Ari Up, lead singer of British punk band The Slits, died yesterday after a “serious illness.”
Up (real name Ariane Forster) was only 48. It’s not known what her cause of death was, but John Lydon announced it through his website yesterday.
Rather than mourn and bemoan the cruellness of this woman’s early passing, we here at CHARTattack prefer to remember what made Up a legend.
Here, then, are 14 reasons why Ari Up was cool:
1. Up had an early introduction to the music industry, since Nora Forster, her mother, was friends with Jimi Hendrix and dated jazz guitarist Chris Spedding.
2. In the ’70s, Up’s mother married then Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten (now known as John Lydon), which means that, yes, Lydon was her stepfather. That pretty much made her punk rock royalty.
3. Late Clash frontman Joe Strummer taught Up to play guitar.
4. Up was only 14 years old when she formed The Slits. That makes The Runaways look pretty pathetic.
5. The Slits opened for The Clash in 1977, when Up was just 15. Some of those performances were filmed and are included in 1978′s The Punk Rock Movie.
6. While bands like The Clash had experimented with reggae in their music throughout the original punk rock era, The Slits took it one step further. Their 1979 Cut debut album mixed reggae, dub, punk rock and its attitude inevitably inspired tons of riot grrl bands to come like Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill and Le Tigre among others. The Slits were probably the most innovative of the original punk bands.
7. Cut‘s cover depicted three of the band’s members completely topless, wearing loincloths. It was controversial when the disc was released, and it even caused problems within the band; drummer Palmolive quit before the album was recorded because she didn’t like Up and the other members’ idea for the cover. Prudes probably still have a problem with it today.
8. The Slits would be awesome for their cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” alone:
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxvo_9DEqY]
9. Up was known for her vocals, which were a unique mixture of sass and occasional, almost operatic trilling. It gave The Slits an unmistakable sound.
10. Up was also a member of the New Age Steppers, a collective that also included The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart, late Jamaican singer/songwriter Bim Sherman, Flying Lizards collaborator Steve Beresford, Neneh Cherry and then NME journalist Vivien Goldman. She concentrated mainly on that group after The Slits broke up in 1981. The New Age Steppers mixed dub with experimental samples, and they released three albums from 1980 to 1983.
11. Up may have grown up in Germany and England, but had no interest in living there after 1981. She moved with her husband to Indonesia and Belize and lived with those countries’ indigeous peoples for a number of years before finally travelling to Jamaica. This meant when she spoke, her accent was a mixture of German, English and Jamaican.
12. Amongst all of this, Up found time to release her first solo album, Dread More Dan Dead, in 2005.
13. The Slits weren’t finished, though. Up organized a reunion in 2006, which eventually led to the release of a new Slits disc, Trapped Animal, in 2009. The reunited Slits lineup featured Hollie Cook, daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, on backing vocals.
14. Live, Up was known for wearing extremely colourful, bizarre outfits and for using her dreadlocks as a prop, swinging them around in time to the music. In 2008, she toured solo, performing by herself to backing tracks of Slits tunes, her own solo material and dub and reggae classics.
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