Poison Girls - Where's The Pleasure

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.