Music today was The Scream (1978), the debut album by Siouxsie and the Banshees. The album featured the angular metallic shred of John McKay and the thumping toms of Kenny Morris with Siouxsie and Steve Severin on bass. A classic in its own right with an unlikely cover of The Beatles’ Helter Skelter, the album was praised by everyone except the NME’s Julie Burchill: “The Banshees sound was a self-important threshing machine, thrashing all stringed instruments down onto the same low level alongside that draggy sub-voice as it attempts futile eagle and dove swoops around the mono-beat. Their sound is certainly different from the normal guitar-bass-drums-voice consequence. But it’s radically stodgy […] loud, heavy and levelling, the sound of suet pudding”. It was going to be a fascinating journey. A non-album single, Hong Kong Garden, was released in August 1978 and reached No.7 on the UK Charts. The album released in November reached No.12 in the UK and No.36 in Australia – the world of guitars, bass and drums was changing fast.

Music Of The Daze

The musical musings in this post are an excerpt from my daily blog, TO WHERE I AM NOW, featured on my main website. See more pictures and read the full post here.