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X-Ray Spex
Biography
One of the great English punk bands of the late '70s, there is only one thing wrong with the careers of X-Ray Spex and lead singer Poly Styrene -- they didn't record enough music. Formed in 1976 by school friends Marion Elliot (Styrene) and Susan Whitby (saxophonist Lora Logic), X-Ray Spex exploded onto the punk scene with one of the era's great singles, the feminist punk rallying cry "Oh Bondage, Up Yours." With Logic's sax stating the melody semi-tunefully and Jak Airport's guitar laying down a wash of distorted chords, Styrene's vocal, especially on the chorus, is a marvel. Along with the early Sex Pistols and Clash singles, this was one of punk rock's great moments.

So, too, was X-Ray Spex's debut LP, Germ Free Adolescents, which was great in spite of "Oh Bondage" not being on it (a situation that would be rectified with the 1993 CD reissue). Lora Logic was gone (to form Essential Logic), but her replacement, Rudi Thompson, played in as rudimentary a fashion, but stayed in tune a little more. The songs were guitar-driven punk-pop that combined outrage and aggression with a sense of alienation and disenfranchisement about rampant commercialism and an increasingly sterile and artificial world.
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