Peek-a-Sioux
DOWNLOAD: Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Peek-a-boo”, from Peepshow
Despite being a lover of both female-fronted rock bands and creative English post-punk / new wave, for whatever reason I’ve almost entirely managed to avoid listening to or even having awareness of the Siouxsie & the Banshees. Perhaps because they tended a bit more main-leaning (or not)? I’m not quite sure why Siouxsie and her bands have been such a blind spot for me given my general interests, but for whatever reason I’ve managed to make it 28 years without ever listening to anything she’s done except a few occasional spins of early single “Hong Kong”.
Which is a relatively reasonable; you can’t listen to everything. But I guess more weirdly is that I can still remember the exact moment I became intrigued by Siouxsie: Thanksgiving, 1994.
I was at my grandparents’ home in south shore Boston sitting in the basement watching MTV and a recap program of live music from the summer was playing. Going to my grandparents’s for Thanksgiving was an annual ritual and given that we didn’t have cable tv at my own home, I always spent much of my time there watching the amusingly exotic Nickelodeon and then MTV as I grew up. But it’s strange, because for whatever reason this particular normal-Thanksgiving tv-watching experience seems as fresh in my mind now as it did 17 years ago.
It was morning, around 11am, on I think the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I was watching tv in the basement. My mom came down and sat next to me as I put on MTV and saw they were running the highlight show, which included footage of Woodstock ‘94. My mom made a few standard old folks comments about “the original Woodstock” (she was too young to go) and then an edit of VJ talking and live performances began playing. The three specific memories I have are the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who I liked at the time) coming onstage in light bulb outfits and—as one of the first time I can remember hearing live musicians—I remember being astonished at how different (and worse) Anthony Kiedis’s voice sounded than it did on record. After that was Porno for Pyros, who I’d never heard of, doing “Pets”—which seemed like a strange song to me—and finally was a lilting, dark-circus of a song by a band called Siouxsie and the Banshees, who I knew of as being an “old 80s band” but otherwise knew nothing about.
I don’t remember even catching a song title—I just remember a dark-haired woman roaming the stage and shouting loudly,
“Heee-Eee, heee-eee-ho-ho!”
It was weird music but I was enthralled and decided I’d track it down and find out more.
But oh, those were the pre-internet days where you could only hear music you bought, borrowed or heard on the radio, and given that I was only 12 and with limited budget (reserved for higher-profile selections like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins), it meant that I never bothered track any Siouxsie records or even this song down.
Until, flash forward seventeen years, today. I saw the name Siouxsie this morning and for whatever reason I decided that today would be the day i’d finally find this song.
Was it her most popular track? An early cut? Something contemporary to ‘94? After about 25 minutes of reference googling, discography reviewing and YouTube watching, I finally stumbled across a track title that made sense to the tiny shred of memory I had: “Peek-a-boo”.
“Heee-Eee, heee-eee-ho-ho! Heee-Eee, heee-eee-ho-ho!” went my memory.
“Peee-ee ee-eek-a-Boo! Peee-ee ee-eek-a-Boo!”
Sure enough, finally, after seventeen years, there it was. And here it is now: “Peek-a-boo”, from a post-heyday 1988 record called Peepshow.
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