Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

[HunnyPi007 AT aol.com]

Thanks for the tip, Larry-bob! Nice to hear Poly Styrene singing again. Not 
all the excited by the song, but I'll give it some more listens and check out 
her Youth-produced album., "Generation Indigo," that she has coming out in 
March.

Yes, Poly was a Hare Krishna follower for a while. Dunno about now. FWIW, she 
also put out "a New Age solo album" in 2004. But, yeah, Aileen, that video is 
a bit of a mishmash. It's intent could definitely be clearer and the video 
could lose many edits--seems like a not very sophisticated 80s video... 

Just learned this from Wikipedia about Polly:

"As a teenager, she was something of a 'barefoot hippie'. At age 15, she ran 
away from home with just £3 in her pocket, and hitchhiked from one music 
festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She thought of this as a 
challenge to survive. The adventure ended when, possibly hallucinating, she 
stepped on a rusty nail while bathing naked in a stream and had to be treated 
for septicaemia.

"In 1978, after a gig in Doncaster, Poly had a vision of a pink light in the 
sky and felt objects crackling when she touched them. Thinking she was 
hallucinating, her mother took her to the hospital where Poly was 
misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, sectioned, and told she would never work 
again. Although she missed playing at the time, in hindsight, Poly feels that 
getting out of the public eye was good for her. She was eventually diagnosed 
with bipolar disorder"

Wikipedia also informs that:

"Black Christmas features, and was written in collaboration with Poly's 
daughter, Celeste and was inspired by the Killing spree in Los Angeles 
instigated by a man dressed as Santa Claus."

And also that: "Styrene's daughter Celeste Bell - Dos Santos is the 
frontwoman for the music group Debutant Disco based in Madrid, Spain."--Has 
anyone here heard DD?

Additionally: "In March 2009, Styrene took part in the inaugural Instigate 
Debate night. The night's theme was modern day consumerism." Perhaps her 
stance on consumerism  informs her new video.

Typically,
Lydia

On Nov 18, 2010, at 7:33 PM, Aileen Brophy wrote:

> Nice!  Just curious, does anyone know if Poly is a Christian?  (I think she 
> was a Hare Krishna at one point, so definitely a spiritual seeker of some 
> sort.)  Just wondering because the video  has some pretty heavy crucifixion 
> imagery 
> (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ML0cD0REC4Y#!) and 
> I can't really tell if it's pro- or anti- (or maybe it's neither!)
> 
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Larry-bob Roberts <larrybob AT gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> I found out Poly Styrene has a Twitter account, and has a free
> download called "Black Christmas"
> 
> http://twitter.com/poly_styrene
> http://www.poly-styrene.com/