Tag: lydia lunch

RSVP HERE: A Deer A Horse Play Brooklyn Bazaar + MORE

Welcome to our new weekly show recommendation column RSVP HERE – your source for the best NYC shows and interviews with some of our favorite local live bands.

This week A Deer A Horse are supporting The Art Gray Noizz Quintet featuring Lydia Lunch for one of Brooklyn Bazaar’s final shows. The Art Gray Noizz Quintet features Stu-art Gray Spasm of Lubricated Goat joined by members of Live Skull, Woman, Cabbages & Kings, Twin Guns and more; playing a set of all “unreleased collaborations and bastardized classics.” A Deer A Horse are perfect openers with their melodic 70s punk meets post rock sludge. They are constantly touring so don’t miss the opportunity to see them while they’re in NYC! We asked ADAH a few questions in anticipation of their show this Wednesday 11/6…

AF: What are your top 5 bands to see live?

ADAH: Daikaiju (they light their instruments on fire while they are being crowdsurfed around the room, they’re fucking insane).

Ono (when they perform you are transformed from an audience to a congregation and Travis is your preacher. You will follow him wherever he goes).

Minibeast (intense, relentless noise rock from providence, memers of Mission of Burma).

Blacker Face (soul, r&b mixed with aggressive noise rock, some of the most inventive shit we’ve seen in a hot sec).

No Men (you’re dancing so hard that you don’t realize you’re worshipping Satan, these heathens rule).

Black Midi (fresh operatic noise weirdness from far far away, best band we saw at SXSW).

Listen… so we know we already did six here, but also s/o Big Business for melting our faces off for a week in August! When they play the song “Horses” Coady leaps out of his seat to slam the cymbals as hard as he can at the end of the song and it’s fucking amazing.

AF: I read somewhere that The Shining is one of your biggest inspirations. What’s your favorite scene from The Shining and has that film influenced your live show?

ADAH: I think you must have misunderstood the article… We could care less about that terrible piece of drivel, we worship instead, The Shinning. It’s a true masterpiece, a horror classic, The Shining pales in comparison to The Shinning. And who could forget those words repeated into the ether “No TV and no beer make Homer something something”? Chilling.

AF: If you could ask Lydia Lunch anything, what would it be?

ADAH: Lydia Lunch is one of the most prolific artists out there.  I mean seriously, just scroll through her credits on Wikipedia, the list goes on and on. It’s insane how much she’s accomplished! We’re all creative people, but Lydia is on another level; it’s both inspiring and intimidating. So I would definitely like to know where she feels her drive to create comes from.



RSVP HERE for Art Gray Noizz Quintet feat. Lydia Lunch with A Deer A Horse and Conduit on Wednesday, November 6th @ Brooklyn Bazaar. All Ages / $10-12

More great shows this week:

11/2: Deli Girls, Murderpact, Safe Word, Beak Trio @ The Broadway. 21+ / $12  RSVP HERE

11/2: Pinc Louds (4-year anniversary), Los Cumpleaños @ Market Hotel. All Ages / $15 RSVP HERE

11/2: Goth Prom III:  Parlor Walls, Whiner, Daily Therapy, Meganoke, The Sewer Gators, Holy Wisdom LLC @ Rubulad. All Ages / $8 RSVP HERE

11/4: Swanky Tiger, Nihiloceros @ Mercury Lounge (early show). 21+ / $8 RSVP HERE

11/5: The SpeLcast Live Variety & Medicine Show @ The Living Gallery. All Ages / $5 entrance and hand writing analysis / $1 sense of humor, spells and tinctures / free bandaids RSVP HERE

11/5: Dead Tooth, Karaoke Mood Killer (tape release), Should’ve, Johnny Dynamite @ Alphaville. 21+ / $10 RSVP HERE

11/5: Jenny Slate @ Town Hall, NY Comedy Festival. All Ages / $41 RSVP HERE

11/5: White Reaper, The Nude Party, Wombo @ Bowery Ballroom. 18+ / $15 RSVP HERE

11/6: No Swoon (Record Release), Big Bliss, Wooing @ Union Pool. 21+ / $10-12 RSVP HERE

 

LIVE REVIEW: Lydia Lunch Retrovirus @ Rickshaw Stop

The No Wave scene of 1970’s New York City was altogether bowel borne, the sickened spasm of a nihilist made nervous by the violent void of the Lower East Side. It was a pocket of time and space that knew no law nor order. Rather, it was poverty-ridden and putrid, little more than a decaying plane of filth and illness occupied by scum-soaking bums.

Enter Lydia Lunch – No Wave’s mainstay and New York’s bristling brat among rats. A runaway at 16, Lunch fled her family home in Rochester, New York, in favor of the gurgling gutter of NYC, licking the lyrical coattails of Jean Genet, Hubert Selby Jr, Marquis de Sade, and Henry Miller. In an interview for the Women of Rock Oral History Project, Lunch explains that the works of these writers stoked her drive to confront the trials of her own riotous reality, meaning mundanity was no longer a viable existence. Finally, the filth supplied by a sour mouth would be flavored female (although she’d likely contest the confinement of gendered categories).

Unsurprisingly, Lunch’s confrontational energy was highly anomalous among the saluted dudes of the local underground music scene at the time. In fact, many of her younger comrades thought her to be a “teenage terrorist,” with the exception of a few “weird old men,” including guitarist Robert Quine, who collaborated with the likes of Lou Reed, Richard Hell, and Brian Eno.

Thankfully, Lunch would go on to terrorize the masses through many mediums, including spoken word performance, literature, film, and music. A self-described “musical schizophrenic,” she incited delicious din in the ever-seminal No Wave group Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and proceeded to rasp her way through a number of bands over the course of her career: Beirut Slump, 8-Eyed Spy, Harry Crews, Big Sexy Noise, and finally, the live and writhing Retrovirus. 

Retrovirus is Lunch’s current outfit, along with drummer Bob Bert, bassist Tim Dahl, and guitarist Weasel Walter (also of Cellular Chaos). The self-described “sonic brutarians” recently took the stage at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop. As Lunch rarely makes her rounds in the United States, I was eager to secure a ticket. My excitement was not misplaced.

Shortly after her stealthy entry, Miss Lunch greeted the audience with her special cocktail of snarl and stoicism, oozing authority and anti-appeasement. What occurred next could only be described as an all-out aural confrontation. Whilst Bert maintained a steady tremble on drums, the fingerwork of Dahl and Walter was at once phlegmatic and panic-ridden. Lunch punctuated their sonic thunder with fierce ease, a seeming conductor to the cauldron of clamor.

Towards the close of their all too short-lived set (“Snakepit Breakdown,” “Afraid of Your Company,” and “Mechanical Flattery” among the highlights), Lunch did not pussyfoot the expectation for an encore. “This is our last song, trust me. You can beg all you want. We’re not doing another one. We have one song, we’re doing that.” And so it was over. Quick and dirty, like a racy romp in one of her Richard Kern features. Despite my desire for another dose of din, the nonchalance of her dismissal proved startlingly refreshing in this age of social masquerade and appeasement sleaze. Don’t waste your cheerleading on this one.