{"id":3670,"date":"2011-04-26T10:58:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T17:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimatli.org\/blog\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2011-04-27T22:14:18","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T05:14:18","slug":"poly-styrene-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimatli.org\/blog\/?p=3670","title":{"rendered":"Poly Styrene RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nPoly Styrene’s Talk of Toytown<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Poly Styrene<\/a> (Marianne Elliot Said), singer and songwriter for the 70s punk band X-Ray Spex passed away yesterday from breast cancer<\/a>. I don’t often feel emotional about the deaths of celebrities and musicians but X-Ray Spex and Poly Styrene were such a looming musical presence in my teenage years that I can’t help but feeling the loss of this amazing musician.<\/p>\n

I spent a good chunk of my early teenage years hunting down the music of X-Ray Spex. It’s not like nowadays where I find the most obscure songs, things I’ve been looking for for years, ready to download in a matter of minutes. In the 80s\/90s being a music lover required much more patience.<\/p>\n

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I went to Fairfax High School on Melrose in Hollywood. All around my high school were record shops with owners who loved to price their rare vinyl in the double digits. Bleeker Bob’s was the worst, their prices were ridiculously high.\u00c2\u00a0 But they were the only shop where I’d ever seen my vinyl holy grail, Germ-Free Adolescents<\/em> by X-Ray Spex. After school, I’d wander over to the shop and gaze at the album hanging on the wall. It cost something like $50, an outrageous price, I thought. While standing at the counter admiring the album artwork, I’d often ask some stupid question to the guy behind the counter about the record and he would give me that “Buzz off kid, you’re bothering me” look. He knew I hadn’t the money.<\/p>\n

In the tenth grade I saw an odd boy on the bus to school wearing an X-Ray Spex t-shirt. I made friends with him and immediately developed a crush on the guy even though I knew he wasn’t into girls and even after he told me, he found the t-shirt in a pile of clothes at the second hand shop where he worked. “Will you give me your shirt? Pleeeeease?” I’d ask him all the time but he always answered with a firm ‘no’. Despite hanging out with a crew of Hollywood punks, he was the only person I knew that actually liked the band beside myself. I was a punk generation too late.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, I only really knew the song “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” <\/em>It was the X-Ray Spex performance in the documentary The Punk Rock Movie<\/a><\/span> DOA <\/em>where I remember first hearing the song. That’s when I first saw Poly Styrene and I was captivated by her style, by the crazy energy of the music and by her…color. She wasn’t White and if you are\/were are a punk rock kid of color you understand the significance.<\/p>\n