Record Execs Don't Know What To Do With The Slits' Ari Up
Thursday August 18, 2005 @ 04:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff
Ari Up's stepfather, Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols, once referred to the singer as "a total individual as I've ever seen." As well he might - Up formed '70s punk band The Slits as a 14-year-old in London, released two albums and a Peel Session recording, toured with The Clash and was lauded as a ferociously original trailblazer for women in music.
But that doesn't mean record executives are clamoring outside of her Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York homes, begging Up to make more music. Her reputation as a no-holds-barred punk rocker, coupled with the dreadlocks she hasn't cut since the '70s and her time spent in the '80s living naked in the jungles of Borneo and Belize have caused music execs to turn their backs on her. Though a superstar in Jamaica who goes by the name Madussa, Up's new record, Dread More Dan Dead, is her first ever full-length solo album.
"This is only my first album because I've been recording all my life, it's just that no one's releasing anything. Everyone is scared of me, you know, people are frightened. I don't know why, I've no clue," Up says, her voice a hybrid of German, British and Jamaican accents.
"They're never really saying, 'The music's not good' or, 'You can't do anything,' it's never really like that. It's always an awkward moment where people just don't know what to do with me. They're like, 'Are you an alien from a different planet?' 'Which planet do you come from?' or 'What do we label you as? What label are you?' What are you, punk, reggae, what are you? What are we gonna say? You're not R&B, you're not hip-hop, you're not rock.'"
Indeed, Up - real name Ariana Forster - has always made genre-crossing music. The Slits fused punk with dub reggae and she describes Dread as an "album of sort of mixed stuff," from instrumental songs, vocal-only numbers, hardcore reggae and songs she says The Slits could have written. Much like her time with the band, where the biographical lyrics ranged from Johnny Rotten arguing with Sid Vicious over drug intake, shoplifting to survive and criticizing the expectations placed on women, Up shopped for Dread's content from the people and events surrounding her.
"Babymother" was inspired by stories she'd heard of New York mothers going out and leaving their children uncared for at home. "Can't Share" was written after Up learned about the large percentage of women having affairs with already-involved men. She resurrected "True Warrior" from her Slits days.
"We've had even a song that would have been like that on the next album we were writing for. We had a dubby song, it was even more dubby, and it was about warriors as well," Up explains. "It even had the 'True Warrior' words in there, I think. It's just that this version has totally different words and different melodies and beats but it's the same type of atmosphere, it's the same thing that was left off with The Slits."
Now, instead of concentrating on old Slits material, Up is working on a new version of the group, with bandmate Tessa Pollitt returning on bass. She's speaking from London, in the middle of the "very hopeful, very redeeming" reunion. Up and Pollitt are looking for new Slits members, "because it's not going to be like a get-together of a vintage, old-time thing. It's the new Slits, totally."
The reunion is timely. Cut, The Slits' 1979 debut, was voted #58 on The Observer's list of the Top 100 British Albums Ever last year. The album has recently been issued in North America, having previously been available only as an import. Up can easily explain this resurgence of interest in her old band.
"Because we were born ahead of time, so people have to return back to The Slits," she explains. "We're just getting in time now, I think. Maybe we're still ahead of time. A little. But not as much as we were then, so people are catching up now because for it to come out now, it doesn't sound like vintage, I wouldn't say."
New Slits material is expected to be released later this year. Having had a few words to say about modern music, Up is hopeful the new music can shake things up.
"People in current times, I think, are ruled by too many rules. That's what was so refreshing with The Slits, is that we were just completely spontaneous. Organized chaos, so to speak. Just very honest and no preconceived notion of how it should be done, or what politics should be involved and what do we stand for and what are we labeled as and what clothes do we wear, it was more instinctive. What's great about The Slits is that it's such a totally instinctive group."
Up sadly acknowledges that the poor treatment of women in the music industry hasn't changed very much in her eyes, but she knows what kind of change she'd like to see.
"Well, I'm doing it, innit? I'm continuing The Slits to maybe start changing that."
― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Friday, 19 August 2005 09:48 (eighteen years ago) link
one year passes...
one month passes...
three years pass...
one year passes...
two years pass...