I clambered over mounds and mounds
Of polystyrene foam
And fell into a swimming pool
Filled with fairy snow
And watched the world turn day-glo
you know you know
The world turned day-glo you know
I wrenched the nylon curtains back
As far as they would go
And peered through perspex window panes
At the acrylic road
I drove my polypropolene
Car on wheels of sponge
Then pulled into a wimpy bar
To have a rubber bun
The X-rays were penetrating
Through the laytex breeze
Synthetic fibre see-thru leaves
Fell from the rayon trees
X-Ray Spex are an English punk band from London formed in 1976.
Initially, the band featured singer Poly Styrene (born Marian Joan Elliott) on vocals, Jak Airport (Jack Stafford) on guitars, Paul Dean on bass, Paul ‘B. P.’ Hurding on drums, and Lora Logic (born Susan Whitby) on saxophone. This latter instrument was an atypical addition to the standard punk instrumental line-up, and became one of the group’s most distinctive features.
X-Ray Spex’s other distinctive musical element was Poly Styrene’s voice, which has been variously described as “effervescently discordant” and “powerful enough to drill holes through sheet metal”. As Mari Elliot, Poly had released a reggae single for GTO Records in 1976, “Silly Billy”, which had not charted. Born in 1957 in Brixton, of Somali-English parentage, Poly Styrene became the group’s public face, and remains one of the most memorable front-women to emerge from the punk movement. Not conventionally attractive, she wore thick braces on her teeth and once stated that “I said that I wasn’t a sex symbol and that if anybody tried to make me one I’d shave my head tomorrow”. She later actually did at Johnny Rotten’s flat prior to a concert at Victoria Park. Mark Paytress recounts in the liner notes for the 2002 compilation, The Anthology, that Jah Wobble, Rotten’s longtime friend and bassist for his post-punk venture PiL, once described Styrene as a “strange girl who often talked of hallucinating. She freaked John out.” Rotten, known more for his outspoken dislike of things than actual praise and admiration, recently said of X-Ray Spex in a retrospective punk documentary, “Them, they came out with a sound and attitude and a whole energy - it was just not relating to anything around it - superb.”
X-Ray Spex existed from mid-1976 to 1979, during which time they released five singles - “Oh Bondage, Up Yours”, “Identity”, “The Day the World Turned Day-Glo”, “Germ Free Adolescents”, and “Highly Inflammable” - and one album, Germ Free Adolescents. The album and title single reached 30 and 19 in their respective charts, although “Oh Bondage, Up Yours” is regarded as their most enduring artifact, both as a piece of music and as a sort of proto-grrrl catch-phrase. Opening with the line, “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard - well I think, oh bondage, up yours!”, the song could be interpreted as a premonition of the riot grrrl movement a good 15 years later, although Styrene herself insists it was more intended as an anti-consumerist/anti-capitalist jingle, and wasn’t exclusively feminist in nature. The song was not originally on the album, although later CD releases added it as the final track.
The group played a fortnight’s residency at New York’s CBGB’s, even though Germ Free Adolescents was not released in America until 1992. Exhausted by touring, Poly Styrene left the band in 1979 to release a solo album, Translucence, before joining the Hare Krishna movement (as did Logic, who left the band aged 16 in 1977 to form a new group called Essential Logic).
Without Styrene, the group lost its momentum and split up. Hurding and London went on to form Classix Nouveaux, while Paul Dean and Rudi Thompson went on to form Agent Orange with Anthony (Tex) Doughty, who later become a founding member of Transvision Vamp.
-Wikipedia.