NO WAVE

The short-lived movement was a direct outgrowth of the punk and new wave scenes on the lower east side, but it was also a rejection of their impending commercial undertones. No Wave was unabashedly and indiscriminately antagonistic. It aimed to abandon the vestiges of all traditional rock -- James Nares, filmmaker and member of No Wave band the Contortions, described “trying to approach music as if no one had ever made it before.” The bands aimed to shake up the audience through the use of dissonance, atonality, nihilistic lyrics, hostile stage presences, and untrained musicians. The scene was deeply local; its core bands all rehearsed in the same space and performed at the same venues, often swapping band members with one another. Its birth, life, and death were responses to a struggling New York City amid a downtown manhattan art scene that was ready to rage and open for experimentation. Ultimately, the inherently inimical nature of No Wave was the source of its own downfall, which occurred, according to its members, just four years after its conception. Once you name the void, the void is filled.

No Wave was the product of a broken New York City. In February of 1975, Mayor Beame was prepared to declare bankruptcy. The city had been hit hard by the US recession and large municipal bond market failure, in addition to the loss of tax revenue due to the movement of the middle class into the suburbs; NYC was operating under a 12 billion dollar deficit. Social programs were cut back dramatically, including crucial welfare for much of the city’s poor. Crime rates were high and the police department was riddled with corruption.

This context, though devastating for countless underprivileged New Yorkers, created ideal conditions for a flourishing arts scene in harsh neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, where No Wave was centered. Artists could afford the low rents without working full time (or they could choose to pay no rent by squatting in abandoned buildings, of which there were many), and the police force was spread so thin that people largely enjoyed a sense of freedom. Yet an atmosphere of desolation permeated the city’s ruin from top to bottom -- an influence crucial to the development of No Wave’s transgressive outpouring of emotion. The desperation of New York City in the mid-70s created the opportunities for artists to experiment as well as the feelings of fear and post-apocalypticism that fueled their work.

Suicide, one of the primary influences of No Wave, performing Ghost Rider live. Followed by Lyrics.

Like many CBGBs bands, Suicide did not intend to sound pleasant; musician and club attendee David Simons told me he would go there "to be audially abused." Drummer Michael Suchorsky, who traveled and played with Lou Reed for nearly a decade, told me of his time playing with various bands such as Noise R' Us at CBGBs [story paraphrased from an informal conversation]: "One time a neighbor came down with a crowbar, jumped onstage, took our singer by the throat and said 'if you don't stop playing I'm gonna kill you.' We stopped playing."

Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was formative for No Wave.

Generally accepted as the first No Wave band, Mars was made up of China Burg, Nancy Arlen, Sumner Crane and Mark Cunningham, four artists who decided that the New York music scene was more exciting after frequenting downtown clubs and seeing acts like Suicide, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell. Like each band that followed in its wake, Mars was comprised of a mix of trained and untrained musicians, as well as a mix of genders, two combinations that were rare on the scene.

Guitarist Constance Burg contributed one of the key pioneering techniques in No Wave: slide guitar. It’s easy enough for a beginner, and its natural atonality fit the bill. Despite sounding chaotic and improvised, Mars practiced four times a week for over a year before their first performance at a CBGB’s audition night in January 1977. Burg describes their style; “it was structured, but there was a lot of improvisation within the structure. But then we played so much too that we were like a machine in a way -- a really out of control machine. I can remember wanting to see how far it could go and still be called music.” The bandmembers, especially songwriter Sumner Crane, took inspiration from literary sources like Kierkegaard and French writer Raymond Roussel.

LYRICS:

Mother said I don’t like the way you always want to stay in bed / I don’t mind the service / But I think you’re getting overfed / I said Mama, this is better than a girl — / Because from this standpoint I can understand the world / You’re not suppose to break your toys / Drop the papers — make the noise / It’s too much mystery to always only see half a face / Out on the street marching unrestrained the human race / All this ceaseless motion takes all my might / Close the curtains give up the light / Take the file smooth me down / Drop the bodies on the town / The wall cries out: “Hey pal I’m starving how about something to eat” / Opens up his lips tunnel tongue regurgitates the street / Mother unbondaged mouth wakes up the hand underneath the steps — trips down the stairs drops the milk gets the sheets all wet / Mother don’t abuse your child / It’s not the time to make the smile.

DNA was created by Arto Lindsay, who turned down a position in Mars to pursue his own project. He joined up with performance artist Robin Crutchfield. They were both inspired by transgressive artists like Chris Burden, and wanted to shock their audiences. The third member of Mars was Ikue Mori, a Japanese art student visiting the NY punk scene who had befriended members of the crowd despite a tricky language barrier. Arto was close with all the members of Mars, so their influence was evident in his bizarre, shrieking vocals and slide guitar technique. But they wanted DNA’s sound to be unique, so they developed their own rhythmic style, held down by drums and keyboards.

After 1980, Crutchfield left the band. He was replaced by Tim Wright, trading keyboard for bass. Wright added more groove to DNA’s sound because he was a trained musician, unlike Crutchfield. Wright says, “I had tons of ideas rhythmically and sonically speaking. Some inspired by Tibetan music, some inspired by Columbian Indian music recorded by old archaeologists. I told the band: ‘imagine this. We’re three idiots from the jungle, and we come across a stash of electric instruments and drums. What are we going to do with them?' ” Part of their new stage presence was dancing -- Tim Wright was especially athletic. “We do whatever is physically necessary to keep that excitement level at its peak.”

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks was the creation of Lydia Lunch, a notorious personality on the downtown scene. She was mentored by Suicide after arriving in Manhattan at age 16. Instead of the more abstract musical innovation of Mars and DNA, Lydia brought her ferocious voice to No Wave. Lunch wanted to “have a band that was like nothing else, that was based on my primal anxiety, anger, and hatred, that caused fear and panic in those not on the stage. It had nothing to do with putting on a nice show for people to stand there smiling about. That was just a repulsive reaction, and the last thing I wanted.” Lunch also aspired to reject the previous generation of punk and new wave, despite it having drawn her to the city initially. Rapidly, her 18 year old self had outgrown it.

Lunch’s drummer, Bradley Field, played just one drum and one cymbal. Other members filtered in and out, eventually settling down with Jim Sclavunos on bass. The group was known for short, intensely hostile live shows. Sclavunos described their attitude; “Lydia and I agreed that it should be the aural equivalent of rough sex, a good cold hard hate-fuck. We managed to say what we needed to say in ten minutes, quick and to the point. And just in case there were any masochists or deluded intellectuals in the audience who were getting off on the show, we needed to thwart and frustrate that pleasure with a cruel premature withdrawal.” Lunch ended the band once she turned 20 in 1979.

Chance formed his own group, the Contortions. Chance had previously played sax in the SoHo free-jazz or loft jazz scene, but had left because he was widely disliked due to his unorthodox stage persona. He named his new band the Contortions due to a 1977 New York Times review that described Chance’s “contortionists’ acts with minimal musical content.” He wanted to bring free jazz to the punk crowd, so he infused the Contortions’ sound with the genre’s improvisational, fluid energy. He was notorious for recruiting bandmembers based on which strangers looked cool, regardless of whether or not they played an instrument. He ended up with Pat Place, Adele Bertei, George Scott, Jody Harris, and Don Christensen. The sound was dissonant and atonal due specifically to Chance’s saxophone and Place’s slide guitar. Yet it wasn’t as chaotic as Mars or DNA -- it was grounded in catchy beats, subverting rock by taking it and twisting it, rather than rejecting it outright. A review described how “squawking, barely controlled spurts of saxophone playing get trapped in the thudding repetition of [this] primal outfit. And a fascinating, very visual web of hypnotic music is woven by the bizarre meshing of personnel.” One of Chance’s main goals was that his music be danceable, because he was frustrated by the anti-dance culture in the downtown scene.

Chance’s audience interactions ended up being as famous as his band’s music. He would jump off the stage, convulse around, and pick fights. I interviewed filmmaker Emily Armstrong about her time filming at CBGB's in the 70's, and she told me about one such performance where Chance’s target ended up “beating the crap out of him. The band kept playing, but he pulled me into the alley. It had snowed that day and there was this fresh white virgin snow, and his blood was all over the snow. I cleaned him up with some paper towels and he went back and finished the set.”

In May 1978, a Tribeca gallery called Artists' Space hosted a five-day No Wave music festival featuring ten bands, including the four I spotlighted. Brian Eno was there, an english keyboardist for Roxy Music and a highly sought-after producer who would later reach legendary status. He was interested in how far these bands went in their experimentation-- they had no limits, unlike the alternative English bands with which Eno was familiar. He decided to make an album encapsulating the No Wave scene and initially got all ten of the festival's bands involved, but after a few weeks the list had shrunk to four. Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, and James Chance & The Contortions would therefore end up being immortalized as the heart of No Wave due to this recognition. No New York was recorded in June 1978 at Big Apple Studio. It's important to note that the movement didn't have a name until the time of Eno's album, although it is unclear if he championed it himself or if it was attributable to a Lydia Lunch interview or NO! magazine. Regardless, its antagonistic members were against the idea of unifying under a common title, and this act of labeling itself dimmed the flame of No Wave.

The following is an exchange is taken from an interview at the time;
• Roy Trakin: You don't consider yourself part of any movement, then?
• James Chance: AARGHH!!! NO!! I DESPISE movements!! I'd never be part of any movement!

Despite gaining legitimacy for the scene, No New York was the beginning of the end. The bands never wanted to be reduced to a catchy name, even if it expressed the negative, oppositional nature of their music. Don Christensen of the Contortions had this to say: “We'd seen bands from CBGB get signed; we'd seen them make records. The whole Punk and New Wave thing was supposed to be something different, but we watched them just turn into the same sleazy thing. There was definitely a distaste for that-- the idea that they joined up with suits or the bad guys or with an establishment. There was kind of a consensus around that we were Artists. We were happy to stay underground and not get involved in this careerist idea.”

In the years following the album’s release, all the core No Wave bands had broken up besides DNA, which lasted until 1982 and was featured in Downtown 81.

I drew the top left section of NO New York's back cover in an effort to pay artistic tribute to these innovative minds.

Although short-lived, No Wave’s legacy is important to alternative rock and noise. Despite their attempt to remove themselves form the continuum of rock, many subsequent bands were inspired by their revolutionary attitude. Sonic Youth, which formed in 1981, carried the audial elements of No Wave firmly into the public sphere through their success as a dissonant alt-rock band. No Wave also inspired Pussy Galore, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Liars, as well as countless other alt-rock acts. 

It is important to note that No Wave was not confined to music -- it crossed many art form barriers due to the tight-knit multidisciplinary scene. Emily Armstrong was so involved in the scene that Hilly Kristal hosted her daughter's sweet sixteen at CBGBs for free. She remembers: “CBGBs was like high school, with different cliques; punk rockers, no wave, junkies heartbreakers crowd, but everybody was friends ... There were 500 people in the whole punk scene. We used to call it the Fab 500, and it was just everyone. Same people at CBGBs night after night… the only thing that mattered was that everybody did something. Fashion designers, diy magazines, filmmakers.”

Armstrong, Emily. Interviewed personally, November 2019.

Bangs, Lester. “The White Noise Supremacists.” The Village Voice. 1979.

Beck, Olly. “No Wave: Histories Along The Bowery.” Garageland, November 30, 2008. Rocksbackpages.com.

Blanco, Mykki, and Lydia Lunch. “Mykki Blanco Talks To Lydia Lunch.” Electronic Beats, 2015.

Coulter, Andi. “Urban circuitry: Community building through noise in downtown new york city 1973-1981.” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo. 2018.

Danhier, Celine. Blank City. 2011; New York; Insurgent Media, 2011. Film.

Calvert, John. “A Beginner’s Guide to No Wave, New York’s Middle Finger to the World.” Fact Mag. VF Publishing, October 3, 2014.

Gordon, Kim. Girl in a Band. NYC, New York: HarperCollins, 2015.

Lunch, Lydia. “No Wave Now.” ASAP/Journal 1, no. 2 (2016): 243–46.

Lunch, Lydia. So Real It Hurts. Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2019.

Mamone, Jordan N. “Life on Mars: The Surviving Members of the Earliest No Wave Band Talk 

Muggings, Warhol, and 1977.” Vice. Vice Media Group, September 28, 2015.

Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog, 2007.

Masters, Marc. “NO!: The Origins of No Wave.” Pitchfork. Conde Nast, January 15, 2008.

Moore, Thurston, and Byron Coley. No Wave: Post-Punk, Underground, New York, 1976-1980. 

New York: Harry N. Abrams Books, 2008.

Nusser, Richard. “Now It's 'No Wave' Making N. Y. Waves.” Billboard, March 1, 1980.

Palmer, Robert. ““Musicians’ Groups Combine on ‘Solos.’” New York Times. June 7, 1977.

Penman, Ian. “Various Artists: No New York (Antilles Import).” New Musical Express, December 16, 1978.

Reagan, Michael. “Capital City: New York in Fiscal Crisis, 1966-1978.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington. 2017.

Simons, David. Interviewed personally, November 2019. 

Sisario, Ben. “A Brief, Noisy Moment That Still Reverberates.” New York Times. June 12, 2008.

Trakin, Roy. “Avant Kindergarten (Sturm and Drone).” SoHo Weekly News. January 26, 1978.

Bertoglio, Edo. Downtown 81. 2000; New York. Film. Clip used: Arto Lindsay, Ikue Mori, Tim Wright. “Blonde Red Head.”

James Chance & The Contortions. “James Chance and The Contortions - I Can't Stand Myself.” Danny (Youtube Account). YouTube video, 4:17. April 21, 2007.

Mars. “Mars - 3E / Scorn.” W indmills20  (Youtube Account). Youtube Video, 5:54. September 9, 2008. 

Mars. “The Immediate Stages of the Erotic.” Provided by Orchard Enterprises. Youtube video, 3:39. September 29, 2014. 

Reed, Lou. “Metal Machine Music, Pt. 1.” Provided by Sony Music Entertainment. Youtube video, 16:05. Released 1975. October 26, 2015.

Suicide. “suicide- ghost rider (live 1977-1978).” Moss, Ceci (Youtube Account). Youtube video, 5:12. February 18, 1976. 

Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. “I Woke Up Dreaming (live 1979).” Jitterbug, Jenn (YouTube Account). Youtube video, 1:58. December 3, 2017. 

Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. “Teenage Jesus & the Jerks – "Orphans."” Foley, Lachlan (Youtube Account). YouTube video, 2:26. APril 30, 2018.

DNA. Credit Unknown. Collection: NEW YORK NO WAVE ARCHIVE. Online.

GODLIS. Lydia Lunch. Date unknown. Back Cover of Shut Up and Bleed, album by Teenage Jesus & The Jerks and Beirut Slump. 

Hanekroot, Gijsbert. Lou Reed Posed in Amsterdam. January 1, 1976. Collection: Redferns. Getty Images. 

Io Perl-Strahan. Drawing of No New York back cover. 2019. 

James Chance and the Contortions. Credit Unknown, Date Unknown. Collection: NEW YORK NO WAVE ARCHIVE. Online.

Levine, Laura. Alan Vega in his loft. 1983. Photograph. Collection: Stephen Kasher Gallery. Accessed via the Guardian. 

Levine, Laura. DNA. 1981. Photograph. Collection: Stephen Kasher Gallery. Accessed via the Guardian. 

Mars. Credit Unknown. Collection: NEW YORK NO WAVE ARCHIVE. Online.

Mars. Credit Unknown. 1978. Pinterest.

Merinov, Eugene. James Chance and the Contortions. 1978. Accessed via Fine ARts Building New York.

Roberts, Ebet. Suicide. January 20, 1980. Photograph. Collection: Premium Archive. Getty Images. 

Saunders, Susan. Lower East Side, early ’70s. Date Unknown. Photograph. Appears in: International Photo Magazine, “Dark side of New York City (1970s).” September 19th 2015.

Simon, Kate. Richard Hell. 1977. Photograph. Collection Unknown. 

Stefanko, Frank. Patti Smith. Date unknown, 70’s. Collection: Patti Smith: American Artist via Insight Editions. Accessed via W magazine.

Steven Keister (Album design). No New York, Produced Brian Eno, Album Cover. Antilles Records 1978. 

Tannenbaum, Allan. FDNY Firefighters Extinguish Trash Fire On Crosby Street In Soho. July 5 1979. Photograph. Collection: Archive Photos. Getty Images.