Lydia Lunch

by Lydia Lunch

Overview

In these uncensored, easy-to-read yet not dumbed-down interviews, Lydia Lunch spiritedly discusses her personal history and some of the many creative collaborations that have spiced up her life, art and travels. A master of cutting through creative gordian-knots, she discusses how she evolved her unique style of guitar-playing and song-writing. Simplicity and originality are the hallmarks of her recent Teenage Jesus and the Jerks concert performance tours. Lydia has not only survived but thrived as she has traveled the world making art, music, performance and installations — always on her own terms. An incarnation of female Nietzschean will, Lydia Lunch continually surprises, provokes and evokes dark laughter in these "you-are-there" transcribed conversations. Hopefully, after reading this book, every reader will be inspired to make art, create blasphemous thoughts, and change the world...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781889307381
Publisher:	RE/Search Publications
Publication date:	02/05/2013
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	3.90(w) x 6.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Lydia Lunch: Lydia Lunch is a writer, musician, photographer, Spoken Word artist, filmmaker, installation artist, lecturer, recording artist, band leader, and more. A founder of the No Wave NYC movement circa 1976, she spearheaded Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, starred in early Richard Kern films/photographs, etc.

Read an Excerpt

"Somebody gave me a broken guitar . . . and that's how I wrote most of the songs." — Lydia Lunch, from the book

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As a young child, what influenced me very much was actually 1967, at the age of eight, when there were riots going on right outside my front door. There were riots in Rochester, Detroit, Cleveland—a lot of race riots were happening. And since that happened right outside my front door, even though I’m eight... the bizarre incident is that I was watching The Haunting, based on a Shirley Jackson book, The Haunting of Hill House as the riots were happening. So, I’m having two kinds of fierce stimuli coming at me! But, the riot caused such joy and elation in me that it counteracted the fear of the film, which is still a terrifying horror film.

So, as the riots are raging and I noticed my father’s station wagon getting smashed to s—t, I’m like cheering for joy—I just can’t believe it. I hear black voices screaming and I see people running down the streets; it’s violence, pande- monium, and chaos... and even in my twisted, eight-year-old mind I was just joyful—I didn’t know what the hell it was, but I was happy it was going on.

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Well... First of all, it’s just the nature of poetry: there’s short sound stabs... poetry is just a very specific format and I think Spoken Word is developing a longer story—you have to be able to hold people’s attention through an emotional roller-coaster. A poem is very short and specific; I mean, you can do twenty poems in a session—if they don’t like one poem, well, maybe the next one will catch them... and, it also has to be catchy.

Spoken Word does not have to be catchy; you have to be able to seduce people with your language, with the rhythm, with what you’re talking about. I think it’s a very, very different format.
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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Somebody gave me a broken guitar . . . and that's how I wrote most of the songs." — Lydia Lunch, from the book

Editorial Reviews

"Somebody gave me a broken guitar . . . and that's how I wrote most of the songs." — Lydia Lunch, from the book

From the Publisher