#punkettes

Two young punk girls on Charing Cross, London, in July 1979, as captured by Lesly Hamilton.

Though some loud-mouths will spout off that she’s a flash-in-the-pan artist, Fancy Rosy’s “Punk Police” will fuck you up, wake you up & make you wanna dance. 

You want it to do that. You definitely, definitely want it to do that. 

Crystal Castles and the like have been biting her style for years. Listen to those slap-back vocals and that menacing drum march, clinching her position as grand marshall of the clown parade in Disco Town. 

Joan ‘Juice’, one of the original punks of the early Mancunian punk scene, posing for Kevin Cummins in the streets of Manchester in 1977. She can be also seen in another Kevin Cummins’ pic in the gatefold sleeve for The Drones ‘77 EP “Temptations Of A White Collar Worker”.

Along with other key players of that burgeoning scene, such members of The Fall, Buzzcocks or Joy Division, Joan Juice was a regular at the Ranch Bar and a part of the northern equivalent of the Bromley Contingent called “The “Ranch Posse”, who would often hop in the back of a transit van full on Manchester punks to travel to London to see the Buzzcocks headline at the Roxy (while Joan was piercing peoples ears on the road) or to Wolverhampton to see the Pistols.

“...Manchester during this period was a dangerous place to stand out from the crowd. If the Perry Boys [an ultra-violent subculture of soul boys who sported wedge haircuts and Fred Perry t-shirts] didn’t get you, then the Teddy Boys or the soccer hooligans were waiting around the corner. Manchester punks had little choice but to take refuge in gay clubs (...) That’s how a small downstairs gay nightclub called the Ranch Bar on a desolate street surrounded by empty warehouses became the Manchester punk scene’s headquarters...

...At first, the place catered mainly to Bowie and Roxy fans. As more and more of them grew bored with the glam look and started to sport leather jackets adorned with safety pins and razor blades, it turned into an exclusive social club for the Manchester punk set. On a typical night, you’d find scattered about the room musicians from all the major bands that formed in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ Lesser Free Trade Hall gigs, preeminent among them Buzzcocks, the Fall and Joy Division prototype, Warsaw.

https://medium.com/cuepoint/booze-blood-and-noise-the-violent-roots-of-manchester-punk-af8092bcaac3

Punk girls in Stockport Town Centre in 1983, as captured by Shirley Baker.