Movie of the Week: Put Blood In the Music - Underground New York Music Scene feat. John Zorn & Sonic Youth (The South Bank Show - 1989)

Movie of the Week: Lydia Lunch - Video Hysterie: 1978-2006 (2008)

Lydia at Max's in 1978 by Eugene Merinov

Here's a fun way to waste a Saturday afternoon - watching this retrospective of Lydia Lunch videos from 1978-2006.

This retrospective of Lydia Lunch's musical collaborations from 1978-2006 is an incredible representation of her approach to art. Hailed by the Boston Phoenix as "one of the 10 most influential performers of the 90's", no other artist of the 20th century has fought, forged, punched, and sculpted their own artistic vision in such a uniquely original way. Defying categorization, Lunch actively has conquered new territories, and has gained international recognition for the innovative quality of her work. Robert Palmer from the New York Times writes "Miss Lunch was always an effective vocal performer. But rock has grown complacent again -- even the underground rock that has borrowed so much from Miss Lunch's various bands over the years. Perhaps it's time for her to administer it a few more rude shocks." This DVD is sure to please anyone in search of change of pace, a stray from the norm.

Purchase on DVD here

Don't Hide The Madness: Lydia Lunch To Host Howl Benefit at Pyramid

HOWL! Arts and Some Serious Business Present an Evening of Spoken Word in the Raw

LYDIA LUNCH Hosts DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS
With cohorts Bob Bert, Nicole Blackman, Bibbe Hansen, Zachary Lipez, Edgar Oliver, Tony O'Neill, Phantom Family Halo, and surprise guests. 

 DJ: Linda Rizzo

Thursday, May 30, 2013 / 7–10 PM

Tickets: $10 in advance / $15 at the door / Cash only the evening of the show
Tickets available in advance through Brown Paper Tickets http://m.bpt.me/event/378639

A Benefit for HOWL! Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P.)
*100% of the proceeds from the door go to H.E.L.P.

Pyramid Cocktail Lounge
101 Ave A (between 6th & 7th Streets)

East Village, NYC

Charles Ball remembered by Godlis

Charles Ball on the Bowery, 1977 ©Godlis

Following today's sad news about Charles Ball, Godlis checked in with some fantastic images of the man about whom he said, "Charles was a Dylan fanatic, and I fondly remember going to see the Street Legal Dylan at Madison Square Garden one night in 1978. Charles brought along a suitcase with his giant tape recorder, to record the show. I still have that tape of Dylan singing a monumental version of Changing of the Guard - a song that Patti Smith has since been known to cover."

"I heard of Charles Ball's death this afternoon and just can't shake that feeling. He's been underground for so many years now in Florida, gone from his New York scene, that I can't remember the last time I saw him. I think it was on a drive up to Westchester in the early 90's when he was helping me on a video project with my photos. He was working in an audio store up there, and got me a discount on a tuner. Then he was gone one day, no forwarding address or number, and I never heard from him again. We met at CBGB's in 76, when he was working with Terry Ork, and I took this photo of them on Delancey Street after we visited the Teenage Jesus loft one night. He set me up to do at least three Teenage Jesus sessions. Charles used my Alex Chilton photo for the Bangkok 45 and made it legendary. I'm not sure if I ever got paid, but I still spent a lot of great time in the day with Charles Ball - as insufferable as he was visionary. R.I.P. now Charles."

All images ©Godlis

Charles Ball & Terry Ork, Delancey Street, 1977 ©Godlis

Bob Quine, Lydia Lunch, Charles Ball in the studio, 1977 or 1978 - Vanguard Studios? ©Godlis

Movie of the Week - The Gun Is Loaded with Lydia Lunch

Random Lydia Lunch reference of the day

Photo by Keegan Gibbs

Hell in Paradise by Pat Ivers

After posting the above ad for the famous Hell In Paradise show (June 1978, Paradise Garage) last month, I invited Pat Ivers (of Nightclubbing video fame, along with Emily Armstrong) to write a remembrance of the night since I've never read, or heard, anything about the show. In fact, the only reason I know about it is because of Pat & Emily. I've been lucky enough to see some of their footage from this evening, and the idea of these acts playing in the hallowed disco ground of the Paradise Garage is reason enough to get the story...I hope you enjoy this, and a huge thank you to Pat! Be sure to visit their website - link below. Take it away, Pat:

Maybe it was just an idea whose time had not yet come, but I remember thinking at the time, "Wow! Punk at the Paradise Garage, our music taken to the next level of visibility. Maybe it really is going to be a viable thing , not exactly mainstream, but playing to a larger audience…people actually making money." ...It didn’t exactly work out that way.

The lineup was great: The Senders, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, the Contortions, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Great mix of styles, something for everyone. Emily Armstrong and I started negotiating with the guys who ran Paradise Garage to come in and videotape what we thought would be an historic night, which it was...for all the wrong reasons.

Paradise Garage exterior, 84 King Street

First, nobody came. There seemed to be maybe 100 or 150 people in attendance. In a space like the Paradise Garage, it looked like the worst prom ever. With the disco ball spinning in the darkened room, the space looked sinister and a little sleazy. And then as The Senders played, the electricity failed. This happened over and over again over the course of the evening.

Still, everyone soldiered on. Lydia played a short show. The Contortions roared through a set. James Chance left after his performance with some girl for a date in the cemetery on 2nd Street. Richard Hell, I seem to remember, threw beach balls or something into the audience while he played. It was grim.

At the end of the night, James returned to find Hell being told by management that no one was getting paid. Threats and counter threats ensued. James stopped them in their tracks, breaking a beer bottle and cutting himself with the words, “You can’t scare me”. The stunned management paid them.

I haven't seen most of the video from that night in years. It is one of the many tapes I can't wait to see, as Fales Library begins its restoration of our collection.

If you're as much of an ephemera or original source geek as me, you'll be happy to see this photo of the actual tapes from the Nightclubbing collection of that infamous show.

Nightclubbing - official website & Facebook

Before and After: Some Velvet Morning

Before - Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra:

Lee Hazlewood on Amazon
Nancy Sinatra on Amazon

After - Lydia Lunch & Rowland S. Howard:

Lydia Lunch on Amazon
Rowland S. Howard on Amazon

Before and After: Diddy Wah Diddy

Before - Bo Diddley:


During - Captain Beefheart:


After - 8 Eyed Spy:

Before and After: Frankie Teardrop

Before - Suicide:

(Shout out to Paul Dougherty! Indeed, this is what we were up against.)

After - Lydia Lunch:

Lydia Lunch - The Gun Is Loaded now available

There's nothing like waking up at 7:00AM on a Saturday morning to a film featuring Lydia Lunch. Directed by Joe Tripician, and former Hurrah club VJ Merrill Aldighieri, The Gun Is Loaded was shot in 1988 and features Ms. Lunch walking & ranting in the streets of NYC intercut with various scenery, news footage, etc. All set to music by Mr. Foetus, aka JG Thirwell (both pictured above). The full 37 minute film is now available for download rental via GoEggIt.com. Now if I could only get my hands on a copy of Vortex. Trailer warning for liberal use of the F-word as one might expect.

Friday Ephemera - Downtown again

Punking Out

If you liked yesterday's post regarding the Blank Generation film, you'll love this as well.

Punking Out was filmed in 1977 around CBGB and features some high quality, in-your-face, front row footage of the Dead Boys, Ramones, and Richard Hell & the Voidoids performing, as well as interviews with club employees and fans, including a VERY young couple of kids by the names of Lydia Lunch and James Chance. Visit the film's official website. A DVD of the movie is available for only $14.95. That's a steal! Plus, you're buying it directly from the filmmaker himself.

Here's the trailer. The quality of the actual DVD looks a lot better than this video does: Punking Out

Paul Tschinkel's Innertube - New York Music New York

Paul Tschinkel's "Innertube - New York Music New York" was a public access video show that ran from 1979-1984 in Manhattan. He shot some incredible performances by the likes of DNA, the Contortions, the Cramps, the Waitresses, and many more. A short bio about Paul can be read here. His longest running project, ART/New York, a video series on contemporary New York-based artists can be seen here.

James Chance & the Contortions, Max's Kansas City, 1979


Klaus Nomi interview, 1982


New York New Wave at P.S. 1 - "The Armory Show of the 80s," 1981


Eight Eyed Spy with Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd's film "They Eat Scum" (1979) and Howie Zowie, 1983


Johnny Thunders, Klaus Nomi and Jayne County, 1982


The Waitresses (Irving Plaza) & the Cramps (Mudd Club), 1981

Eugene Merinov 8Tracks Mix

Listen while browsing the amazing photographs at www.eugenemerinov.com. Nine tracks of alternative & punk and post punk, including music by Bauhaus, Bush Tetras, Lydia Lunch / 8 Eyed Spy and Pere Ubu.

No Wave book & Teenage Jesus night pix continued

More from last Fridays event on Leonard Street here in NYC. The following photos courtesy of our friend, John Espinosa, from the Retna Photo agency.

Thurston Moore & Stephanie Chernikowski (photographer):


Lee Renaldo & Thurston Moore:


Pat Place (Contortions, Bush Tetras):


James Chance:


Glenn Branca:


Michael Zilkha (Ze Records co-founder) & Martin Rev:


Jessie Malin & Howie Pyro:

Teenage Jesus & the Jerks Reunion 6-13-08

Went to the early set, and enjoyed it a lot more than expected. The band, or Lydia Lunch & Jim Sclavunos with Thurston Moore, were probably tighter and more together than they had been originally - although thats just speculation. The set was 20 minutes which was perfect. Every band I see from now on should just play 20 minutes. Who needs more?

Anyway, it was the scene, the event, that really made the night worthwhile. I haven't been to a show like this in years. The Knitting Factory was crawling with scenesters, the real music heads. I met Martin Rev, Glenn O'Brien, Andy Schwartz, all of Sonic Youth, and I'm sure a lot of other people there would have been recognizable if it were 30 years ago. I Had a great time hanging out with Gary from Domino & my old buddy Mark Ibold who I hadn't seen in years. It was also nice seeing Josh from Other Music - they were there selling copies of the book, and related CD's. Byron Coley was DJ'ing. Ran into Jason Gross from PerfectSoundForever.com. Even James Chance was there.

Check out my friend Randy's pictures here on Flickr.

Add to your no wave collection:

A Brief, Noisy Moment That Still Reverberates

Tonight, prior to the Teenage Jesus & the Jerks sets at the Knitting Factory (click image to enlarge):



And just in case you missed the story in the Times:



Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived.

Centered on a handful of late-1970s downtown groups like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and James Chance’s Contortions, it was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style and nihilistic in attitude. It began around 1976, and within four years most of the original bands had broken up.

But every weird rock scene — and every era of New York bohemia — eventually gets its coffee-table book moment. This month Abrams Image is publishing “No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980,” a visual history by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley.

On Friday the book will be celebrated with an exhibition opening at KS Art, at 73 Leonard Street in TriBeCa, and, across the street at the Knitting Factory, the reunion of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, whose blunt, aggressive songs had instrumentation so minimal that on its records the percussionist was sometimes credited as playing simply “drum.” Lydia Lunch, the former lead singer, is flying from Barcelona to play the show.

In the last year two other books have been published on no wave and overlapping periods of downtowniana: Marc Masters’s “No Wave” (Black Dog) and “New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88: Photographs by Paula Court” (Soul Jazz), a collection of photographs by Paula Court.

“It was a little, blippy scene,” said Mr. Moore, the Sonic Youth guitarist and historian of underground rock. “It came out of the gate finished.”

With crisp black-and-white photographs and interviews with musicians and visual artists, the book is a loving reminiscence of a largely unheard period, as well as a look at a seedy, pre-gentrified Lower East Side. Most groups in the no wave scene — which also included Mars, the www.epitonic.com/artists/theoreticalgirls.html and the Gynecologists — left behind few recordings, and the compilation album that defined the genre, “No New York,” produced by Brian Eno in 1978, has never been legitimately issued on CD in the United States.

Despite its brief, blippy existence, no wave has had a broad and continued influence on noisy New York bands, from Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore in the 1980s to current groups like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Liars. But the original no wavers saw themselves not as part of any rock continuum but a deliberate reaction against such an idea.

“A guitar player like Lydia Lunch was somebody who clearly was not coming out of any kind of tradition,” said Mr. Coley, a veteran rock critic. “She didn’t have a Chuck Berry riff in her.”

The rebelliousness came out in many ways, from song composition — nasty, brutish and short — to the movement’s name, a cynical retort to “new wave,” then emerging as a more palatable variation on punk. The looks were nerdy and androgynous (or, in Ms. Lunch’s case, menacingly oversexed).

The sound reflected the squalor and decay of downtown New York in the late ’70s.

“New York at that moment was bankrupt, poor, dirty, violent, drug-infested, sex-obsessed — delightful,” Ms. Lunch said by phone. “In spite of that we were all laughing, because you laugh or you die. I’ve always been funny. My dark comedy just happens to scare most people.”

Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley’s book emphasizes the major role that women had in the scene. Besides Ms. Lunch, they included Pat Place of the Contortions, Ikue Mori of DNA and Nancy Arlen of Mars, as well as impresario-scenesters like Anya Phillips. Many photographs were taken by women, among them Julia Gorton and Stephanie Chernikowski.

Ms. Gorton, who was a student at the Parsons School of Design in the late ’70s and now teaches there, said that everyone in the no wave circle knew one another. “There were a lot of late nights, a lot of pitchers, a lot of Polaroids,” she said.

The book’s genesis was two years ago when Mr. Moore heard that Abrams, which published “CBGB and OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock” in 2005, was considering a book on no wave, with a broad and multidisciplinary approach.

Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley, who said they had been considering a no wave book for years, rushed to the Abrams office to pitch their idea, which would instead have a narrow focus, excluding everything that did not meet their strict definition of no wave.

A restrictive approach to one of the most obscure periods of rock music would seem to limit a book’s audience. But Tamar Brazis, who edited both books, said there was enough interest in the period to justify the “No Wave” book, and that the depth of Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley’s knowledge bowled her over. The CBGB book, she said, has sold nearly 40,000 copies, an impressive figure for an art book, and she added that Abrams has similar expectations for “No Wave.”

Mr. Moore said that only a narrow definition would fit the genre, which was so contrary in its sound and attitude that too much outside context would dilute its impact.

“We liked the absurdity of how small it was,” he said. “We kept our parameters really tight. We needed a cut-off point, and we cut it off as soon as anybody played any semblance of rock ’n’ roll. Any kind of traditional aspect of rock, it’s over.”

No Wave slideshow at NYTimes.com - click here.

NY Rocker 1980