Lydia Lunch: Teenage Jesus And The Jerks + Beirut Slump + 8 Eyed Spy + Lydia Lunch With The Anubian Lights

 

Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch, June 2, 1959) is an American singer, poet, writer, actress and

self-empowerment speaker. Her career was spawned by the New York City no wave scene in the 1970s, predominantly as the singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Her work typically features provocative and confrontational noise music delivery, and has maintained an anti-commercial ethic, operating independently of major labels and distributors. The Boston Phoenix named Lunch one of the ten most influential performers of the 1990s. Her collaboration with Sonic Youth called "Death Valley '69" was named one of "The 50 Most Evil Songs Ever" by Kerrang!.
                                                       

She has been an actress in experimental movies by Richard Kern and by Beth B & Scott B, and she's

also known for her spoken word performances. She's still producing music and collaborating on several projects as her latest one Lydia Lunch Retrovirus, beside leading her solo career too. She's also involved in writing and has edited books of poetry and fiction, including "Adulterers Anonymous" in collaboration with X's Exene Cervenka, and the novel "Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary".
                                                 

The basic plot would sound wild if it happened now, so imagine how gutsy it seemed back then: In

1976, at age 16, Lydia Koch runs away from her upstate New York home, crashes in a hippies' loft in Manhattan, befriends Suicide and the Dead Boys and foists her poetry on them, and eventually launches a band called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. "The driving vision behind Teenage Jesus was to castrate the tradition of melody and composition," she wrote in a memoir included in this disc, "and simply vent in the most primal way possible the horrible din of my own torture."
                                                

That may sound over the top, but it's an understatement compared to how Teenage Jesus actually

sounded. Over harsh, dogmatic beats, gravity-drenched bass, and exploding slide guitar, Lunch screamed out her obsessions with torture, imprisonment, and bodily harm. "Take a bullet to my eyes/ Blow them out and see if I die"; "Little orphans running through the bloody snow"; "The dishes are cracked, the forks are plastic/ The food is in cellophane, and I puke elastic." Lunch's short, spiked songs were the musical equivalent of avant-garde slasher movies. (No wonder no wave directors like Vivienne Dick and Beth and Scott B. often made Lydia the star of their films).
                                                 

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS 

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were an influential American no wave band, based in New York City, who formed part of the city's no wave movement.

Lydia Lunch met saxophonist James Chance at CBGB and moved into his two-room apartment. She started to combine her poetry with acoustic guitar and was spurred to start a band after seeing one of Mars' earlier performances. Lunch found guitarist Reck at CBGB and recruited him as a drummer, later moving him to bass. They formed a band called the Scabs and briefly added Jody Harris to their lineup. Lunch knew Bradley Field through Miriam Linna and convinced him to join in early 1977.
                                            

The band put together a ten-minute set of very short songs. It released only a handful of singles.

Featured on the seminal No New York LP, a showcase of the early no wave scene, compiled and produced by Brian Eno, the group left behind little more than a dozen complete recorded songs. Most of the surviving titles were collected on the eighteen-minute career retrospective compilation Everything, released in 1995 through Atavistic Records. However, other studio versions of several songs exist, alongside a few live recordings.
                                               

The group disbanded at the end of 1979, only reuniting briefly in 2008 for a small number of performances with former bassist Jim Sclavunos on drums and Thurston Moore on bass guitar.

 

                                                                                  Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

Bradley Field – drums, percussion
Lydia Lunch – vocals, electric guitar
Jim Sclavunos – bass guitar
Gordon Stevenson – bass guitar    

BEIRUT SLUMP

 

                                                            

Beirut Slump co-exists partialy at the same time as Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. They rehearse for most of the time they exist (@ Kristian Hoffman and Bradly Fields' place on 240 Grand Street), but end up

doing only 4 live concerts and one recording session. Apparently Diego Cortez (director of the illustrious "Grutzi Elvis" 1978 feature film) was their manager. In this band Lydia does not sing. Vocal duties are taken by Bob Swope, who alledgedly was, just like his sister, a tag-wrestler from Florida. Bobby Swope was one of the St.Petersburg (FL) Eckerd College crew (like Arto Lindsay, Connie Burg, Marc Cunningham and Gordon Stevenson). It's around this time that Lydia starts starring in (Irish born) Vivienne Dick's Super-8 films.
                                                 

Atavastic assembles the most complete compilation to date of these two bands fronted by the no wave legend Lydia Lunch, offering an unrelentingly harsh and bleak portrait of the artist as a young woman.
                                                            

The early work of Lydia Lunch often gets linked inextricably to no wave, the post-punk movement that burned through downtown New York in the late 1970's. That's accurate-- her nihilistic, audience-defying attitude helped define the movement (some claim she even coined the term). But it's also a bit unfair. Lunch's music would be bracingly unique anywhere, anytime, as would the path she took to get there.

LYDIA LUNCH  HYSTERIE (1976 - 1986) 1989
                                                                                                                              

Lydia Lunch – Hysterie
Label: Widowspeak Productions – WSP 8 CD
Format: CD, Compilation
Country: UK
Released: 1989
Genre: Rock
Style: New Wave, Punk, Avantgarde

TRAXS

                                              

01. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Red Alert    0:21
02. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Orphans    2:24
03. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–The Closet    3:47
04. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Burning Rubber    1:38
05. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–I Woke Up Dreaming    3:02
06. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Freud In Flop    0:42
07. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Baby Doll    1:32
08. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Race Mixing    1:01
09. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Crown Of Thorns    0:42
10. Teenage Jesus And The Jerks–Red Alert    0:24
11. Beirut Slump–Try Me    1:58
12. Beirut Slump–Staircase    2:38
13. Beirut Slump–I Am The Lord Jesus    0:53
14. Beirut Slump–Case #14    2:25
15. Beirut Slump–See Pretty    2:44
16. Beirut Slump–G-I Blue    0:56
17. Beirut Slump–Tornado Warnings    1:16
18. Beirut Slump–Sidewalk    2:54
19. 8 Eyed Spy–Swamp    0:51
20. 8 Eyed Spy–Run Thru The Jungle    5:29
21. 8 Eyed Spy–Motor Oil Shanty    2:30
22. 8 Eyed Spy–Love Split With Blood    2:04
23. 8 Eyed Spy–Ran Away Dark    1:51
24. 8 Eyed Spy–Diddy Wah Diddy    2:18
25. 8 Eyed Spy–Lazy In Love    2:53
26. 8 Eyed Spy–Dead Me You Beside    3:40
27. Lydia Lunch & Rowland S. Howard–I Fell In Love With A Ghost    6:59
28. Lydia Lunch & Sort Sol–As She Weeps    5:31
29. Lydia Lunch & Die Haut–Der Karibische Western    7:57

MP3 @ 320 Size: 173 MB
Flac  Size: 452 MB

LYDIA LUNCH 13.13  1982

                                                                            

"13.13" is the second album by American artist Lydia Lunch, released in June 1982 by record label Ruby. Trouser Press writes that the album "[revives] the grind-and-caterwaul of Teenage Jesus as

LYDIA + CAVE

filtered through Metal Box-era PiL, all deviant guitar and rolling rhythms". UK magazine Fact wrote that "sonically it comes over like a more droning, dissolute Stateside cousin of Siouxsie & the Banshees' Juju". The musicians who played on and co-wrote the album had been members of first wave Los Angeles punk band the Weirdos.
Recorded in 1981 and originally released in ’82, it’s arguably the New York artist’s most satisfying full-length statement, and certainly one of her most influential.
                                                         

LYDIA LUNCH WITH NICK CAVE

“13.13" exists as document to the pandemonium of spectres and potential serial killers who twisted the

California Dream into a waking nightmare as they snaked through the boulevards, back yards and basements of a sun stroked paradise turning into a blood soaked inferno of fear, paranoia, panic and lust killings.” Right you are, Lydia. Despite it’s grisly subject matter, 13.13 is a remarkably accessible and – dare we say it – fun record. Lunch is clearly as titillated as she is disgusted by the “bad beat poets, dopesick singers, cracked actors and petty criminals” she sings about, melody wins out over dissonance, and Denney’s crunchy guitar work is good enough to eat.  

13.13 is a Masterpiece.

MEMBERS

Dix Denney – guitar
Lydia Lunch – vocals, piano, production
Cliff Martinez – drums, percussion
Greg Williams – bass guitar

Production and additional personnel

13.13 – production
David Arnoff – photography
Bob Blank – engineering
Steven McDonald – engineering
James Partie – photography
Jeff Price – design
Thom Wilson – engineering

TRAXS

 

01. Stares To Nowhere     4:15
02. 3x3     6:05
03. This Side Of Nowhere     4:15
04. Snakepit Breakdown     4:07
05. Dance Of The Dead Children     2:49
06. Suicide Ocean     5:56
07. Lock Your Door     5:27
08. Afraid Of Your Company     7:04

STARES TO NOWHERE LYRICS

The plastic crumbles and the walls fall in
The sidewalk's melting I begin to spin
You know where I'm going and
You know where I've been
My mind's exploding like it's never been
The sidewalk's melting I begin to spin
I can't look down, I might fall in
I'm looking up but I'm feeling down
I'm standing still but still falling down
The plastic crumbles and the walls fall in
The sidewalk's melting I begin to spin
I'm looking up but I'm feeling down
I'm standing still but still falling down
On the stares that lead to Nowhere
I'm staring into Nowhere
On the stares that lead to Nowhere.

MP3 @ 320 Size: 97 MB
Flac  Size: 241 MB

8 EYED SPY  1981

                                                                            

8 Eyed Spy was an American no wave band from New York City, consisting of Lydia Lunch (ex-

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Beirut Slump) and Jim Sclavunos (also ex-Teenage Jesus and Beirut Slump), Michael Paumgardhen, Pat Irwin and George Scott III.
8 Eyed Spy played their first New York City show in October 1979 at the Mudd Club. Subsequently, AllMusic qualified 8 Eyed Spy as "a far more overtly musical group than Teenage Jesus and the Jerks".
                                              

They covered Bo Diddley's Diddy Wah Diddy, the swamp rock classic Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. The band recorded only briefly, releasing one live album, Live, and a self-titled studio album. The band broke up in 1980 after the death of George Scott III.
                                                            

8 Eyed Spy – 8 Eyed Spy
Label: Atavistic – ALP75CD
Format: CD, Compilation, Remastered 1997
Country: US
Released: 1981
Genre: Rock
Style: Art Rock, Punk

TRAXS

                                                                  

01. Diddy Wah Diddy (Written-By [Uncredited] – Ellas McDaniel, Willie Dixon)  2:19
02. Lazy In Love    2:28
03. Love Split    2:10
04. Dead You B Side Me    3:40
05. Swamp    0:57
06. Run Through The Jungle  (Written-By – John Fogerty)  5:26
07. Motor Oil Shanty    4:30
08. You Twist I Shout    2:31
09. Looking For Someone    2:40
10. Lightning's Girl  (Written-By – Lee Hazlewood)  3:07
11. Innocence    1:25
12. Boy Meets Girl    1:58
13. 2 Square    2:36
14. I Want Candy  (Written-By – B. Russell, R. Feldman, G. Goldstein, B. Gottehrer)  2:05
15. Ran Away Dark    1:51

Credits

Bass – George Scott III (tracks: 2 to 3, 7 to 15)
Drums – Jim Sclavunos
Guitar – Michael Paumgardhen
Photography By – Michael Halsband, Tom Bessoir
Producer, Engineer – Bob Blank
Remastered By – Pat Irwin
Remix – Chris Stamey, Scott Lit
Saxophone, Guitar, Bass, Piano – Pat Irwin
Vocals – Lydia Lunch

MP3 @ 320 Size: 96 MB
Flac  Size: 247 MB

LYDIA LUNCH WITH THE ANUBIAN LIGHTS  2002

                                                                                    

The Anubian Lights are a spacy, partially electronic group loosely connected to Hawkwind via one of the Lights' membership in Nik Turner's Space Ritual; other members hail from Pressurehed, Farflung, the Brain, Chrome, and Zero Gravity. The group debuted in 1995 with The Eternal Sky; it was followed in 1996 by the EP The Jackal and Nine and in 1998 by the full-length Let Not the Flame Die Out. Naz Bar marked the band's first release of the new millennium.
                                                                 

Lydia Lunch With The Anubian Lights – Champagne, Cocaine & Nicotine Stains
Label: Crippled Dick Hot Wax! – CDHW 027
Format: CD, EP
Country: Germany
Released: 2002
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Experimental

TRAXS

                                                                        

01. Nothing But Trouble    3:59
02. Champagne , Cocaine & Nicotine Stains  (Guitar [Treated] – Scott Rusch)  4:00
03. Potango Tango    3:45
04. Guernicana    2:11
05. Potango Tango (Rmx)  (Remix – Anubian Lights)  4:24

Credits

Bass, Guitar, Keyboards, Loops – Tommy Grenas
Electric Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar – Tracy Garcia
Keyboards, Drums, Programmed By, Loops – Len Del Rio
Lyrics By – Lydia Lunch
Mastered By – Ryan Kirk
Mastered By [Final Mastering] – Bo Kondren
Mixed By, Engineer – Len Del Rio
Music By – Del Rio, Lunch, Grenas
Painting – Oliver Tibi
Producer – Anubian Lights, Lydia Lunch
Vocals – Lydia Lunch

MP3 @ 320 Size: 46 MB
Flac  Size: 125 MB