We're so excited about next week's Ladies Lotto New York meeting with Ari Up. Here's a short but sweet history lesson about a lady who has influenced artists, musicians, fashion and culture for over two decades.
The Slits were formed when fourteen-year-old Ari Up (born Arianne Forster) ran into Spanish-born drummer Palmolive (Paloma Romero) at a Patti Smith show in London in 1976. The two were joined by bassist Tessa Pollitt and guitarist Viv Albertine, who had played with Palmolive in the short-lived Sid Vicious side project the Flowers of Romance. (Palmolive would later join another influential early female punk act, the Raincoats, and then be replaced by future Siouxsie and the Banshees member Budgie.)
"I think we did a lot to set the pace," says Ari in her half-British, half-Jamaican accent. "We helped change music for women. And because the Slits didn't get credit at the time, we've become like Greek mythology. The fans are not even fans -- they're more like members of a tribe."
"Palmolive had a girl vision," says Up. "She wanted that female energy.
The first song the Slits played in practice was the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop." "Sure, we couldn't play," says Up, "but we learned quick. Palmolive used to say, 'Being in a band is like being in an army: We have to be militant and disciplined.' It was a balance between that dedication and never taking ourselves too seriously."
With their Flowers of Romance association, the Slits' very first gig was a blowout. "We played a gig with the Clash and the Buzzcocks, to this huge audience in a movie theater," Up remembers. "And we had such a big impact!"
The band members, their dirty hair knotted up into hornet's nests, raged and sneered onstage. Up, her voice alternating between a hot scream and a weird vibrato, had a penchant for flashing her breasts at the audience. "We got our attention," she says, laughing.
"Before that, you know, a girl band was about singing with a tambourine and a piano," says Up. "Punk was free expression -- no categories, no heroes, and anyone who has something to say should be able to take the stage and do their shit, no big deal. We were wild and carefree girls, like animals escaping from the zoo!" That attitude, however, took its toll: The band found itself attacked, both in print and on the street. "The amount of negative press, oh my God!" Up gasps. Being punk then, she says, "was hard enough for the boys, but for the girls it was a witch hunt. People saw us walking down the street, and if they could have put us on the stake they would have done it. I got stabbed in '76: This disco guy walked up behind me and said, 'Here's a slit for you!' My huge, dirty old coat saved my life."
However, the Slits' did get plenty of support from their punk peers. "The boys were so open to women," Up says. "They were like brothers to us. The Clash were like secret Slits members. Without them, I don't know how we would have gotten through."
Those same boys were also an influence on the Slits' sound, with teen dropout Up taking guitar lessons from the Clash's Joe Strummer and picking up a taste for reggae from future stepfather Johnny Rotten. "There was this generation of hippies none of us could stand, so most of us listened only to reggae at that point," she says. "That's how our sound came. We had that really heavy bass from the beginning." Their innovative punk-reggae sound -- shrieks and jangling guitar contrasted with mellow riddims -- was crystallized on Cut, recorded with veteran reggae producer Dennis Bovell.
Above: Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Friend and Ari Up
After the Slits split more than twenty years ago, in 1981, Up went on to become the singer for producer Adrian Sherwood's dub-funk project, the New Age Steppers. But the collaboration was short-lived, with Up growing disenchanted with the Eighties scene and haunted by her former band. "People were really intimidated by the Slits," she admits. "So I was followed by this eerie reputation, like 'Oh, don't go near her.'" Only nineteen, and in search of a surrogate tribe, she fled London to stay on a series of Indian reservations in the U.S., eventually making her way to the jungles of Borneo. "I was living with the tribal peoples," she says. "Naked."
Eventually, Up resurfaced in Jamaica, settling in Kingston where she continues to perform a hip-hop-inflected dancehall act under the pseudonym Medusa. For years now, she has shuttled between two homes, in Kingston and on Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue.
Excerpt from Alex Mar on Rollingstone.com
Above: Ari with Chloe Sevigny post-show at Chloe's Opening Ceremony Fashion Week Party this year
Tuesday, September 23rd
7-10pm
Socialista
505 West Street
Features include a work shop with Business Coach Teri Schneizeit and guest speaker Ari Up
RSVPNYC@LADIESLOTTO.COM
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