POLY STYRENE- RIP

according to various Facebook postings and OC WEEKLY, UK punk icon/legend
POLY STYRENE passed away today.




The X-ray Spex's singer, whose real name is Marian Joan Elliott-Said, was diagnosed with cancer two months ago. She just released her solo album Generation Indigo in March.

Poly Styrene is 53, same age as moi...... if this is true, it is the end of punk rock. another nail in the coffin.




UPDATE- it has been confirmed to be true. our punk rock heroine has subcumbed to the modern age, like so many before, and unfortunately many more to come. RIP- ICON- RIP.......

Poly Styrene was the stage name of Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011),
a British musician, song-writer and singer, most notably in the pioneering punk rock band X-Ray Spex.

(IDENTITY)

Poly Styrene was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a British (Scots-Irish) legal secretary.
Her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Poly was 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 in a stream and had to be treated for septicaemia.
In 1976 she released a reggae single "Silly Billy" as Mari Elliot. Later that year, after seeing the Sex Pistols, she was inspired to form the punk band X-Ray Spex.


(I AM A POSEUR)

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 felt that getting out of the public eye was good for her. She was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1991.

(WORLD TURNED DAYGLO)

Poly is best known for her vocal performances for X-Ray Spex. She has been described by Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk" who, because she wore braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock star, sported a gaudy Dayglo wardrobe, and was of mixed race, was "one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female".
Stumbling upon a very early gig by the Sex Pistols live on Hastings Pier, playing a set of cover songs, performing to three people, Poly and two language students from Sweden, she was so inspired by this that she put an ad in the paper for ‘young punx who want to stick it together’ to form a band.

(GERM- FREE ADOLESCENCE)

Poly recorded a solo album, Translucence, in 1980. The album abandoned X-Ray Spex's loud guitar work for a quieter and more jazzy sound that anticipated the 1990s dance band Everything But the Girl.

In 1983, she was initiated into the Hare Krishna movement and recorded at their recording studios while living as a devotee in the Bhaktivedanta Manor.

In 2007, Poly was invited to the Concrete Jungle festival in Camber Sands, where she and the gathering's organizer, Symond Lawes, agreed to initiate a 30-year celebration of X-Ray Spex's seminal debut album, Germ Free Adolescents. They decided to hold a live show at the Camden Roundhouse, which was a sell-out event on 6 September 2008. A live album/DVD of this event, Live @ The Roundhouse London 2008, was released in November 2009 on The Year Zero label by Future Noise Music.
Earlier in 2008, Styrene made a guest appearance at the 30th anniversary concert of Rock Against Racism in Victoria Park, London, doing a single song, "Oh Bondage Up Yours", with guest musicians Drew McConnell (of Babyshambles and Helsinki) and 'Flash' David Wright playing saxophone.
That same year, she dueted with Goldblade's John Robb on a remix of Goldblades's "City Of Christmas Ghosts".
In March 2009, Styrene joined other members of PRS for Music in criticizing Google for allegedly not paying their a fair share of royalties to musicians. This followed Google's removal of millions of videos from YouTube because of a royalties dispute with the organization.

On 29 October 2010, NME.com announced that Poly Styrene was to release a solo album titled Generation Indigo, produced by Martin Glover (aka Youth from Killing Joke), in March 2011. She released a free download of "Black Christmas" in November 2010. "Black Christmas" featured and was written in collaboration with Poly's daughter, Celeste. It was inspired by the killing spree in Los Angeles instigated by a man dressed as Santa Claus.

(BLACK CHRISTMAS)

Poly Styrene announced "Virtual Boyfriend" as the first single from her new album Generation Indigo via Spinner Music.


(VIRTUAL BOYFREIND)

Styrene described herself as "an observer, not a suffering artist writing from tortured experiences. I was playing with words and ideas. Having a laugh about everything, sending it up."
She lived in St Leonards, East Sussex.

Styrene's daughter Celeste Bell-Dos Santos is the frontwoman for the music group Debutant Disco based in Madrid, Spain.

In February 2011, in an interview published in The Sunday Times magazine, which largely focused on her past and present relationship with her daughter Celeste, Poly Styrene revealed that she had been treated for breast cancer.

She died of cancer on 25 April 2011.

thanks to syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent.