Banshees Pt2

 

 
It was this sort of subject matter that attracted negative press attention and negative reaction from the record industry who found the fascist fascination naive and repellent. They started gigging in earnest with new guitarist John Mckay supporting the Heartbreakers & Buzzcocks, they recorded John Peel sessions and appeared on tv  programmes like So It Goes. 

They broke house records at the Vortex and sold out the Nashville watched other bands released records and they had nothing. They even self financed their own tour to make themselves better known outside of London something unheard of then. They rejected releasing a record on BBC records and they rejected having a track of theirs on the Jubilee soundtrack deeming the film tacky despite appearing in it. Eventually Polydor signed them on the Banshees terms in June 1978 and they were ready.


Click the safety pin to hear audio clip of 'Bad Shape'


Click the safety pin to hear audio clip of 'Captain Scarlet'

  

Make Up To Break Up

Spots and warts and blemishes
And deep receding crevices 
Seem to disappear when foundation’s on my face 
When foundation’s on my face 
Girls with eyes like swimming pools are the ones that I despise 
‘cos I need lots of colour to hide my bloodshot eyes 
To hide my bloodshot eyes

Now comes the break up
From the make up
Just like the devil’s rain 
C... c... c... colours run insane. 
Foundation starts to tremble 
My nose a grotesque abstract 
My mouth a gaping gap 
My eyes are shooting blood

Bad Shape

We’re all f***ing spastics 
We’re all paralysed 
Cancer in the ears 
Cataract in the eyes 
We’re all dismembered 
We’re all in stitches 
Wrapped in bandages 
Stumble with crutches

  So after the Nazi imagery, morbid pre-occupations and darkness the first thing the Banshees gave the world was Hong Kong Garden. " A brash two chord triumph" said the NME. "Its oriental 'authenticity', its flickering eroticism, its simple beauty pushed it deep into the charts" said journalist Paul Morley. Undoubtedly it is a brilliant debut single and one in the face for fools like Burchill.. Astonishingly their debut album The Scream continued this quality if not chirpiness. Jarring rhythms/chords merge with dark lyrical undercurrent and themes to present an album that holds up today and as far removed but based in their punk contemporaries sound. Their nemesis Julie Burchill didn't agree she wrote in the NME in 1978 "Standing alone, the Banshee sound is a self-important threshing machine thrashing all stringed instruments down onto the same low level alongside that draggy sub-voice as it attempts futile eagle and dove swoops around the mono-beat...Ah well, kid, take it to yourself and examine your subconscious. Maybe you’ll love it. Me, I keep seeing Siouxsie up there in her swastika armband making nothing but a fashion accessory out of the death of millions of people. And I honestly don’t think that a rilly sensitive person like myself can ever see beyond that. "

Siouxsie. 'Steve where are you' ?

 Already though there were tensions in the band and I'm not suprised given some of the pretentious statements by Morris/McKay like " In interviews...you can't talk about trivial things because we've got something to continuously put over to a pretty pathetic press and public in general " or " every song I come up with lately, I think 'No, its no good, it's "normal. "   

Over here Siouxsie !!!

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