POISON
GIRLS - WHERE'S THE PLEASURE
It's fair to say that a
good number of the women at Greenham Common, if not quite outright
fans of Poison Girls would have been aware of them and knew they were
on their side. It's fair to say, even, that were it not for Poison
Girls some of those women would possibly have never become involved
in protesting against Cruise missiles in the first place.
Poison Girls encouraged
people - and women in particular - to stand up for what they believed
to be right and to voice their objection to what they perceived as
being wrong. And if this was in regard to the imposition of nuclear
madness then to Greenham Common they could go. They gave courage to
both men and women to act on their love, their fears, their feelings,
and their compassion. Poison Girls emboldened.
Having announced earlier
that year that they would no longer be touring with Crass, Poison
Girls were now striking out on their own, free from the shadow of
being so closely associated with - for some, at least - such a
revered band.
Where's The Pleasure
was Poison Girls' first studio album since the 'divorce'. Released on
their own XNTrix label and produced by Simean Skolfield and Stuart
James (as opposed to Penny Rimbaud), like all their previous releases
it found them once again in a strange and unique place. Musically
they were being more diverse and adventurous than ever whilst
lyrically concentrating more on the personal, though in Poison Girls'
world the personal was always going to be political and vice versa.
"Where's the
pleasure, where's the fun?" asks Vi Subversa in the title
track "It don't take much to work it out. Love is what it's
all about." And once again there she was getting to the
point immediately. The whole reason for her writing and singing her
songs was not for fame or fortune or other such trifling things - but
for love. The whole message being imparted was not of anarchy or
rebellion or whatever - but love. That wasn't to say, however, that
in real life love can't be battered and bruised and be painful; and
if anyone sounded as though they'd experienced real life to the max,
then it was Vi: "I've done it all before," as she
tells us in the song of the same name "Losing my head,
sharing my bed. Love in the bath, love on the floor. Done it all
before. But this is now love, it's me and you love. Take it easy,
let's take it slow. Make it last, don't want to lose it. Love will
die, love will go, I know. I've done it all before - but not with
you."
If there was no love in a
relationship or in what you were doing then should that relationship
be brought to a close or the course of your direction changed? This
is what Vi (and subsequently Poison Girls as a whole band) was
expressing as in the title track again: "The feeling's gone,
the story's told. The pleasure's over, now it's cold... People alter,
people change. I hardly know you, what's your name?"
And then in the track
Lovers Are They Worth It, Vi sings: "Some say I'm silly not
to realise how good it was, but things are better now that you don't
come around no more... Days, when I knew I had to throw you out. And
I'm not sorry, even though I'm all alone."
A personal act leading to
personal change could also be a revolutionary act leading to
revolutionary change. The personal was political and vice versa. As
Vi had sang in Don't Go Home Tonight on the Total Exposure album:
"Big changes can come from just little actions. You take a
little risk, just a small chance. Take a little risk, like don't go
home tonight."
No better is the
personal/political relationship exemplified than in the track Soft
Touch where Vi tells the story of a boy and a girl going to bed
together for the first time: "They were tired, they were
drunk and both of them were full of dread. He hoped she would be cute
enough to detonate his armaments, but he felt like the government
that couldn't get its rockets up."
Rather than going at it
like a battle, however, they discover that softness can be ecstasy:
"So they realised that sex didn't have to be a fight, time
and time again they made energetic peace that night. Both ways up and
both ways round, with no attack and no defence, they beat the
government with sexual disarmament."
Was there anyone else but
Vi Subversa who could connect oral sex with the British government's
national defence policy?
And talking of 'defence',
how and from who knows where that very issue is addressed in the
track Take The Toys in which Poison Girls go acappella, delivering
not so much a song but an incantation: "Take the toys from
the boys, made a bullet out of rubber. Take their hands off the
dials, made a cannon out of water. Get their minds off the money,
gotta make a killing. Made a bomb."
At later gigs, rather
than singing it live, a recording of this particular track would be
played over the p.a. before the band stepped out onto the stage;
causing the audience to stop their chattering and creating a sudden
change of atmosphere. The effect was spine-tingling.
In an additional track
entitled Take The Toys (Reprise), they again go acappella but this
time with just two lines being repeated over and over, but those two
lines speaking volumes: "Oh no, another bloody bomb song,
bomb song. Oh no, another bloody peace march, peace march."
For all this, the most
overtly political track on the album is Rio Disco Stink, in which Vi
introduces to the agenda the subject of Rio Tinto Zinc, the
multi-national mining company responsible for importing uranium to
the UK from its mines in South Africa. This being at a time of
Apartheid and in contravention of UN resolutions stating that South
Africa's natural resources should only be sold with the consent of
the UN Council for Namibia - which hadn't been given.
"Do you know what
it means when you hear the pain in an ugly woman's song?"
asks Vi "I know the truth, I won't hold my tongue about
what's going on. I know what it means when you look away when I sing
my song. I've got nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and what you
do is wrong."
The uranium was being
imported under contracts signed in the Sixties by the UK Atomic
Energy Authority and RTZ. It just so happened that the British
Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington (before moving on to become the
Secretary General of NATO after resigning from the government over
the Falklands crisis) was a director of RTZ (who were investors in
British Petroleum, who were interested in the oil around the
Falklands) but also that Queen Elizabeth was a major investor in
them.
"It's not enough
to cry when the miners die at Rio Tinto Zinc, uranium will kill your
son whatever you want to think... I know what it means to want to
blow up the Queen and Rio Tinto Zinc... The company banks fill up
their tanks but you can't lock up the stink.. Are you feeling proud
of that hole in the ground at Rio Tinto Zinc?"
The most powerful track
on the album, however, is Cry No More which comes across as a
genuinely heartfelt confession as Vi confides that she's simply tired
of crying: "..For the underprivileged, for the blacks, the
women, for even black women. I'm tired of crying for the starving
children, for the Irish, for the unemployed, refugees, amputees, for
the pain of the Third World, the poor unfortunates of Hiroshima,
Bikini, America... I'm tired of crying for America."
The list continues and
never was Vi's voice more fitting for a song: "I'm tired of
crying for collection boxes, for noble causes, for victims, more
victims. Victims of violence and protection, victims of privilege,
more violence, more victims. For teachers lies, for poisoned milk,
I'm tired of crying - it changes nothing. For the abuse of sex, the
endless rape, the decay, the decaying. I'm tired of crying. For the
broken hopes, broken hearts and promises, for the broken backs and
the broken dreams. I'm tired of crying."
Years later, Mark of The
Mob would say that Cry No More was probably the best Anarcho Punk
record ever and his claim would be a valid one.
"It's a savage
world, a savage world and I'm tired. And I just want to cry - for
me."
The album ends with the
track Fear Of Freedom, leaving the listener standing on the spot
having been accused of something applicable to all: "Why do
you think that they are laughing?" Asks Vi before telling us
"Because they've got you where they want you. They taught you
fear of falling. They taught you fear of feeling. They taught you
fear of freedom. Fear of freedom."
Which meant, of course,
that only we held the key and that nobody else could provide it for us. Not Crass, not Poison Girls, nor anyone. Only ourselves.
According to music critic
Johnny Waller when reviewing the album in Sounds newspaper, Where's
The Pleasure was 'the last great Punk record', which was a
nice thing to say and a huge compliment to make though not true by a
long chalk. In fact, it would actually be the album that would lose
Poison Girls a large chunk of their hardcore Punk audience due to the
softening and diversifying of their sound. For the Punk hardcore
there were other, more harsher sounding bands to attract and hold
their attention than Poison Girls with their new, melodious,
post-Punk agit folk rhythms. But that was fair enough and no bad
reflection on the hardcore Punks at all.
Poison Girls were moving
into the future.
Everyone was happy.
