Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch founded Teenage Jesus and the Jerks at sixteen and arrived in New York already sounding like downtown's most uncompromising voice, playing guitar as if she were strangling it rather than tuning it. Her approach was confrontational noise by design, a response to what she saw as the decay of the late seventies rather than an aesthetic pose. After Teenage Jesus disbanded she formed Beirut Slump, then 8 Eyed Spy with bassist and guitarist George Scott III. Her career widened from there into spoken word, writing, and film, including an appearance in Black Box (1978). She remains active as a singer, poet, writer, and actress.
At a glance
- Active
- 1976–present
- From
- Rochester, NY, USA
- Records in the issues
- 1 (1980)
- Original label
- ZE Records
- Listening guide track
- “What Is It”
Listen
In the NYC No Wave listening guide: “What Is It”
In the issues
- NYC No WavePrincipal · 1977-1984
NYC No Wave is a music scene from Lower Manhattan, New York City, 1977–1984. Its principal artists include Suicide, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Sonic Youth and The Contortions. This issue covers 10 essential albums and 14 dated events.
Records
Queen of Siam
1980 · Go deeper in NYC No WaveOriginal release: ZE Records · ZEA33-006 · 12″ Vinyl · US 1980Lydia Lunch's first solo album, released in 1980, expanded past the brutal brevity of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks while holding on to no wave's confrontational aesthetic and its refusal to court an audience. The songs still put texture and dissonance ahead of conventional melody, but Lunch gives them room to breathe here in a way Teenage Jesus's songs, some barely a minute long, never allowed.
Listen on Spotify
Voices
Quotations from the issues, each matched word for word against the source it links to.
“The ultimate goal of the group is to annoy. We just want to show the other bands how bad they are. New Wave is dead wave. There's no such thing because all the New Wave bands are re-hashed Who. We have one influence: I live in front of a factory. That's the only influence.”