I’ve only just found out that Ply Styrene – back when she was Marianne Elliott-Said – was making music before X-Ray Spex. Music like this.

As far as I can tell this is the only record she made – a childlike slice of pop-reggae released under the name Mari Elliott in 1976 that’s nothing at all like Oh Bondage Up Yours! or Germ-Free Adolescents.

It does have a certain charm though, making it more than merely a minor artefact in the annals of pre-punk history. And the music is by the momentarily almost-famous G.T.Moore & The Reggae Guitars – a name I remember from the mid-’70s (and who once included Tom Robinson).

The B-side is of a similar nature, a mellow flute-inflected reggaeish shuffle called What A Way.

By the time this single came out The Sex Pistols had begun to shake up the music scene in London and Mari became the punk icon Poly Styrene.

As for G.T. Moore, he became a session man, playing on Johnny Nash’s Tears On My Pillow and going to Kingston to become one of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s house band The Upsetters.