Lydia Lunch

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Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch; June 2, 1959)<ref name=mcs>Martin Charles Strong. The Great Indie Discography. 2003, page 85</ref><ref name="Masters, Marc 2007, p. 73">Template:Harvnb</ref> is an American singer, poet, writer, actress and self-empowerment speaker. Her career began during the 1970s New York City no wave scene as the singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Her work typically features provocative and confrontational noise music delivery and she has maintained an anti-commercial stance,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> operating independently of major labels and distributors.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Boston Phoenix named Lunch one of the ten most influential performers of the 1990s.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Kerrang! named Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69" featuring Lunch one of "The 50 Most Evil Songs Ever".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Biography

Lunch was born on June 2, 1959, in Rochester, New York, and is of German and Italian descent. She moved to New York City at the age of 16 and eventually moved into a communal household of artists and musicians.Template:Citation needed After befriending Alan Vega and Martin Rev at Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential no-wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, with James Chance.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Both Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and the Contortions, Chance's subsequent band, played on the no wave compilation No New York, produced by Brian Eno. Lunch later appeared on two songs on James White and the Blacks album, Off-White. She was in two other short lived bands before launching her solo career in 1980, Beirut Slump and 8 Eyed Spy.<ref>Forced Exposure magazine, Issue #10, 1986</ref> In the mid-1980s, she formed the recording and publishing company "Widowspeak Productions" (also known as just "Widowspeak"), on which she continues to release her own material, from music to spoken word. Two albums published by Lunch's label were released in 2013: Collision Course & Trust The Witch, by Big Sexy Noise (released on Cherry Red), and Retrovirus (released on Interbang Records); both albums are by Lunch's musical projects.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

She released her studio album Smoke in the Shadows in November 2004, through Atavistic Records and Breakin Beats, after a six-year break from music.<ref name="popmatters">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Nels Cline, the lead guitarist of alternative rock band Wilco, was featured on the album.<ref name="fly">Template:Cite web</ref> Smoke in the Shadows was met with positive reviews by AllMusic,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> PopMatters,<ref name="popmatters"/> and Tiny Mix Tapes.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2009 Lunch formed the band Big Sexy Noise. The group features Lunch on vocals, James Johnston (guitars), Terry Edwards (organ, saxophone), and Ian White (drums).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Johnston, White and Edwards are members of the British band Gallon Drunk.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A six-track eponymous EP was released on June 1, 2009, through Sartorial Records,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and included a cover of Lou Reed's song "Kill Your Sons", as well as "The Gospel Singer", a song co-written with Gordon.<ref name="fly"/> The debut, self-titled album, Big Sexy Noise, was released in 2010, followed by Trust The Witch in 2011. For both albums, Lunch and her band completed tours throughout Europe.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2010, The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project launched We Are Only Riders, the first of a series of four albums featuring Pierce's previously unreleased works-in-progress. The album features interpretations of Pierce's work by friends, collaborators, and admirers, including Lunch.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lunch also contributed to the second album from the project, The Journey is Long, which was released in April 2012.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Lydia Lunch (6890267545).jpg
Lydia Lunch performing in 2012

Although the Pierce Sessions Project's third and final album, The Task Has Overwhelmed Us, was due for release in late 2012,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the schedule was changed after the release of the second installment. Glitterhouse Records, the label producing the collection, instead released a third album titled Axles & Sockets in May 2014, on which Lunch performs "The Journey Is Long" with Pierce's recordings. The label explained that the third album has become the "penultimate" full-length release of the Project, but did not name the final album, or its release date.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lunch released the album Retrovirus (also the name of the band Lunch has played with since then) in 2013 on Interbang Records and ugEXPLODE (the vast majority of the album tracks are published by Widowspeak).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Together with band members Weasel Walter, Algis Kizys, and Bob Bert, Lunch performed a show following the album's release at the Bowery Electric venue in New York City, in May 2013.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In March 2022 the Center for Popular Music (CPM) at Middle Tennessee State University named her the recipient of the CPM Fellows Award. The only previous recipients of this honor were Barry Gibb and Lamont Dozier.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Film

She appeared in two films by directors Scott B and Beth B.<ref name=NYT>Template:Cite news</ref> In Black Box (1978) she played a dominatrix, and in Vortex (1981) she played a private detective named Angel Powers. During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by Vivienne Dick, including She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co-starring with Pat Place.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> In 2011, Lunch appeared in Mutantes: punk, porn, feminism, a film directed by Virginie Despentes, also featuring Annie Sprinkle and Catherine Breillat. She also wrote, directed, and acted in underground films, sometimes collaborating with underground filmmaker Nick Zedd and photographer Richard Kern.

Spoken word

Lunch has recorded and performed as a spoken word artist, collaborating with artists such as Exene Cervenka,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Henry Rollins, Don Bajema and Hubert Selby Jr. as well as hosting spoken-word performance night "The Unhappy Hour" at the Parlour Club.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1998 she collaborated with the Italian group Minox (which included Mirco Magnani) with spoken word on the EP U-Turn and in 2001 on the album Downworks.<ref>https://www.ondarock.it/recensioni/2008_minox.htm</ref>

Literature

In 1997, Lunch released Paradoxia, a loose autobiography, in which she documented her early life, sexual history, substance abuse and mental health problems.<ref>Fortune, Drew (July 18, 2008). "Nothing's Shocking: An Interview With Lydia Lunch". PopMatters. Template:Webarchive.</ref> Time Out New York gave it a favorable review,<ref name="timeout1">Template:Cite web</ref> while Bookslut ambiguously concluded "It's to the reader to determine whether Lunch's study goes deeper than that, or if instead, it's a kind of literary and philosophical repetition compulsion, a reprisal of greatest hits from male nihilists, sexual adventurers and chroniclers of deviance."<ref name="timeout1"/> PopMatters called it a "brutal but boring and predictable circus, about which Lunch shows no emotions. Only fatigue seems to have given her pause."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Additionally, Lunch has authored both traditional books and comix (with graphic novel artist Ted McKeever).

Other work

In 2013, Lunch ran self-empowerment workshops in locations such as Ojai, California, and Rennes, France. In regard to the Rennes workshop, her inaugural self-empowerment event, Lunch recalled: "Every day people would come in that would have to get a hug. I felt like mother India."<ref name=NYT /> In April of that year, Lunch said that she is the producer of the Emilio Cubeiro album Death of an Asshole. In 2014 Lunch shot a series of photographs with Austin, Texas-based artist, Darla Teagarden.

In 2019 Lunch started the podcast The Lydian Spin. Lunch hosts each weekly episode with bassist Tim Dahl.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2020, Lunch appeared on the album Against All Logic "2017–2019", by producer Nicolas Jaar.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

In 2004, she left the United States to live in Barcelona.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She returned to the United States in 2017 and lives in Brooklyn.

Discography

Solo

Albums
EPs
Singles
  • "No Excuse" (1997)
Compilation albums
Video albums
  • Willing Victim (The Audience as Whipping Boy) (live in Graz, Austria, 2004)

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

EPs
Singles
  • "Baby Doll" (1979)
  • "Orphans" (1979)
Compilation albums
Appears on

Beirut Slump

  • "Try Me" (1979)

8-Eyed Spy

Albums
  • 8-Eyed Spy (1981; reissued as Luncheone in 1995)
  • Live (1981)
Singles

Harry Crews

  • Naked in Garden Hills (1987)

Big Sexy Noise

  • Big Sexy Noise (2009)
  • Trust the Witch (2011)

Collaborations

Appears on

Spoken word

  • Better an Old Demon Than a New God, Giorno Poetry Systems comp. feat. William S. Burroughs, Psychic TV, Richard Hell and others (1984)
  • The Uncensored, solo (1984)
  • Hard Rock, solo (split cassette w. Michael Gira / Ecstatic Peace, 1984)
  • Oral Fixation, solo (12", 1988)
  • Our Fathers Who Aren't in Heaven, w. Henry Rollins, Hubert Selby Jr. and Don Bajema (1990)
  • Conspiracy of Women, solo (1990)
  • South of Your Border, w. Emilio Cubeiro (1991)
  • POW, solo (1992)
  • Crimes Against Nature, solo spoken-word anthology (Tripple X/Atavistic, 1994)
  • Rude Hieroglyphics, w. Exene Cervenka (Rykodisc, 1995)
  • Universal Infiltrators, (Atavistic, 1996)
  • Kicks Joy Darkness, feat. Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac's work performed by other various artists (1997)
  • The Devil's Racetrack (2000)
  • Flood Stains, w. Juan Azulay (2010)
  • Medusa's Bed, w. Zahra Mani & Mia Zabelka (2013)
  • Marchesa, solo (Rustblade, 2018)

Filmography

Actress

Writer

  • The Right Side of My Brain (1985)
  • Fingered (1986)

Composer

  • The Offenders (1980)
  • Vortex (1983) (with John Lurie, Adele Bertei, Pat Place, Beth B and Scott B)
  • The Right Side of My Brain (1985)
  • Goodbye 42nd Street (1986)
  • Fingered (1986)
  • I Pass for Human (2004)
  • Flood stains (2010)
  • Disturbtion (2015)

Subject

  • The Wild World of Lydia Lunch (1983)
  • Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1987)
  • Put More Blood into the Music (1987)
  • The Gun is Loaded (1988–1989)
  • The Road to God Knows Where (1990)
  • Malicious Intent (1990)
  • The Thunder (1992)
  • Totem of the Depraved (1996)
  • Paradoxia (1998)
  • Lady Lazarus: Confronting Lydia Lunch (2000)
  • Kiss My Grits: The Herstory of Women in Punk and Hard Rock (2001)
  • DIY or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist (2002)
  • Kill Your Idols (2004)
  • "Lydia Lunch, à corps perdu " (2008), directed by Ludovic Cantais<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkO9DIkJnY0</ref>

Narrator

  • American Fame Part 1: Drowning River Phoenix, dir. Cam Archer (2004)
  • American Fame Part 2: Forgetting Jonathan Brandis, dir. Cam Archer (2005)
  • Wild Tigers I Have Known, (Scenes Deleted), dir. Cam Archer (2006)

Plays

(both written, acted, directed and produced with Emilio Cubeiro)

  • South of Your Border (1988)
  • Smell of Guilt (1990)

Books

References

Citations

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Bibliography

Further reading

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