Track Nine: Siouxsie & the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden

Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of the most successful bands to emerge out of the punk era. And while they later inspired some of the most god-awful dirges and doom-laden music in the form Goth, they began as something very exciting.

They began as a one-off, standing in for a band which dropped out of the '100 Club Punk Festival'. Their lineup included Siouxsie and her friend Steve Severin along with John Ritchie on drums. Ritchie would become better known as Sid Vicious.

There was no intention that the band would ever appear again, but their set (a twenty minute version of the Lord's Prayer) went down so well that they were asked to play again. Having abandoned Ritchie they appeared with a real lineup of Sioux, Severin (Bass), Pete Fenton (Guitar) and Kenny Morris (Drums). Fenton was too much the typical rock guitarist and was replaced by John McKay in July 1977.

Long before they produced any records, John Peel had them on the show. Their sessions were edgy and discordant with the feel of the Doors but without the smoothness given to that band by Ray Manzerick's keyboards. There was no way this band would ever produce anything like Riders on the Storm.

When they finaly signed for Polydor, their first single was this song inspired by the menu of a take-away. With the number of goth bands inspired by the Banshees thir stripped down, discordant sound is familiar, but this was a unique sound at the time. Severin had turned into abass player unafraid to intrude on the mix, at a time when bass players were supposed to be heard but not noticed. McKay's chords sounded off and harsh and Siouxsie was not exactly your traditional girl singer. Most of the second half of the song is McKay riffing on the song in a style about as far from your usual guitar hero as you can get. But somehow they reached the top ten in the british charts. The album which followed, The Scream, suffers now by imitation, but at the time it was shocking and difficult and wonderful. Nick Kent, the ubercool editor of the NME said described it as a "unique hybrid of the Velvet Underground mated with the ingenuity of Tago Mago era Can" thereby marking the band as one that old hippies had permission to like.

This isn't the single version, rather coming from the second session the band recorded for John Peel. The slightly smoother single version can be found on the alternative takes playlist, but this is the trak that takes me back to 1978 and an old cassette tape that I played until it fell apart. Happy days.