The Slits – London O2 Islington Academy

The Slits

The Slits are on stage and the Tories are in power. We’re rocking back to 1979. Just as David Cameron is a warmer, smoother, sexier version of Margaret Thatcher, the new Slits are now less raw and raucous. They haven’t sold out, though! Johnny “Rotten” Lydon might be doing adverts for butter on TV, but the Slits exist for their music, and they’re still rocking – led by Johnny’s step-daughter Ari Up.

Bad-girl Hollie pops backstage to pee in a cup and then sprays it over the audience. Her dad is Paul Cook from the Clash so she was born a punk-rocker. At least they don’t gob on us! We love the striking women filling the hall with jungle shrieks and that thumping reggae bassline that makes the floor bounce. We might be too young to remember the original line-up, or too old to pogo, but we’re glad the Slits exist again and singing along with ‘Shoplifting’: “Do a runner, do a runner!” we chant.

The late John Peel said after their Session for his radio show that they couldn’t play their instruments and he loved them for that. Patronising git!

Well, now they can play not only their own but also each other’s. Lead signer Ari also does a fine a capella Jamaican patois number, and they storm through a cover of ‘Heard it Through the Grapevine.’ They’ve got a new album out (Trapped Animal) – punk-reggae or reggae-punk if you want to label it. And they’ve also released all their old demos, just to prove that they COULD play all along. This tour takes them across Europe and Scandinavia to Italy and Greece with an independent crew far from the dead hand of Live Nation – a punishing month-long schedule with no rest-days. These are tough cookies and they’re back in the UK for two dates in the first week of June.

Ari Up, who founded the Slits as a fourteen-year-old riot grrl in 1976, is proud to have started the world’s first-ever all-girl punk band. But chatting to her in the dressing room before the gig, it’s clear that punk is a dirty word for her.  “We couldn’t relate to it. It was a label. The media decided that’s punk. But now I use it ‘cos people are desperate for labels.”

She can’t stand it that punk has now become a fashion-statement, and she’s scathing about the so-called godfather of punk Malcolm Mclaren who died recently.

“It doesn’t mean shit to me that Malcolm Maclaren died. He was a rip-off and con artist. I don’t know what’s all this Malcolm- worshipping going on. He’s very exploitative, cashing in on other people’s talent. I’m furious – apparently we were mentioned in the report of his death because he managed us for two weeks and they couldn’t even spell us right! We were on the TV caption as The Splits!”

Tessa, also in the original band, adds “We found we were being written out of the history books so we still have a mission and a lot to say. That’s why we re-formed the band. The roots of it is still there but we’ve kept it fresh.”

New members Anna, Hollie and HoneyChild are a generation younger and they’re bringing the Slits to a new audience with music heavily influeenced by the dreadlocked Ari’s decades of living in Jamaica, Belize, Borneo and New York. Trapped Animal, the new album, sounds like 2010 in its world-music fusion of reggae bassline and punk lyrics

Ari Up believes “We inspired a lot of girls to make their own music. We get them coming up to us saying that they made a band becasue of us.The world hasn’t moved on for girls. It’s totally stagnant. The world’s crumbling. We’ve still got rebellious lyrics against the system, representing freedom for the girls and boys. We’re not segregating girls from boys.”

Indeed when they perform ‘Typical Girls,’ they make a point of getting a male friend onstage to help out with the backing singers. But he doesn’t stay on for Ari’s sexy solo performance of ‘Take Me Don’t Wake Me’ about how she likes to be woken in the middle of the night by a lover slipping himself inside her.

Maybe that’s not so shocking now as it would have been in ’79 but you’ll be surprised how relevant those old songs sound and the new stuff takes the Slits to a  new level: stronger, more confident and accomplished. Grown-up, but in a good way!

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