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No-wave misbehaviourLydia Lunch revives Teenage Jesus &
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Teenage Jesus & the Jerks foisted Lydia Lunch’s dark lyrics, monotone yelps, abrasive staccato arrangements and patented minimalist “mommy, mommy” (as she called it) guitar sound onto the late-1970s NYC scene, making even the most raucous punk rock sound like Burt Bacharach. Following countless music, film, comix and spoken-word collaborations with the likes of Nick Cave, Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby Jr., Lunch was convinced by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to revive the band for a scant handful of shows, to promote his 2008 book No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976–1980. She was reached by phone in Barcelona, where she’s been residing ever since “Bush stole the election.” Mirror: Audiences are privy to 30 years of Lydia Lunch now. Does this alter your method of provocation or must you time-travel to the past to re-enact your first band? Lydia Lunch: I began at such a hysterical, intense level that my 30-year path has been to find a way to finesse, sophisticate and change without losing intensity, intent, concept and passion. I call it crab-walking sideways. When you start at that kind of level, you can only go sideways in a circle in a different direction. It was such a propulsive experience and I’m happy to be an example because I still think there are far too few women making hideously aggressive, ugly, non-audience-pleasing noise. M: Why do you think that is? LL: Some are doing really intense music, but that ugly, brutal, violent, delicious aggro—I don’t know where they are. So, in a sense, I have a duty because I occupy that realm, the same way I feel with spoken word. There are a few paths that come back in that crab-walk because it’s an extreme feminine archetype that can’t be lost in all this overproduced, over-packaged ideal perfection of sexually-pleasing-to-the-male-eye beauty bullshit. Girls, get ugly. Get noisy. And laugh. There’s something so beatifically absurd, preposterous, outrageous and Dada about no-wave in spite of the anger and aggressiveness, and that’s where the kick comes in. It’s not just a hammer over the head. It’s a mystery. If you don’t have mystery and humour, you’re sunk. Contaminated by the truthM: Do you sense a difference in audience reactions between now and the ’70s? LL: All 10 or 20 of them? David Byrne used to run away from me when I was 17. “Psycho Killer,” my ass. He would see me and he’d run. It was so immediate and short-lived, with such a small audience. Part of the attraction for that period is the sense of community there was. You can’t plan that. Not just musicians, but painters, filmmakers, graffiti artists, poets, all different types of creative people were brought to the asshole of the universe, NYC, forced to create or go insane. That’s the most important part of what came out of it. M: What would you consider subversive today? LL: Telling the truth instead of jabbering at gossip, diverting from real issues. During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act, as George Orwell put it. I’ll never shut up about global patriarchal corporate capitalist-based injustice and bullshit. It’s always gonna come outta my fucking mouth and keep me outside mainstream culture. No matter how many ventricles I vomit out, how much it disturbs me, I’m gonna be contaminated by it. Fortunately I don’t feel alone. Sexy sicknessM: During your stint with the Cinema of Transgression movement, you were a proponent for making more porn for women. LL: That wasn’t the goal. It was public psychotherapy dealing with issues nobody was talking about that I thought affected a lot of men and women. Sex was involved because it was part of my reality, my identity, my obsession, my sickness. M: What would differentiate female-targeted porn from male-targeted porn, in your opinion? LL: I can’t speak for any audience because I’m so fucking weird to begin with. I can’t dissect desires, I can only say, everyone should be allowed films that somehow satisfy their desires. I’d like to see more psychologically twisted material. We don’t know what drives our crotches into overdrive and sometimes it’s our lowest, base, repulsive instincts. So be it. M: The last time I interviewed you for the Mirror, in 1988, I got fired for trying to illustrate a perverse special-effects fantasy you described to me. Would you like to try to get me fired again? LL: Oh, you devilish little bastard. Let’s hold the lynch mob off until I’m safely back in Europe. Some things I’m gonna leave to your overactive imagination. With our collective horror fantasies? Don’t get me started. WITH DUCHESS SAYS AND AIDS WOLF |
