CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)

By: Miranda Mellis
August 13, 2020

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite punk songs, c. 1974–1983.

“OH BONDAGE! UP YOURS!” | X-RAY SPEX | 1977

In 1978, after playing a show in South Yorkshire, Poly Styrene had a vision. She saw a pink light in the sky and felt objects crackling when she touched them. There can be no better way to describe her singing: pink light crackling. The (old) soul of the X-Ray Spex, she was opera-trained, a songwriter for the punk feminist aeon — “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard,” she begins, campy saccharine, be-hatted, a teen in braces, “But I say… Oh Bondage! Up yours! 1, 2, 3, 4!”

To listen to her sing is to vibrate with the joy of integrally vocalizing (from voca, as in vocation, same root as vote) screaming, finally. Yelling and laughing, crying and decrying, talking and cursing, these mouthy actions are contiguous with each other, a continuum of soundings. The singer’s body jumps out of her throat, her shrieks un-constrain her head. A cunning laugh opens the face. The lit fuse of the mouth spits back, to refuse what refuses you, such as the received story of a girl’s virtue with its codes of erasure, pretense, and silences which disconnect her from knowledge, courage, reality, comedy — because yes, it’s all laughable.

The daughter of a Somali dock worker and a Scottish-Irish secretary, Poly Styrene sang entanglement, irony, satire — I live off you / And you live off me / And the whole world / Lives off of everybody / See we gotta be exploited / See we gotta be exploited / By somebody, by somebody, by somebody.

“Why Poly Styrene?” “Because it’s lightweight and disposable,” she replies with a bemused grin, “like pop stars.”

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CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020): Series introduction by Josh Glenn | Mimi Lipson on Flipper’s “Sex Bomb” | James Parker on The Jam’s “Going Underground” | Dan Fox on The Cramps’ “Human Fly” | Adrienne Crew on Bad Brains’ “I and I Survive” | Devin McKinney on Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” | Deb Chachra on The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” | Mark Kingwell on The Demics’ “New York City” | Jessamyn West on Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” | Douglas Wolk on The Homosexuals’ “Soft South Africans” | Josh Glenn on The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not L.A.” | Stephanie Burt on Sorry’s “Imaginary Friend” | Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd.’s “Public Image” | Miranda Mellis on X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” | Adam McGovern on The Clash’s “Washington Bullets” | Mandy Keifetz on Germs’ “Forming” | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sex Pistols’ “Problems” | Anthony Miller on The Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You” | Deborah Wassertzug on The Mekons’ “Where Were You?” | Tor Aarestad on Gang of Four’s “Return the Gift” | Marc Weidenbaum on The Pop Rivets’ “Dream of ’63” | David Smay on The Rezillos’ “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures” | Vanessa Berry on The Cure’s “So What” | Chelsey Johnson on The Slits’ “Typical Girls” | Lynn Peril on Crass’s “Smother Love” | Mike Watt on The Dils’ “You’re Not Blank”.

MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)

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