Poly Styrene - 'Ghoulish'

I was thinking about Poly Styrene yesterday when I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the 'Glamour of the Gods' exhibition. There's a portrait of Poly by Pennie Smith in the collection but it's rarely on display for some reason. I saw it as part of the 'Devotional' exhibition in 2007 and, before that, I'd arranged a viewing with the NPG archives (you can do that y'know). I do find it rather irritating that portraits of the likes of Blur and Susan Boyle are on the walls but not Poly.

I looked her up on the NPG catalogue and it notes her year of death (so it's been updated) but the text suggests her work ended with 'Gods & Godesses' and there's no mention of 'Generation Indigo'. I might have to write to them about that. Since I saw the photo in 2006 it's leaked onto the Internet but I took rebellion in my hands and took a photo of the catalogue screen anyway, and here it is.

So it was with a sense of righteousness that I heard about the video for a new single from 'Generation Indigo' which has a remix of the song by Hercules & Love Affair as a 'b' side. Poly spoke about this song as being inspired my Michael Jackson so the video picks up on that theme and we see various Michael's doing their stuff at a rehearsal room. It's lovely to see the Michael's mouthing Poly's lyrics. It's a very clever video, a bit fun and a bit poignant, and if the spotlight message at the end doesn't make you shed a tear then you're either (a) not a punk or (b) not human. The single is out on 8 August - wouldn't it be great if it charted?