Pure Punk Picks
My Sex – Ultravox
“My sex waits for me, like a mongrel waits, downwind on a tightrope leash. My sex is a fragile acrobat. Sometimes I’m a novocaine shark, sometimes I’m an automat.”
My sex is often solo (Great line!). Sometimes it shorts circuits. Sometimes it’s a golden glow. (Another great one!) My sex is invested in suburban photographs, skyscraper shadows on a car crash overpass.” (How haunting!)
While the lush, somber, overbearing but beautiful tones come gushing, crashing in, descending like an avalanche of sound upon a stark, minimal music scene with plaintive, poetic, purely expressive, evocative words.
“My sex is often savage, tender. It wears no future faces, owns only random gender.” Such a great line looking forwards, towards our future now. (This song is from 1977!)
“My sex has a wanting wardrobe. Of all the bodies I knew and those I want to know.” (Wardrobes as a metaphor for all the bodies he’s experienced and those to follow).
“My sex is a spark of electro-flesh. Leased from the tick of time and geared for synchomesh.” Whatever that is?
“My sex is an image lost in faded films. A neon outline on a high-rise overspill.” Just wonderfully, poetic sounding words that suggest the past, faded films, and the future (high-rise) skyscrapers at the same time.
“My sex” is repeated several times at the end as the music oozes wearily, melancholy along, ending with a dissonant note or two.
This song is uncomfortably revealing, suggesting a world-weary vibe not usually inhabited by the young, early twenty-ish folks who created this song. And is an absolute masterpiece in my mind.
I know that Andy Bang and I would agree that one of the best, if not best known, albums of the early punk era was Ultravox’s album “Ha Ha Ha.” A name that was taken from a Dada art movement painting.
That was their second album and certainly their third, “Systems Of Romance” contained much more electronic/synthesizer influenced music, though still being very good but much less punk. Their second album was punk with glam and experimental influences at it’s finest.
But after that third album their lead singer, John Foxx, left the band to pursue strictly electronic music and the band continued in that style, though much more in a pop vein. Even though that’s when they achieved their most popular pinnacle, at least in Europe, I feel that’s when they lost any interest, any artistic credibility for me.
This song, “My Sex”, is actually the last cut on their self-titled first album while they were still heavily influenced in portraying an English art rock style, heavily influenced by David Bowie and Roxy Music. No surprise that this band, BTW, was formed at an art school.
John Foxx, in a recent interview said that this song was recorded basically, after they finished the session.
Brian Eno, their producer and now a very famous one at that- having produced U2 on some of their classic albums, asked if they had anything else they’d like to work on?
Now, the project’s complete, nothing more to prove. Now, it’s time to relax and experiment.
This is where this song came out of, and Mr. Foxx revealed several other Ultraxox songs were birthed the same way. “Hiroshima Mon Amour”, “Dislocation” and the wistful “Just For A Moment”- all amongst my favorite songs by them.
You have a good argument in saying you don’t feel that this is a punk song and shouldn’t be included here. But I feel I have a good argument in saying that for me, living in the original punk era- Oh, yeah I feel it certainly is. The nihilism and discomfort with society is quite evident here.
It denotes the alienation and the sadness I felt, we all felt, with life and mainstream society then. It’s something that all the younger punks than me now experience and feel today. It’s what I feel now even as I grow older.
I relate to lines that state “random gender.” I feel my sex does not fit in with accepted society. And I feel that peoples longings and urges and identities are so varied and different and don’t fit into the nice, easy three or four slots society has laid out for us. “Gender is a social construct” is a meme I saw recently and related to.
I believe each individual is different and only they can judge and decide who they are, what they identify with and what they feel.
And my sex? Well, I’m a straight, submissive male.
And that’s all right. We are all free to describe who we feel we are. We are all individuals however you categorize us.
Though that has nothing to do with this song.
Which I feel is truly a great one.
(Slimedog)
