Double Feature: Home is Where The Music Is (Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche & Box of Rain)

Music scenes are inescapable, each undoubtedly more annoying than the last. But for someone looking for a community of their own, or a way to easily define themselves, these scenes can provide a sense of belonging; a home where the lack of one was being felt.

In this documentary double feature, we get to see very distinct sides of two different musical worlds. One, the British punk world of the seventies and eighties and the other the Dead Head crowd that spanned decades and brought a motley crew of people together under its umbrella. Both documentaries dive into the worlds created by a certain type of music and how much people (or one specific person as you’ll see in the lead feature) looked for a place to belong within these insular and strange groups.

Lead Feature: Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche (2021)

Poly Styrene was a young mixed race woman who managed to make quite a name for herself in the halcyon days of the British punk scene. So young that some photos of her show her still wearing braces, Poly was noted for being outspoken, goofy, and precocious with a solid streak of righteous anger coursing through her veins. Told she was too fat and had to tone down some of her more radical beliefs, that of course that isn’t what an angry teenager wants to hear. I Am A Cliche is a chronicle of her life and career as much as it is an examination of public personas, pop culture consumption, and mental health.

Poly would be an unusual figure in pretty much any music scene, but of all the possible options, the punk scene would be the most inviting. Throughout the film, there are clips of Poly talking to the media and the media talking about Poly. She is questioned about her race, her weight, her style, her hair, anything that can be brought up to make her uncomfortable. Her childhood stories of being bi-racial in the UK and being sexualized too young set the stage for someone with a yearning to belong though she also proclaims the world around her to be false and not worth her energy. As her fame grows, her feeling of being part of something wavers.

The story of Poly’s rise is interesting in and of itself but where the documentary really picks up speed is when we learn about Poly’s post-punk life. She joined the Hari Krishnas in an attempt to find a place for herself that she had thought music would provide. A friend of hers who was with her in the cult-ish movement talks about Poly’s undiagnosed mental health struggles; she would stay up for days on end doing everything she could to be a model Hari Krishna. Each time Poly thought she found her people, she drove herself into exhaustion trying to be part of whatever scene it was.

Narrated by Ruth Negga and directed by Poly’s daughter Belle, I Am A Cliche touches on a lot of points that can be applied to anyone seeking fame but keeps the story personal and close to the bone, never losing Poly herself in the shuffle. We as the audience begin to understand that this is Belle’s attempt of finding the connection with her mother that Poly was always trying to find with her music.

Second Billed: Box of Rain (2022)

The Grateful Dead has reached the level of notriety where they cease to be real and become a sort of short-hand that borders on parody. When someone says ‘deadhead’, one type of mental image comes to mind – most likely of a person snacking on a California cheeseburger. Directed by Lonnie Frazier, Box of Rain aims to show a wider perspective of who followed and loved the Grateful Dead as well as the ties and connections made within this ragtag collection of folks.

Frazier was a teenage runaway when she first encountered the deadheads, people who followed the Grateful Dead on tour and made a life of it on the road. Since this documentary was made recently, many of these people have settled into a less nomadic lifestyle, which is where we join them. Some are the gray-haired hippies you’d expect while others are younger, fiestier, or more sarcastic than you’d assume. One man in a wheelchair discusses how Dead shows were accessible in a time when no one cared if he could get into a venue or not. Women of all ages talk about feeling protected among the crowd and that there was a code of conduct upheld by die-hard deadheads regarding consent and touching. This community grew from makeshift, weirdo roots but had powerful values not seen even in polite society.

Though not the initial focus of the film, Box of Rain explores how people managed to pull a life together with limited money and resources. One section feels like a rundown of out-dated technology as deadheads discuss using cancelled phone cards to make free calls on pay phones then recording live shows on reel-to-reel players. There’s also the on-line archive that showed that Grateful Dead fans were some of the earliest internet users catalouging hours of concerts and creating message boards for everyone to talk and trade.

Despite how this movie starts, Frazier’s story is not central to the narrative. She uses her experience as a springboard, tying in anecdotes from others both similar and different from her. For so many of them, they found a place to belong in a sea of strangers and realized that home is sometimes a location, sometimes a destination, and sometimes it’s a creation you make yourself.

Box of Rain is distributed through Mutiny Pictures and is available on most streaming platforms as of May 3rd.