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I didn't realise how ill Poly Styrene was until Stephen McCauley sent me the link to the news story this morning about her death. She was 53, and a bright enough personality that the daily newspapers will be able to run the photos of Poly with the braces on her teeth and highlight some of the song titles. But I want the papers to print page upon page of how great her songs were - and they were her songs, written at the age of 20 when she started X Ray Spex. She invented a world of consumer weirdness through Germ Free Adolescence, Warrior In Woolworths and The Day The World Turned Day-Glo.
I mean, where did a title like 'Oh Bondage, Up Yours !' come from ?
No one really came close to the songs or the look of Poly's Spex. I remember being on a bus in London in 1978, my first visit to the city, and seeing someone sitting opposite me with an ID badge advertising, what else, 'Identity' , the band's single that summer. What a great place London is, I thought,Ìý where everyone loves X Ray Spex. Maybe they didn't then, but they should now.