Siouxsie & the Banshees - The Scream

When I was nine my parents made the move from Nottingham to London and we found ourselves relocated to Richmond Upon Thames, right at the end of the District Line and on the fringes of suburbia. Thinking about the place still makes me shiver slightly with nostalgia because it's a truly beautiful part of the world and an idyllic setting to grow up in. Here's a picture of the railway station which was a stone's throw from our house and the entrance point via which we made our way to the High Street.

 

Unbeknownst to me, in inner London the first rumblings of the British punk rock movement were beginning to occur just as we arrived. I was utterly oblivious. Music was a peripheral part of my small world and would remain so until Top of the Pops became worth watching in the late 70s and I first started to develop a consciousness that all this stuff might actually be important.

 

I began to become  aware by the following year however because my sheltered, ten year old self first started to encounter the first punks on the streets of Richmond as the look and attitude rippled out towards suburbia. There was a narrow alleyway leading to the station pictured above and I can still recall the sense of fear I'd experience if  started down it only to see a couple of punks approaching from the other end.

 

It's difficult now that this look is so common and widespread and frankly almost clichéd that it was once something that could inspire fear and terror in society as a whole. I didn't understand at all of course but even as a ten year old, that tingle of fear was a realisation that something was taking place that was threatening and challenging. 

 

Now that this period has been so excessively poured over and documented it's difficult to get a proper perspective on the actual events and really only one thing can be said with any certainty. Punk changed things. 

 

The first punk record that made it's way into my collection was this one.

 

 

I bought it in the early 80s. I was a very late starter. Before this the most daring I'd got was probably The Police. And that's really not very daring. This record is a collection of the first Banshees singles. By this point were genuine pop stars. Even all these years later It's a really great collection of songs. The cover is also quite wonderful. On the back it has some sleeve notes from then NME journalist Paul Morley that at the time I remember being really impressed by but now seem slightly (to say the least), ridiculous.

 

'I was scratched, fiercely and justly, by “Hong Kong Garden” and was never the same again. Siouxsie and the Banshees, on the nightmare edge of our sheltered world, were concerned with nothing less than breaking the rules of logic, space, and time. Accepting, exploiting and confusing pop music’s universal vanity, futility and profound quality, they set about eliciting from life’s facts and fantasies a sense of the things that matter.'

 

Yeah, right! Still he is correct that the Banshees were an extremely disorientating and on occasion a really thrilling band who questioned and challenged the basic value systems of the normal society which I very much inhabited. Or else they were just a lifestyle choice and a bunch of utter poseurs depending on where you stood.

 

 

Next record to review Siouxsie & the Banshee's debut album The Scream. Be scared. Be very scared!