When one thinks of ‘70s and ‘80s dissident, hyper-creative – and often torrid -- underground New York, one thinks of No Wave, Punk, Hip Hop, The Saint, Voguing, The Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City, The Mudd Club, CBGB’S; Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, Patricia Field, Dorian Corey, Frankie Knuckles…the list of legends from that era goes on.
But for aficionados of true gritty underground New York City culture, Lydia Lunch is the first name that comes to mind. As one of the legendary musicians (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Queen of Siam), spoken word artists (Oral Fixation, Conspiracy of Women), authors (Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary,Will Work For Drugs) and actresses (R. Kerns’ Right Side of My Brain and Fingered) who emerged out of the ‘70s nihilistic No Wave movement who is still with us and still working, Lunch carries the torch of the great creativity that came out of New York from that time. Offending sensibilities since 1977 with her relentless and unfiltered challenges to sex, gender, politics, religion, war, technology, consumerism, the arts, the media, baby-having, you name it, Lunch is a true embodiment of the kind of creative impulse and extreme experiences – both wonderful and horrible – that arise out of pure and simple defiance of convention.
Lunch left New York in 1990 to tour the world and returned last year with a new photographic exhibition at the Howl! Happening Gallery and to perform with her new band, RETROVIRUS. Lunch reemerges at a time when the gritty, creative, and underground New York of the ‘70s and ‘80s has turned sterile, conformist, and consumerist; when spaces where underground culture could even take place have been bulldozed and turned into luxury towers, banks and tourist traps; and when the city has been occupied by people who spend their time trying to be both observed and approved of on social media. In other words, Lunch returns at a time when New York has become the antithesis of what defines underground.
With the exodus of New York’s artistic class almost complete, one would have to ask Lunch why in the world she would come back now, or deduce that she’s needed more than ever.
Lunch would contend the latter.
It is with that very intent that she brings Lydia Lunch’s Underground Salon: Sexy Stories From New York City’s Torrid Underground to the Roxy Hotel’s subterranean lounge The Django in Tribeca July 11th and 26th, with a possible encore through the summer. Lunch will be reliving her own torrid past with readings from her salacious sex memoir Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary (Akashic Books 2007). Joining Lunch will be Warhol superstar Bibbe Hansen giving the room a taste of ‘60s New York prison life, Village life, Beat life and Factory Life as rendered in her unpublished memoirs, and Lower East Side raconteur Zoe Hansen providing a preview of what life was like as an ‘80s street walker turned professional madam as vividly illustrated in her unpublished memoir, Going Down in Gotham. Out Jazz Brutarians Weasel Walter, Tim Dahl and Chris Pitsiokos will fill in the blanks between readings with contemporary nihilistic sounds of No Wave.
With the curtain on Lunch’s Underground Salon about to go up, the indomitable, multi-talented and perennial provocateur had me over for cocktails at The Roxy to discuss exactly what a torrid underground is, how it can happen again in New York, and just how torrid her own life is today.
CLN: What is Sexy Stories from New York City’s Torrid Underground about?
LL: The show is true tales from 3 outrageous survivors of extreme New York, offset with musical interludes from the best contemporary “out “-- as in, out of the mainstream -- musicians New York has to offer…with the occasional surprise guest.
CL