Lydia Lunch on Delancey Street: No Wave Taking Shape
Alejandro De LunaLydia Lunch sits in a Delancey Street loft wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt as one of New York’s most abrasive musical movements begins to form around her.
Photographed by Godlis one of the key photographers documenting New York’s early punk scene, in 1977/78, the image captures Lunch during the period when Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were becoming part of the downtown scene that would soon be identified with No Wave.
Lunch later described the purpose of Teenage Jesus in characteristically uncompromising terms:
“The goal of Teenage Jesus was to destroy rock music as I knew it.”
This was not punk simply becoming faster or more aggressive. Teenage Jesus stripped rock down to something deliberately hostile: short songs, dissonant guitar, repetition and confrontation.
In 1978, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were featured alongside Mars, DNA and James Chance’s Contortions on Brian Eno’s No New York. The compilation became one of the defining documents of No Wave and preserved a brief moment when a handful of New York bands were attempting to dismantle many of the conventions of rock music altogether.
A small image from a scene that would leave a disproportionately large mark on underground music. Disneyland on Delancey Street: commercial fantasy meeting downtown New York abrasion.
