March 06, 2005
MRR #264
Out to Lunch
Although I’ve typically found the extremes of Punk somehow unconvincing (even GG Allin is a caricature), I’ve always found Lydia Lunch authentically frightening. She was very adult when most Punks were fresh faced, and Goths came off as poseurs. Try listening to her “King of Siam” LP in the dark at night, alone. The same chills as Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop”. I didn’t know what to make of it. I never thought about seeing her live. She seemed like nightmares planted in your head. Meanwhile, Texas correspondent Lona Leigh had the guts to check out Lunch on her recent spoken word tour. She had this to say:
Last January, when Lydia Lunch came to town, I purchased four tickets to her spoken word show, In Our Time of Dying, at the Axiom, Houston TX (yes, the Axiom of lore), but ended up turning three of them back to the box office.
"Lydia who?" No one knew, and I could garner no interest. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a statement about my social life. But I also see it as symptomatic of where Lunch exists –or doesn’t –in the public conscience. Despite several brushes with notoriety and instances of artistic acclaim, Lunch remains obscured from the myopic vision of the taste makers and trend setters, although I am not sure why. It seems clear she is a relentless progenitor of ideas that work their way (albeit slowly) into the mainstream -her discography is too lengthy to delve here. Still, she is largely under-credited.
Lydia Lunch was born in Rochester, New York, 1959. She went to New York City in the mid 70’s with the idea of becoming a writer. In a 1997 interview, she named Patti Smith, Richard Hell and Television as her musical heroes, but clings to literature as her creative raison d’etre, and cited Henry Miller and Jean Genet as her greatest influences. For Lunch, music is mainly a backdrop/sound scape for lyrics. And she disassociates herself from the New York punk scene, claiming she got lumped in because of her predilections toward primal scream art and black clothing, that on an artistic level she really had very little to do with punk. She identifies herself much more closely with the "no-wave" movement, which she explained was about confronting personal insanity, apathy and self-oppression. She has worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Richard Kern, and Henry Rollins. Her band, 8 Eyed Spy, put her in touch with a more traditional rock and roll listener, but she never commercialized. She outs 8 Eyed Spy as being "too catchy" and "too accessible". Despite offers from record companies she quit the band, believing steadfastly that repetition is unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting, that she didn’t want to play the same songs for ten years, over and over... Which may be factored when considering why her underwhelming popularity. Moving quickly from project to project and genre to genre, her audience can’t find her, much less keep up with her.
The crowd at the Axiom was mainly the funky-punks, with a few book-toting, hip-to-be-squares and Friday business casuals rounding out the mix. The recently reformed Axiom, which seats 90, was full. And the booking agent told me he optimistically added an extra show at the last minute, which was also almost sold out. I wanted to take this as a sign Lunch (or her marketing director) does know how to connect.
In person, Lunch is something of a schizzed Scheherazade who, with the fervor of a shit-slinging anthropoid gone bananas, harpoons and lampoons everything and everyone from her neighbors to the cops to the political establishment. But her favorite target: Herself. On stage she appears overwrought by the toll that her personal relationships have taken on her. If you believe that she is not abusing her poetic license and that the hyperbolic expressions she uses are not mere exaggeration, you’ll find her delightfully demented and almost unacceptably sincere. Despite the expletives and the deviant humor, her work rings true. She gravitated toward "fucking and fighting", self-inflicted psychosis, and ritualized drug use as her themes. I winced several times during the segment where she described her boyfriend’s descent into mental illness and addiction, which she seems to have facilitated by pandering to his constant needs for coddling and tit-biting, and by plying him with substances. Whether she believes in karma, I couldn’t hazard a guess, but from the sounds of her she definitely has suffered enough to deserve a clean slate. Just when you feel about to cry: Get down off the wood and give Jesus the cross!, she resurrects herself -a tattered phoenix flying the middle-finger - dropping a stink-bomb of a 1,000 year old egg in your lap: You’re no better than me, and, what are you going to do? and, this is what male and female is about, is how she wraps it up. She is willing to set herself up to be judged, but only for so long…She is a quintessential confrontationalist, challenging the audience to get busy and take the plank form their own eye. She seems to want to show us ourselves by lancing her boils in public. When she exposes her nasty bits, she kinda wakes the audience up to themselves. If she didn’t reek of fringe (and a hangover), she’d be the ultimate, if not accidental, testimonial speaker for the Scared Straight program. I hope I don't see her ranting on a corner in the East Village someday, like Lenny Bruce.
You won't be able to speed track through Lunch's most recent CD album, "Smoke in the Shadows", for the simple reason that the songs are story-like and are presented mainly in a conversational style which commands attention. Plus, they're peppered with plenty of truths to ponder. My most favorite, "Temptation is Greater than Memory", could be the first reasonable explanation for why I keep doing certain things. The album is really cohesive, yet each song has the distinct flavor of a different place and time, and she nails each one: At once you feel yourself sipping side cars and grinding with the initiated, and then, you're on the stoop with a can of Colt in East Harlem. This album represents what Lou Reed would like to be. It is a brilliant cacophony of sounds and styles, much like New York City itself. My favorite track, "Lost World", has such a great beat, it's so smooth and cool, it will get your imagination going. She takes her themes of sex abuse (the consenting adult kind), drug and alcohol abuse, and well, abuse, to new levels and you may find yourself thinking about the album even when you're not listening.
I suppose that popularity control has been a part of Lunch's game, in the name of keeping it real. Still, I hope a lot of people will hear this album, since she is on the level of a Waits. Big boys got nothin' on her.
Fucking Up Your Video Deck
There was some major grunge kinship between Minneapolis and Seattle during the latter ‘80s. Maybe it was something in the flannel. Or maybe it was a non-toeing the line type Marine named Tom Hazelmyer, who bounced back and forth between the two places, swinging his big seven inches via Amphetamine Reptile Records, first vehicle for his own masturbatory affair, Halo of Flies, and later for denizens of similarly noise worshipping hoods. As Sub Pop’s bastard cousin, it subsequently hit some paydirt with the band Helmet, head swelling to self-mocking proportions when it rechristened itself “AmRep Industries”…
“Dope Guns and Fucking Up Your Video Deck Vol 1-3” is a DVD that digitizes the three individual VHS tapes of the same name, plus a baker’s dozen of extra videos. Presented as sort of a monopolized MTV station wherein all the videos are of the pigfuck variety and the host is one tight and barely funny mutha, Dr Sphinctor, the testosterone high can be a rather swift kick in the groin, but it’s a good a way as any to get the gestalt of underground white boy aggro pre and post-Nirvana. The exception might be Helmet, whose attack might be more aligned with Metallica.
Page Hamilton, the leader of Helmet, also did time as a past member of the Branca Ensemble, an ever rotating army of electric guitarists of whom Lee Ranaldo was also alum. “Symphony No. 8 and 10”, performed live at The Kitchen in NYC is also out on DVD on the Atavistic label. Glenn Branca, the ex-No Waver who’s got hair that Donald Trump would kill for, pushes his riff meisters so hard that they look in perpetual masturbation without the cum shot. Tho the visuals don’t really add a heckuva lot to the experience, the music itself is gripping, majestic, and transporting. This is what Prog Rock only aspired to be, stripped of the self-important blowhard.
While highly influential ‘80s zine Forced Exposure was responsible for bringing Branca into my consciousness, they tried unsuccessfully with their devoted gushing over Sun Ra, the outré Jazz artist. Given my staunch RnR leanings at the time, it was a no go. Over the last coupla decades, however, I’ve begun to realize that it’s practically inevitable for any proper rock’n roller to eventually explore, if not embrace, the land of free Jazz and its ilk. Sun Ra is certainly one of the most special artists as it was not just his music but his entire being, the outer space thing, plus the fact that he got an entire Arkestra’s worth of folks to embody his way out leanings, that appeal to the punk aesthete in me. “The Magic Sun”, is an experimental art film by Phill Niblock from 1966, only 17 minutes long so it ain’t got the bore attached, that shows Sun and his Arkestra in a different light per se, that is in a stark negative white and black of close-ups of the band as they play. If 17 minutes seems too little for your money, the extras, being Sun Ra espousing his tripped out philosophies, should be well enough to put you in the buying mood. More cred than the entire Clash catalogue put together.
Meanwhile, also on Atavistic’s Unheard Music Series is another Sun Ra related baffle – “The Cry of Jazz”, which was done in 1959, his Chicago period. It’s a documentary rant on race and Jazz music that showed that blacks were the punks of that era, and Jazz was their punk. Even its proclamation of “Jazz Is Dead” as it’s been misappropriated and stripped echoes that of Punk as it has been by the army of Blink 182’s. Worth a watch, tho unlikely repeatedly.
Ending on a lighter note, DEVO's “Live in the Land of the Rising Sun” DVD is a 2003 show in Japan. Fun backstage stuff wherein Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerry Casale chat while sitting with their respective Pugs in their laps. The nice thing about the DEVO aesthetic is that it translates reasonably well to post middle age. The guys may all be much wider than they used to be, but they can still execute the jerky moves. Jerkiness is easily retained in the muscle memory. Even their outfits age well. The Energy Domes are perfect for balding heads and those Plastic Jumpsuits cover up the flabby bodies. I think they must have thought this through a long time ago.
Ending on a lighter note, DEVO's “Live in the Land of the Rising Sun” DVD is a 2003 show in Japan. Fun backstage stuff wherein Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerry Casale chat while sitting with their respective Pugs in their laps. The nice thing about the DEVO aesthetic is that it translates reasonably well to post middle age. The guys may all be much wider than they used to be, but they can still execute the jerky moves. Jerkiness is easily retained in the muscle memory. Even their outfits age well. The Energy Domes are perfect for balding heads and those Plastic Jumpsuits cover up the flabby bodies. I think they must have thought this through a long time ago.
The show is great by the way. It's also cool to see one of the extras on the DVD which is a 1980 live performance of "Gut Feeling", which if not at their peak it'd have to have been damned close.
posted by Henry @ 5:19 PM 
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