God Save The Queens at Electric Brixton: 50 years of she-punk – live review and photos

God Save The Queens was a riotous live celebration of she-punk featuring a bill of all-star performances from punks past and present, as well as a history lesson from the unsung female heroes of punk and, of course, a whole lot of anarchist energy.

Kicking off a series of events marking 50 years of she-punk, the evening was put together by Up Yours! Collective. The non-profit organisation aims to celebrate the female forces that shaped punk. It was founded by Celeste Bell (who recently joined us on the LOUD WOMEN Radio Show to talk about Up Yours! Collective, God Save The Queens and her mother’s legacy), daughter of the late X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene. Like all events hosted by Up Yours!, God Save The Queens was a showcase of ongoing punk talent as well as a tribute to those sadly lost along the way, including Styrene and The Slits lead singer Ari Up.

Electric Brixton welcomed swathes of punk fans, from those who were there to see the birth of UK punk in 1976 to teenagers with mohawks and homemade band T-shirts. They were graced with the world’s first-ever she-punk supergroup, an empowering collaboration between original punk pioneers and modern musicians keeping the movement alive. Joining Bell on stage were original X-Ray Spex saxophonist Lora Logic and bassist Paul Dean; visual artist and The Raincoats frontwoman Gina Birch; Big Joanie bassist Estella Adeyeri; and Comanechi drummer Akiko Matsuura. The newly formed band was fronted by vocalist Hollie Cook. The daughter of The Sex Pistols‘ Paul Cook, Hollie was brought up surrounded by all things punk and followed in her father’s footsteps to become a member of The Slits’ reformed line-up in the late 2000s.

Cook had enormous shoes to fill by taking on tracks of such velocity as X-Ray Spex’s ‘Identity’ and ‘Art-I-Ficial’, but her fierce vocal performance would have done Poly Styrene proud. The crowd erupted into a mosh pit from the first rallying cry of ‘Oh, Bondage! Up Yours!’ and lost little steam until the house lights came up.

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think, oh bondage, up yours!

Throughout the set, band members swapped in and out to make way for some very special guest stars, from music journalist and The Membranes frontman John Robb to Skunk Anansie‘s Skin. Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers took on vocals for The Slits’ much-loved version of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’, and prolific multi-instrumentalist Bishi delighted the crowd with a sitar cover of perhaps X-Ray Spex’s best-known track, ‘Germfree Adolescence’.

Vivien Goldman, bona fide punk and esteemed author of Revenge of the She-Punks, was compère for the evening. She played host to an incredible selection of punk acts building up the energy for the main event. Opening up for the earlycomers were Essential Logic, originally formed in 1978 after Lora Logic left X-Ray Spex. The band has taken on various formations, always centred on Logic’s groovy sax rhythms. They were closely followed by Hastings-based sludge-rock trio HotWax, the youngest band on the line-up, who released their debut album just last year. Goldman joked that they are responsible for the influx of Londoners relocating to Hastings, but after hearing Lola Sam‘s industrial bass riffs and Tallulah Sim-Savage‘s raucous vocals, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched a theory.

Up next were Gina Birch and the Unreasonables, playing a variety of Birch’s hyper-experimental electro-punk tracks of recent years, including ‘I Play My Bass Loud’ and ‘I Will Never Wear Stilettos’.

We hear Oasis songs coming out of every pub in Britain, but we think this one is better,

proclaimed Birch before launching into ‘Happiness’ from her 2025 album Trouble. As Goldman eloquently put it:

People think being punk is about being harder, louder, faster, but that’s not always the case. You’ve just got to be exploring new territory, like these she-punks do.

The penultimate act were Black feminist punk outfit Big Joanie, named after frontwoman Stephanie Phillips‘ mother, who have been taking the punk scene by storm in London and beyond for over a decade. Goldman reminded the crowd that Poly Styrene was a pioneer not only of she-punk but of Afro-punk, too, and that she faced particular challenges in the industry as a mixed-race woman in the UK. She took the time to assure Phillips and Adeyeri how happy Styrene would be to see them performing today, before they exploded into a powerful set of beloved tracks ‘Fall Asleep’, ‘Happier Still’ and their punkified cover of Solange‘s ‘Cranes in the Sky’. Adeyeri seized the opportunity to promote her bandmate’s talent as an author as well as a musician, plugging her book Why Solange Matters.

To bring the triumphant evening to a close, all of the performers gathered on stage for a final reprise of she-punk anthem ‘Oh, Bondage! Up Yours!’ in true Poly Styrene style. Goldman hinted that the event could become an annual celebration, fuelled by the buzz around she-punk representation and the work of Up Yours!

As part of the wider celebrations of 50 Years of She-Punk, Up Yours! are hosting live panel discussions, film screenings and a world-first she-punk art exhibition at Camden’s Museum of Youth Culture. Find tickets and more information here.

And keep your eyes peeled for some very exciting LOUD WOMEN news this week! We’ll be getting involved in the celebrations with a workshop and contributions from our ever-expanding LOUD WOMEN archive. More on that very soon!