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Golly, Jeepers! Teenage Kicks with Siouxsie & the Banshees.

Posted at 3:30 PM on December 4, 2009 by Jacquie Fuller
Filed under: Teenage Kicks

In the mid-70s a group of kids from Bromley, a town near London, started following the latest band to make a splash in the UK: The Sex Pistols. Among this gaggle (tagged by a journalist as The Bromley Contingent) were Billy Idol and one Susan Ballion, a.k.a. Siouxsie Sioux.

Inspired by the band she followed, the 18-year-old Siouxsie teamed up with Steven Severin (who she met at a Roxy Music show) to make some music of their own. They played their first gig in 1976, when they filled in for a dropped-out band at a London punk festival. On drums: a pre-Pistols Sid Vicious.

Over two decades, Siouxsie and the Banshees developed their distinct brand of dark, atmospheric pop, and saw lineup changes that included The Cure's Robert Smith, and the sole XY-chromosome of all-girl punk band, The Slits - Budgie - who would later marry Siouxsie.

In 1995, the band called it quits, then reunited for a tour in 2003. In 2008, Siouxsie released a solo album, Mantaray.

But let's go back, for a moment, to 1987, when your humble Teenage Kicks host (that would be me) worshipped Siouxsie Sioux as her fashion icon. As you can imagine, this caused great discord with said host's parents, especially on the occasion of family photo shoots. Ugh.

Photobucket

I didn't know it at the time, but I was in good company. Beth Ditto of The Gossip, Shirley Manson of Garbage, and PJ Harvey all cite Siouxsie's music and style as a major influence.

Tune in to Teenage Kicks tomorrow from 8-10am, to hear tracks from our artists-of-the-week, Siouxsie and the Banshees. And to erase the above photograph from your mind, here's Siouxsie looking a bit like a Man Ray model:


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