Teenage Jesus and Beirut Slump
Before the woozy Queen of Siam, the slammed poetry and the blow-job acting bits for Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch helped erect No Wave as a nihilistic powerhouse with several bands whose sound, vision and existential mien far and away bludgeoned what was NYC’s punk scene into the ground. No, seriously. Closer in spirit to dank punk’s originators (Suicide, the Dolls and the drugscuzziest) and the avant-primal loft-area jazz-bos (William Parker, etc.) of Manhattan than her contemporizes (the poppier Blondie, the comic Ramones), Lunch’s manic crews stripped melody from her moments and replaced it with the energy of brutality.
See, punk was energetic. And it could be brutal in a rock-on sort of way. But with sax maniac James Chance (before his Contortions) drummer Bradley Field and bassist Gordon Stevenson, the guitar-stress and announcer (Lunch) took what she called “the horrible din of my own torture” and shoved it furiously and quickly (very quickly: I witnessed whole TJ+THJ sets taking ten minutes) up the ass of post-Branca-broken listeners. There was drama, desperation, lonely violence, Harry Crewes-like babble and orphans running through the bloody snow while slide guitars screeeeeeeched and dishes cracked.
“The food is in cellophane, and I puke elastic” might sound like an oafish line now. But pretend it’s 1977 and you’re in grade school and you’re listening to this dirtball woman spitting and moaning those words like she’s getting kicked in the ribs. TJ sucked the air out of the room, the building, your lungs and your friends’ every cavity. Eventually Chance would leave and Jim Sclavunos took over the bass and stuff like “Roll Your Thunder” sounded un-merrily militaristic and spare. Then Lunch became the root of the slow death droning Beirut Slump with Sclavunos on drums and some film people from NYC making horror-cinema noise. And then she ran off to read prose with Exene and get fingered by guys in Foetus. Ah, but we’ll always have “Orphans”.
Standout Tracks: “Orphans,” “Roll Your Thunder,” “Staircase” A.D. AMOROSI
