Biography All Music Guide Wikipedia
All Music Guide:
Susan Whitby was 15 years old and had been playing saxophone for a little more than six months when she joined her friend Marion Elliot (aka Poly Styrene) and formed the great English punk band X-Ray Spex. At this juncture, Whitby renamed herself Lora Logic and brought her honking and squawking to X-Ray Spex's guitar-propelled punk rock, staying in the band long enough to record the seminal feminist-punk single "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" Prior to the recording of their debut album, Logic abruptly left the band to follow her own quirky songwriting muse and formed the wonderfully named Essential Logic. Eschewing fast and loud guitars for off-kilter rhythms, "bluesy" sax playing, and forays into dissonance and atonality, Essential Logic created some of the most liberating, exciting music of the early post-punk era. Along with her primitive, exhilarating sax playing, Logic displayed a wildly imaginative vocal style that conflated the subtle eroticism of Patti Smith with the epiglottal spasms of Yoko Ono. Singing, braying, and screeching her implicitly (at times explicitly) feminist lyrics while her backing band crashed and bashed in the background, this was almost a punk version of that most despised of genres, art rock. And while the subjects of most of her songs were serious (alienation, sexism, poverty, urban isolation), there was a bratty tongue-wagging raffishness to Logic (and band) that placed them a cut above the rest. After one album as Essential Logic, Lora Logic disbanded the group to go solo. After one great solo record, Logic left music to join a London-based Hare Krishna sect with old pal Poly Styrene. Recently, Styrene issued some music in England, and it was rumored that Logic played sax on the recording. But regardless of her current activities, Lora Logic's short recording career will always be marked by its intelligence, creativity, and fun.
Wikipedia:
Essential Logic was a UK post-punk band formed by saxophonist Lora Logic after leaving X-Ray Spex.
The band initially consisted of Lora Logic on saxophone and vocals, Phil Legg on guitar and vocals, William Bennett (later of Whitehouse) on guitar, Mark Turner on bass guitar, Rich Tea on drums, and Dave Wright on saxophone. Turner was later replaced by Jon Oliver on bass.
They formed in 1978 with Logic fresh out of art school. Their first 7" was released on their own record label; Cells. They released a self-titled EP on Virgin Records in 1979, before signing to Rough Trade. Their debut album, Beat Rhythm News - Waddle Ya Pay? was released in 1979, followed by several 7"s before the band split in 1980. In 1980-81 Logic also performed as a member of Red Crayola, as well as playing on recordings by The Raincoats, and The Swell Maps.
Lora Logic released a solo LP, Pedigree Charm, in 1982 on the Rough Trade label. Soon afterwards she gave up recording and performing when she turned to the Hare Krishna religion, though she did record and perform under the X-Ray Spex name again when they reformed in 1995. She resumed with Essential Logic in 2001, and released a four-track EP of new material. The new line-up included ex-members of the ska group Bad Manners and guitarist Gary Valentine of Blondie. A year later, a further four tracks from a recording session in 1998 were made available from the website, Vitaminic.
In 2003, an anthology of Essential Logic recordings was issued, entitled Fanfare in the Garden, on the Kill Rock Stars record label.
