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I finally got a chance to see a performance by the novelist/ spoken word performer and no wave (also called punk jazz) icon/goddess, Lydia Lunch. She performed at the Empty Bottle on Western on Monday evening with her band, the irreverently named, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
Years ago, I had bought one of her poetry books (co-written by Exene Cervenka) titled "Adulterers Anonymous,” as well as her more recent novel "Paradoxia." Both were filled with bile and dark energy. I also had own DVD collection and some of her Richard Kern films (in at least one of them she co-starred with Henry Rollins.) But I had never seen her perform live. Her live show was quite a spectacle.
Even though Teenage Jesus and the Jerks all look like they are around 50, they sound much more abrasive, subversive and modern than most of the newer bands. Lunch (along with James Chance) helped kick start the late '70s No Wave movement because they thought punk was too musical and traditional. They wanted to do something that was not merely a mutation of blues chords like most rock including punk (At one point in the show, Lunch even said, "I know that we sound like...nothing.". Most of the no wave performers came from performance art circles rather than traditional music backgrounds. To find out more about the movement, you should see the film, Kill Your Idols, and listen to the No New York compilation, which was put together by Brian Eno.
About three opening acts performed at the Empty Bottle show before Teenage Jesus, but from the all-black attire of about a fourth of the audience and their before show banter, it was clear that almost of them were there for Lydia.
There were a few persons I knew there such as Dan the fan (an herb specialist who is at every other rock show I attend), and Mark Messing from the marching band, Mucca Pazza (I have run into him in Wicker Park a few times), but there were not too many familiar faces.
Lunch was overweight, with pale white skin, and she looked and acted kind of like a dominatrix. Early in the show Lydia joked that she loved playing at the Empty Bottle because no other place would book her.
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks didn't just play a set, they used their instruments to attack the audience, and test how much they would take. They often played guitars like percussion instruments, as Lydia wailed, complained, yelled and occasionally sang with the songs. They looked and sounded more like a group of escaped mental patients than a traditional rock band. It was a great show, and more intense than any recent music show I had seen.
In the last song, "Orphans” (one of their best) Lydia wailed "Orphans running through the bloody snow, through the blood, through the blood, through the blood." Then after playing for around 25 minutes, Lydia said "that’s all you get, and then she promptly exited the stage. The set was perfect and I didn’t need to hear anything else. Most of the crowd also seemed pleased, and she rejected their call for an encore.
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks play perfect music for those who believe that the human race should be destroyed along with all government and social institutions, and we should start over.
Even though she predated the Goth movement, with her all black attire and pasty skin (I am sure they would have burned her at the stake in the Middle Ages) she still looks like a Goth.
Recently a student lent me a Goth edition of NME (I think it's New Music Express) from, and I was not terribly surprised that the reviews were more literate than what passes for rock criticism today (I remember when most rock critics actually read and liked literature). There are also actually some honest to goodness poetry allusions in the issue.
Many of the reviewers obviously enjoy putting down the Goth artists in the wordiest and most pretentious manner possible often after accusing bands of pretension. For example, Matt Snow wrote, in his review of Bauhaus’s “The Sky’s Gone Out, ” that “Pete Murphy comes across like David Bowie imitating Jacques Brel declaiming a pastiche of Lautremont backed by the early banshees.” That was one of my favorite lines in the magazine.
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