit North America in the mid-1970s like a blast of hot, sour air from an unventilated pub.<\/p>\n<p>Above is an excellent segment about Poly from the British documentary, <em>The Punk Years. <\/em>If you don&#8217;t know her, it is a pleasant and insightful four minutes of video.<\/p>\n<p>After the jump is a do-it-yourself, live-in-someone&#8217;s-basement performance of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oh_Bondage_Up_Yours!\" target=\"_blank\">Oh Bondage, Up Yours!<\/a>&#8221; from 1977, when Poly was 19. (This single was followed a year later by the band&#8217;s debut album with the inspired title,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Germ_Free_Adolescents\" target=\"_blank\">Germ Free Adolescents<\/a>, <\/em>the best cut from which, &#8220;The Day the World Turned Day-Glo,&#8221; is also after the jump.)\u00a0Poly had a classical vocal training, but she used her voice to be noisily and cheerfully insolent about a world of mindless consumption and the human and environmental waste it produces.<\/p>\n<p>(Executing a lateral move in pertinence, here&#8217;s Joe Fasler in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2011\/10\/how-zombies-and-superheroes-conquered-highbrow-fiction\/246847\/?single_page=true\">The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>\u00a0on the horizontal transfer between &#8220;high&#8221; and &#8220;low&#8221; culture.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA\">httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Oh Bondage, Up Yours&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xjVVhJ-INWQ\">httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xjVVhJ-INWQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The Day the World Turned Day-Glo&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I clambered over mounds and mounds<br \/>\nOf polystyrene foam<br \/>\nAnd fell into a swimming pool<br \/>\nFilled with fairy snow<\/p>\n<p><em>Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And watched the world turn day-glo<br \/>\nYou know you know<br \/>\nThe world turned day-glo you know<\/p>\n<p>I wrenched the nylon curtains back<br \/>\nAs far as they would go<br \/>\nAnd peered through perspex window panes<br \/>\nAt the acrylic road<\/p>\n<p><em>Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I drove my polypropolene<br \/>\nCar on wheels of sponge<br \/>\nThen pulled into a Wimpy bar<br \/>\nTo have a rubber bun<\/p>\n<p><em>Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The X-rays were penetrating<br \/>\nThrough the latex breeze<br \/>\nSynthetic fibre see-thru leaves<br \/>\nFell from the rayon trees<\/p>\n<p><em>Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted on riot grrrl a couple of weeks ago, so I don&#8217;t want to push my luck, but I only heard this week that Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex died of cancer in April at the age of 53. Poly was one of the few women who were part of the English punk offensive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[123,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture","category-saturday-night"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Saturday Night Video: Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2011\/10\/22\/saturday-night-video-poly-styrene-and-x-ray-spex\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saturday Night Video: Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I posted on riot grrrl a couple of weeks ago, so I don&#8217;t want to push my luck, but I only heard this week that Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex died of cancer in April at the age of 53. 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