THE JOY OF APEX

Even at the height of punk, when being different was paramount, X-Ray Spex stood out. Like The Mothers Of Invention a decade earlier, they railed against homogeneity and artificiality via a uniquely insurrectionary sax attack. Lois Wilson speaks to Lora Logic, Paul Dean and the late Poly Styrene's daughter Celeste about their incendiary individualism. Identity parade: Ian Dickson

- Lois Wilson

Witnessing the Sex Pistols at Hastings pier in July 1976 was a game changer for Marianne Joan Elliott-Said aka Poly Styrene. With an 'if they can do it so can l' attitude, she put W an ad in Melody Maker for "young punx who want to stick it together" and from it X-Ray Spex were born. Their debut single, Oh Bondage Up Yours!, arriving in October 1977, is one of punk's great subversive 45s, both anti-consumerist protest and feminist warrior cry. Its thrilling, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think..." intro and seditionary sax honk from a 15-year-old Susan Whitby, alias Lora Logic, remain unbeatable.

Yet the group were short-lived, Logic gone after that first single and the group all wound up by 1979 leaving behind just five singles and one album, 1978's Germfree Adolescents, when Poly, a genius tormented, retreated into the Hare Krishna community.

She'd return to music-making sporadically, most notably reuniting with Logic for one final X-Ray Spex album, 1995's Conscious Consumer, and 2011's Generation Indigo, her solo album, which she completed just before her death from breast cancer aged 53.

Gone too soon, yet a part of her survives the part that inspired Luscious Jackson and Bikini Kill, Kim Gordon and Big Joanie, Beth Ditto and Neneh Cherry and her own daughter Celeste Bell; the part that echoes in protests for gender equality and environmental sustainability and the part that echoes in those recordings of a voice full of wit and joy calling out "the plastic way of life".

"Poly Styrene's voice on Oh Bondage Up Yours! was the most exhilarating voice I ever heard - it was all body," said Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, one of many who provided testimony after she passed.