Whilst Plugged In Brighton will keep you up to date to what’s new and alternative in the music scene it’s easy to forget what musical pioneers and trailblazers have come from or to the city previously. One of Brighton’s strengths and weaknesses is its chameleon ability to change from week to week, so last year’s fashion may well as be from the last century. Let me take you back to Brighton in the late 1970s. Like Britain as a whole, Brighton was in turmoil and whilst life was tough for most, this meant radicalism, music and the arts had fertile grounds to blossom from.
Vi Subversa from the Poison Girls is worthy of mention as a female punk who started the Anarcho-Punk band, as a middle-aged mother of two in the late 1970s. Whilst the Poison Girls are labelled Punk, their music uses and abuses Punk and Post Punk influences and with their track Hex created a long-form piece of music which included cabaret and sampling amongst others. They also ran the Vault an unlicensed venue/rehearsal space in the city for Punks around 1977. In addition to music, Vi was involved with the Brighton Free School Movement and the Feminist Movement.
Vi Subversa lived a long and filled life until her passing in 2016. She made positive contributions to the city’s music scene and didn’t take no for an answer. May many more Vis come or be born in our city. We need them!
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