Deathblog:
Ari Up
(1962 – 2010)

(artist’s impression)

If I were digesting this news in a leisurely fashion in the wood-panelled study of my dreams, rather than choking it down on a freezing, hungover morning at work, counting down the hours until my employers decide who to start sacking, I could hold forth for days about how amazing The Slits were.

Their recorded output up to and including the second LP is pure amazingness, exploding in every direction – a clusterfuck of amazing. Early Peel sessions and live cuts are some of the best punk rock ever laid down, “Cut” is an eternal mindblower, “Return of..” is off on some other brave, weird journey entirely.

Whatever else you may think of them, the Slits were bad-ass. Just watch the bit in Derek Jarman’s “Jubilee” where they turn up for about twenty seconds, wrecking a parked car like apes at a safari park. In a better world, that movie would have been a documentary, and they would have starred in it. Nothing Jarman and his cast came up with quite matches the feral chaos of that one scene.

I suppose it was inevitable that there needed to be a girl gang counterbalance to first wave UK/London punk rock. Whoever got the job, I’d probably love them by default. But that they were terrifyingly young and violent, representing the next generation, ready to purge the grumpy post-pub-rock punkers (Johnny Rotten was Ari Up’s step-dad, for chrissake; she was, like, FIFTEEN or something when she wrote the lyrics to all those classic songs), was and is a fantastic happenstance.

That they were completely fucking brilliant and left The Clash et al in the shade was even better luck, and all four (later three) original Slits deserve eternal credit on that score.

That they were also incredibly weird is the icing on the cake, and we’ve got Ari Up, one of the strangest and most divisive front(wo)men in history, to thank for that.

Poorly served on Youtube beyond that never-quite-satisfactory “Typical Girls” clip you’ve probably seen a dozen times already, here’s a quick Sendspace greatest hits;

Vindictive (Peel Session)

Fuck yeah!

Shoplifting (“Cut”)

Best Song Ever: final round contender.
Best Scream Ever: winner.

Ping Pong Affair (“Cut”)

Precocious, hilarious teenage wisdom.

Difficult Fun (“Return of the Giant Slits”)

What the hell IS this..? Instinctive, experimental music; destination: unknown, but beyond bargepole reach of your puny filing system.

Fade Away (New Age Steppers w/ Ari Up)

Sounding more righteous than ever just at the minute.

Labels: Ari Up, deathblog, The Slits