Product Details

* Audio CD (June 5, 1992)
* Number of Discs: 1
* Label: Caroline
* Catalog Number: 1813
* ASIN: B000000HZL
* Also Available in: Audio Cassette | LP Record
* Average Customer Review: based on 26 reviews. (Write a review.)
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: #164,106 in Music (See Top Sellers in Music)
Yesterday: #163,759 in Music

Listen to Samples
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1. The Day The World Turned Dayglo Listen Listen
2. Obsessed WithYou Listen Listen
3. Genetic Engineering Listen Listen
4. Identity Listen Listen
5. I Live Off You Listen Listen
6. Germfree Adolescents Listen
7. Art-I-Ficial Listen
8. Let's Submerge Listen
9. Warrior In Woolworths Listen
10. I Am A Poseur Listen
11. I Can't Do Anything Listen
12. Highly Inflammable Listen
13. Age Listen
14. Plastic Bag Listen
15. I Am A Cliche Listen
16. Oh Bondage Up Yours! Listen
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Carving out a niche in the heady early days of the British punk-rock scene wasn't easy. X-Ray Spex prevailed by creating one hell of a ruckus with guitar and sax providing the wall of noise and by focusing attention on irrepressible bandleader and vocalist Poly Styrene. Her songs dealt with teenage boredom and the absurdities of life in the modern world. Alas, Germ Free Adolescents is the only document this wildly unique and entertaining band left us to remember them by. But what a document it is. Included here are such minor classics as "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" and "Warrior in Woolworths." --Mike Corrigan
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Don't pay these crazy used prices!, April 30, 2005
Reviewer: Hallie Engel (Doha, Qatar) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Just visit www.amazon.co.uk and order it from there for less...you can also pick up The Slits' records cheaper there as well.

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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Authentic Uk Punk Rock Masterwork: originality over formula, July 17, 2004
Reviewer: Stephen E. Andrews (Bath, Somerset United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
So much bull**it has been written and said about Punk Rock since it was propagandised into a formula by journos obsessed with politics and listeners who wanted nothing but the same old cliches again and again. This process started as early as 1977 when The Clash annoyingly brought the kind of sixties 'social realism' protest ideal into Punk Rock, transforming it into mere Punk (note the distinction).
X Ray Spex were (along with The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Damned, The Adverts and Alternative TV) one of the true early UK Punk Rock bands and like their peers, their watchword was originality. Fronted by half Somali-half White vocalist Poly Styrene and female saxophonist Laura Logic, Spex were signed within three gigs, Logic departing after the initial 'Oh Bondage! Up Yours!' single included as one of the bonus tracks on this disc.
How did this originality manifest itself ? Well, I'm sorry to disappoint today's riot grrls by saying that feminism was not overtly on the agenda, making Poly's fronting of the band a more successfully feminist triumph by default -in 1977 Punk Rock UK, women did not have to compete with the boys, they were treated as equals and knew it, so they never had to bleat too much about oppression -Punk Rock transcended such boundaries. What counted in Punk Rock was that one was an individual.
Styrene instead employed a conceptual approach to her lyrics that resulted in a remarkably consistent worldview that anticipated postmodernism -possibly influenced by Andy Warhol's obsession with repetitious consumer images and his statments like 'I Want To Be A Machine'. In the world of the X Ray Spex, the consumer is King and Clown and this includes Punk Rockers themselves. The ersatz nature of a mass production world infects all of Poly's songs, updating the pop art detachment of early Roxy Music for the Punk Rock age. The Spex take on the consumers' need to possess goods for their own sake and their obsession with self-image make for far more interesting and artistically rewarding listening than the agit prop of The Clash et al. In this sense, The Spex have more in common with Devoto's orginal Buzzcocks and the album tracks by The Sex Pistols, where the personal is the political.
The saxophone sets the album apart from the other bands of the era (with the exception of The Stranglers, who used it on their debut single) while reminding us of The Spex' musical influences -the aforementioned Roxy and side two of The Stooges 'Fun House'. Poly's unique keening screech and the amphetamine blast of the guitar/bass/drums backline ensure that the album is pure UK Punk Rock authenticitiy from start to finish.
Not satisfied with the infectious, ecstatic gleefully violent riffing and primeval free-jazz overblowings of tracks like 'Obsessed With You', the Spex also used synthesizers on the title track and 'Warrior In Woolworths', displaying interests in a wider range of tone colours than all of their contemporaries except the magnificent Stranglers. But the best track of all is the breathtsking 'Let's Submerge', the greatest subway train song ever recorded, whose imagery and melody give the listener a real taste of the excitement and fear of Punk Rock London in 1977:

the vinyl vultures dressed to kill/the dagger glares from Richard Hell

is just one stunning snippet from Styrene.

Perhaps it was for the best that there was only ever one Spex album - few of the authentic Punk Rock groups managed more and it was better than they flicked the amp switches off than faded away.
This CD contains all the Spex original recordings, including B sides. It is also a far better bet than the new DVD Audio version, which has fewer tracks and is mixed incorrectly, tnere being an absurd excess of bass in the balance that was never there in the original recordings.

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Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A fun, amusing album, not the definitive punk masterpiece, December 14, 2005
Reviewer: Brian C. Taylor "smug feldspar magnate" (Tallahassee, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Yes, this album is chock-a-block full of catchy, thrashy British Punk, circa 1977, but to me, it's faults underscore the very weakness of British Punk, circa 1977. It's the "C'mon kids, be a punk-rocker! Everyone's doin' it!" feel to the lyrics, the sense that punk was merely a fashion, and not a total disdain of fashion. "It's 1977, and we're gonna show them all, apathy's a drag." Gimme a break. And I'm not sure whether to be amused or annoyed by the "Beach Blanket Bingo" sax on most of the songs. Admittedly Poly-Styrene can sing like nobody's business (she sounds kind of like a tiny little female drill sergeant), and the songs are speedy little hook-laden anthems. I still enjoy listening to it, but unlike the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind the Bollocks...", the Clash's first, and the Buzzcocks "Singles Going Steady", "Germ-Free Adolescents" sounds dated and campy.