“Ghost Lover” is a photograph shot by Lydia Lunch. The image is printed on high quality silver halide Fuji photographic paper and signed and numbered by the artist. “Ghost Lover” comes in an elaborately designed box along with a certificate of authenticity and a poem by Lunch titled “Sandpit” in both English and Spanish.

The “Ghost Lover” Edition is limited to 40 copies only and is available from Contemporanea in Spain.

Lydia Lunch was recently named the #84 best guitarist of all time in a SPIN magazine critic’s poll. I’m fairly certain that this is an honor Lydia never expected to receive.

Listen to “Red Alert” from 1979’s No New York album produced by Brian Eno.
 

Iggy talks about lessons learned from David Bowie: “No,you’re not coming to the dinner table on heroin.”

Jérôme de Missolz’s documentary Wild Thing (2010) was made for French television and it’s a pretty good look at rock n’ roll outlaws from the 1960s thru to the present day.

Here are some excerpts featuring Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch, Iggy Pop and Jello Biafra. Lunch’s anecdote about The Dead Boys is a jaw-dropper. The Boys ate Lydia’s Lunch.
 

 
To watch the entire film (much of which is in French) click here. There’s some fascinating interviews (in English) with Eric Burdon, Genesis P-Orridge, Kevin Ayers and many more.

Stiv Bators, 1980
 
David Arnoff‘s post-punk era photography appeared in the NME, Melody Maker, Trouser Press, N.Y. Rocker and many other publications. The Cleveland-born, but London-based photographer and disc jockey’s work captures iconic bad boys and girls, relaxed and at their most playful. Arnoff is currently readying his photographs for a book and is looking for a publisher. I asked him a few questions over email:

Tara: Tell me about the Stiv Bators shot.

David Arnoff: I was hanging around with Stiv and his post-Dead Boys band in their hotel—pretty sure it was the Sunset Marquis—and we decided to do some shots of him on his own. He’d been messing about with a new air pistol, so we brought that along and just stepped out into the hall, after which it occured to him to maybe go back in the room and put some shoes on, but I said not to bother.  We started out doing some rather silly and predictable 007-type poses before he chose to just sit on the floor and look disturbed. I always thought the stripey socks made him look even more so.

Nick Cave, 1983
 
Tara: You worked with Nick Cave several times. He seems like a guy very concerned about his image, yet playful, too. What’s he like as a subject or collaborator?

David Arnoff: Nick is very easy and unaffected to work with. That shot with Harpo is the result of what started out as another cancelled session at the Tropicana Motel. He apologized for being up all night and indicated all the empty bottles on the TV as evidence, but was perfectly happy for me to carry on regardless even though he was not looking his best. The only downside was he was trying in vain to play “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” not really knowing the chords and the guitar was painfully out of tune.  Not an enjoyable aural experience. He was quite happy with the photos though.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce, 1983
 
Tara: Maybe it was the era, but several of the people you shot were junkies. Any “colorful” anecdotes about the likes of Cave, Jeffery Lee Pierce, Nico or Johnny Thunders?

David Arnoff: Far be it for me to say whether or not any of these people were actually junkies, but it’s funny you should mention Nick and Jeffrey together because I did squeeze all three of us into my little Volvo p1800 to go score on the street—Normandy, I think, around 3rd or somewhere. We then went back to my place in Hollywood, where Jeffrey became convinced they’d been ripped off. But Nick seemed more than happy with his purchase. Afterwards we went to that lesbian-run Mexican place near the Starwood. Nick tried to remember what he’d had previously and proceeded to attempt to describe what he wanted it to the baffled staff. I think they just gave up and sold him a burrito.

More with David Arnoff and his photographs after the jump…

 
Another solo DJ excursion from Richard Metzger, spinning tunes from the Monkees, Lydia Lunch, Hawkwind, Mick Farren, Ru Paul, Liam Lynch, Big Daddy Kane, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Lene Lovich, Blur vs. The Pet Shop Boys, Eels, Jeff Beck, the Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, obscure 70s glam rocker Brett Smiley and more.

01. Monkees: Tema Di Monkees
02. Monkees: PO Box 9847 (alt stereo mix)
03. Malvina Reynolds: Little Boxes
04. Lene Lovich: Lucky Number
05. Lydia Lunch: Carnival Fatman
06. Hawkwind: Silver Machine
07. Mick Farren: Aztec Calendar
08. The Tomorrow People: Delia Derbyshire, Dudley Simpson, Brian Hodgson & David Vorhaus
09. PJ Proby: You Can’t Come Home Again If You Leave Me Now
10. Blur vs Pet Shop Boys: Boys & Girls
11. Ru Paul: Ping Ting Ting
12. Liam Lynch: My United States of Whatever
13. Monkees: Zilch
14. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien: Mister Bobalina
15. Big Daddy Kane: Warm It Up Kane
16. Jeff Beck: Hi Ho Silver Lining
17. Brett Smiley: Va Va Va Voom
18. Eels: That’s Not Really Funny
19. The Dandy Warhols: Bohemian Like You
20. Super Furry Animals: The Man Don’t Give A Fuck
 

 
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Photo by Wes Frazer.

Here’s an interesting interview with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, shot on a roof in downtown Manhattan in 1988. This footage is completely raw and unedited, with cuts and sound interruptions intact. As such, it takes Kim a couple of minutes to get into the swing of things, but she talks about life as a woman in a rock’n'roll band, art, sex, playing bass, her projects Harry Crews (with Lydia Lunch) and Ciccone Youth, and she reads extracts from a book called “So You Want To Be A Rock’n'Roll Star”. The interview is about 20 minutes long and is split into two parts.
 

 
DM pal David Flint has just uploaded a rare video interview with Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern from 1995, over on his always interesting site, Strange Things are Happening. As David explains: 

In 1995, your Strange Things editor began work on a project for the freshly-launched Television X, which was aspiring to be more than simply a soft porn channel. I convinced them that a documentary about ‘transgressive culture’ would be a good thing, especially as many of the leading lights in the field were going to be in London over the next few months. In the end, the higher-ups decided that such noble aspirations were foolish and returned to the T&A, but not before we shot this interview with Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch.

The pair were in London for NFT screenings of Kern’s films and the launch of his book New York Girls. This interview took place the day after the launch party, which is one reason why everyone is so tired! Also in attendance was photographer Doralba Picerno.

It was filmed by a TVX staffer on Hi-8, without any lighting - so was never going to be broadcast standard. It was several years before I was given the tape, and a few more after that before I could actually play it. But while the quality might be a bit murky, the content is, hopefully, worthwhile.I believe this was the first - and possibly only - time the pair were interviewed together.

 
Part two of the Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern interview, after the jump…
 
Via Strange Things
 

 
Here’s an excerpt from the 1990 punk melodrama Kiss Napoleon Goodbye directed by Babeth Mondini-VanLoo (who filmed Teenage Jesus & The Jerks in the 1970s) and written by Lydia Lunch. It was filmed by the legendary Mike Kuchar and stars Lunch, Henry Rollins and Don Bajema.

An ex lover drives a wedge between a couple trying to rekindle their love. At the core of this plot is a story that delves in topics like jealously, rage and obsession.

Douglas Sirk gone goth or a No Wave telenovela, I’m guessing everyone had their tongues firmly implanted in their cheeks (and each other’s) during the making of this bizarre potboiler.
 

 
You can buy the DVD of Kiss Napoleon Goodbye here.
 
Another clip from Kiss Napoleon Goodbye after the jump…

 
During the decade of the 1980s, I saw Lydia Lunch perform maybe 15+ times and I caught some pretty seminal performances of hers, including the premiere of Fingered, the gleefully violent porn film she made with Richard Kern and South of Your Border, the two-person play she did with Emilio Cuberio that ended in a blood-covered, naked Lydia trussed up on a giant “X” onstage pissing all over him! To truly appreciate the aggressively confrontational nature of her performances, you had to be in or near the front row. Like Eric Bogosian or my late friend Brother Theodore, it was fucking scary and intimidating to be anywhere near the stage for one of her performances, but I always figured why not get all of the Artaudian benefits from having someone scream in your face for an hour? If anyone can deliver on the the cathartic promise of Theatre of Cruelty, it’s Lydia Lunch.

Audiences leave her shows limp. What do you say in the cab going home about a show that unexpectedly ends in blood-stained golden showers? (Incidentally, she drank an entire six-pack during the play’s penultimate scene. What she unleashed on Cuberio was not a trickle, okay?)

Lydia Lunch’s The Gun Is Loaded video, long out of print, is now available online as a video rental. I actually saw this show twice when she did this material at the Performance Garage space in New York (and yes, I was in the front row both times). Here’s how the filmmakers describe the project:

THE GUN IS LOADED is a 37-minute performance video featuring former punk rocker, political satirist and sexual provocateur Lydia Lunch. 

This video trails Lydia in 1988 through a series of staged sets and location shots in New York City as she fires her spoken word manifesto directly into the eye of the camera, and in haunting voice-over.  Underscoring Lydia’s onslaught is cinema verité footage of bottom-rung Americana: racecar crowds, dead-end streets and meat packing plants effectively illustrate her ruthless examination of “the American dream machine turned mean.”  J.G. Thirlwell’s ominous score magnifies this brutal desolation. 

Identifying herself as “the average, all-American girl-next-store gone bad,” Lydia vivsects her own sustained damage as a product of this emotionally ravaging environment.

Co-director Joe Tripician wrote to me on Facebook:

This was partially shot at the Performance Garage, but without an audience. Lydia asked me and my former partner Merrill Aldighieri to record her show, but we wanted to expand the production from its theatrical base and exhibit her in an outside environment. So, this video is also a document of the ‘80s NYC street life—from the 14th Street Meat market to Wall Street. We called it a “video super-realization” of her spoken word performance.

In the video she fires her venom directly into the camera lens, and in an intimate voice-over. J. G. Thirlwell supplied the original music score - a one-of-a-kind aural onslaught.

It was released on VHS in the late 80s, but has never aired on TV. The one response we received was from PBS, who called the video in their rejection letter “exceptionally unacceptable.”

They were probably right about that! You can rent The Gun is Loaded here.
 

 
I started listening to this in the car the other day and I must say to the compiler: Well done, sir! This absolutely blew me away.

What is it, you ask? A monstrous 12 CD set of female fronted punk bands from all over the world from the mid to late ‘70s to the mid 80s (and a little beyond). Some of the artists you’ve heard of (Blondie, Crass, The Avengers, Honey Bane, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Rezillos, Slits, Malaria!) but others, trust me on this, there’s just no way you could have heard of all of them. The fellow who compiled this beast is a master. An expert’s expert.! A maven’s maven!
 

 
This represents a deep education in this exciting sub-genre of punk. It would be overstating the case to say it has aspirations of being a Harry Smith-type collection of punk and obscure hardcore bands, but some of this stuff I don’t think I’d ever come across if given two lifetimes. Apparently some of these songs come from cassettes, probably copied one at a time. There are obviously plenty of the tracks that were taken from vinyl 45 RPM records. And the stuff from the Eastern Bloc countries…. where did he get this stuff?

What a maniac! It must have been really hard to collect all of these songs, even in this day and age. Without a deep knowledge of the subject, it would be difficult to even search for some of these records on Google. Like I say, it’s impressive.

From the Kangknave blog (where you will find all of the download the links and a track listing):

This is a pretty insane project put together by my pal Vince B. from San Francisco a few years back. As the title indicates, this is a homemade 12 x CD-R (!) compilation of punk bands fronted by female vocalists from 1977 to 1989. More like a giant mixtape than a compilation, as he only made 36 copies which he sent to friends and people who submitted material. You may notice that some of the bands didn’t have a steady female vocalist (The Lewd, etc.) but he still included songs that were sung by another member of the band. This is as international as it gets, with stuff ranging from world famous Blondie or Crass to the most obscure Eastern European cassette compilation veterans. The boxset came packaged in a handnumbered fancy translucent lunchbox enclosing all 12 CD-Rs, a stack of full-colored cards featuring comprehensive tracklist and artwork/info, as well as a manga pin-up figure! Talk about a labor of love.

Via Glenn E. Friedman
 

 
Last week when I posted about the Wiseblood gig in 1986, I found this pretty amazing interview with Lydia Lunch conducted by my good friend, Merle Ginsberg (who you may know from Ru Paul’s Drag Race or Bravo’s Launch My Line) dating from 1983. Lydia discusses working with Jim Thirlwell, Marc Almond and Nick Cave on the short-lived Immaculate Consumptive performances and more.
 

 
I keep stumbling upon videos on YouTube of things, events, shows where I was actually present, like the Warhol book signing or various parties. It’s odd to have a memory of something, and then one day being able to see that event replay before your eyes. Here’s another: this is what I believe was the onstage debut of Wiseblood, a project of Clint Ruin a/k/a JG Thirlwell, Foetus, etc; and Roli Mosimann (ex-Swans) at the Cat Club in New York City on July 6th 1986.  I think they only did two songs, the stage covered with dry ice smoke and a chair Thirlwell tossed around. It was one of the single most thrilling, spectacular and violent moments of live rock and roll I ever witnessed. When you watch the clip turn it up WAY LOUD.
 

 
It had been a super hot Fourth of July weekend that year and a friend of mine wanted to totally freak out his friends who had come into town from Pittsburgh and he trusted that I would know where to take them. So I took them to this show. I wasn’t even 21 at the time, but they never carded you back then in New York. It wasn’t just Wiseblood, although they closed the show, it was also the premiere of Fingered, the notorious underground film made by Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern. Fingered absolutely blew their minds, and then Lydia herself, who the audience had just seen anally violated with a loaded gun on film(!) came out and did one of her patented Lydia Lunch confrontational theater of cruelty raps and this, I think, scared the living shit out of them. I must have seen Lydia perform fifteen times in the late 80s and 90s and to get the full enjoyment—yer money’s worth, let’s say—you have to be in the front row, receiving the full malevolent force of her nihilistic sermon. We were right up front, I made sure of it! These poor guys from Pittsburgh probably thought they were going to die that night.
 

 
Sad news from Australia: Rowland S. Howard, the guitarist for post-punk legends, The Birthday Party, died of liver cancer on December 30th, 2009. Since the Birthday Party’s break-up in 1983 over his “creative differences” with Nick Cave, Howard’s distinctive, angular, “broken glass” style of guitar-playing has featured in groups such as These Immortal Souls, Crime and the City Solution, Nikki Sudden and the Jacobites and in collaboration with Lydia Lunch on their astonishing goth-tinged cover version of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood’s classic, Some Velvet Morning.

Howard told the Australian edition of Rolling Stone that he had liver cancer and was on the waiting list for a donor. “If you’re trying to write about the human condition there is only so many things you can choose from. Being told that you’ve only got a couple of years to live without a transplant is a pretty frightening experience and certainly changes the way you feel about your life, [it] makes things so much closer.” Howard was 50.

Below: The Boys Next Door (the original name of The Birthday Party) with a young Rowland S. Howard and Nick Cave, perform their cult hit Shivers: