Cultural Revolution vs. Intellectual Bankruptcy: Kill Your Idols (2004)
“[It] tells me absolutely nothing, shows me nothing new, is not visionary, and is by its very nature and attitude redundant.” Lydia Lunch on the New York music scene, 2004
This year has seen the publication of three different books on No Wave. Using three different approaches, the books are well-informed and passionate about their subject, but the critical consensus is that none of them quite manages to get to grips with the violent inspiration behind the music or truly engage with the scene’s nihilistic world view. This suggests that there is still a healthy interest in No Wave music, but that it remains frequently misunderstood and misrepresented. Scott Crary’s 2004 documentary Kill Your Idols was made before all these books, and it also attempts to explain the music of No Wave whilst looking at its influence on musicians of the mid-noughties.
No Wave, for anyone lucky enough to avoid my drunken rantings, was a scene based in New York in the late 70s and early 80s. Driven by the nihilistic anger that inspired punk but contemptuous of a scene which they saw as musically conservative recycling of Chuck Berry riffs, a bunch of disparate artists and down-and-outs dispensed with such niceties as musical training, chords and conventional song structures to produce untamed and raw music which they felt did justice to their feelings of anger and alienation. Though chaotic and unmelodic, this music was highly inventive, original and bristling with invention and passion, often because the practitioners strove to make music that was unprecedented and also had to overcome the barrier of having literally no musical training whatsoever. Whilst The Clash and The Sex Pistols boasted about being unable to play despite clearly having respectable enough musical chops, the No Wave bands had often genuinely never picked up their instruments before deciding to make music. As a result, the music made by bands such as DNA, Mars, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and James Chance and the Contortions among others sounds unlike any music produced by anyone before or since. Most of the bands lasted for only a short amount of time, preferring not so much to burn out as to explode in a violent blast of inspiration and energy rather then staying around to turn into everything that they opposed. However No Wave’s use of untutored guitar noise gave birth to bands such as Sonic Youth and Swans who redefined the way the guitar was used in rock music.
The first 30 minutes of Kill Your Idols is stunning, and is worth seeing for any No Wave fan for the archive footage of live performances. Martin Rev (Suicide), Lydia Lunch, Jim Sclavunos (both Teenage Jesus and the Jerks), Arto Lindsay (DNA) and Glenn Branca all talk about their lives and their music, with Lydia on her usual good form. However, then the film cuts to 2002 to compare No Wave to the (then) current New York music scene. In a series of acutely embarrassing and occasionally sickening interviews, the class of 2002 are shown up for the shallow poseurs they are. Particularly cringe-worthy is Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who comes across as an utterly vacuous valley girl (replete with “Like, y’kneaow”s and all – for the edited highlights, plus some of LL’s putdowns thrown in for good measure, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhAK2flDdXA ), whilst the execrable A.R.E. Weapons are so shallow, stupid, sexist and unpleasant that it makes you profoundly glad that nobody’s heard of them since 2002. Seeing the documentary some four years after it came out only makes many of the modern bands sound more myopic and idiotic, considering what happened to their careers afterwards. The documentary is trying to show up the young pretenders for how vacuous, vain, idiotic and unimaginative they are compared to the No Wave musicians, but surely this is a moot point. As a result, time is spent on a number of modern bands who don’t deserve it, whilst No Wave pioneers such as Mars and James Chance and the Contortions are mentioned only in the passing. In the subsequent showdown between the No Wavers and the new groups, the old groups come off infinitely better. Lydia Lunch is particularly scathing, and looking at the evidence it’s impossible not to agree with her. The tone is not of old fogeys upset by being deposed but of innovative and driven artists thoroughly disappointed with the blatant careerism and the lack of imagination on display. Of the new bands, only Gogol Bordello (whose music I do not know) comes off well – he is clearly an intelligent guy with a deep and sincere passion for the music he makes, and is just as upset at the lack of imagination displayed by today’s guitar bands.
Despite burning out well over 20 years ago, No Wave still holds a large appeal for people such as me who weren’t around at the time. Watching the first part of this film brought me back to all the reasons why No Wave has this strange draw for me: the passion and intensity of the music, the raw, no-nonsense world view of the musicians, the sheer inventiveness and originality of approach, and above all the shocking alien-ness of the music itself. However, the times and the place that inspired this music – 1970s New York – are gone. The specific tensions that fuelled the scene have changed greatly as well, as has the musical landscape. Although Kill Your Idols does provoke thought about the disparity between No Wave and the current music scene in New York, other then geography it presents no sensible reason why we should compare the two in the first place. The division between the No Wavers and the modern bands is inevitable as they ultimately share so little common ground, both sonically and idealistically. I would have liked to see the film go into more detail about No Wave – the film would have benefited greatly from interviews with Mars and James Chance and the Contortions, as well as other members of DNA, and there were loads of No Wave bands untouched – and what made it so special. It would have been interesting to compare No Wave to the Mutant Disco movement that followed it, with 99 Records, Liquid Liquid, ESG and the like. Mutant Disco was musically very different from No Wave – particularly in its embrace of dance music and black culture – but was influenced by many of the same issues and ideas, and a comparison between the two would have made more sense then the comparison in the film. It would also be nice to hear from some more bands that were more obviously influenced by No Wave then the pale post-punk/garage rock revivalists who appeared in the film. Sonic Youth, Swans and Foetus – bands who came around shortly after No Wave and were influenced by its sound and approach – all appear in the documentary and are interesting and insightful on the original No Wave scene, so why not, say, UT, The Birthday Party, Einsturzende Neubauten or Fire Engines? Having said that, the first 30 minutes of Kill Your Idols are excellent, and Lydia Lunch and Arto Lindsay in particular are wonderful throughout. As a huge No Wave fan, though, it’s hard not to feel a little short-changed by the end product.
No Wave was more important then its flash-in-the-pan duration might suggest. The fact that to this day the music has lost none of its visceral punch is a testament to the strength and individuality of its creators’ visions, and it stands as a stellar example of triumph of imagination and passion over adversity. Perhaps one of the reasons that No Wave holds such fascination in today’s derivative, reissue-repackage culture is that its contradictory and divisive nature along with its uncompromising sonic extremism means that it can’t be easily pinned down, reprocessed and revived to be sold again to a new generation. The music of No Wave, the intriguing characters that made the music and the things that drove and shaped their particular artistic outlook are worthy of a fascinating book and/or documentary, but sadly this has not yet been made.
This year has seen the publication of three different books on No Wave. Using three different approaches, the books are well-informed and passionate about their subject, but the critical consensus is that none of them quite manages to get to grips with the violent inspiration behind the music or truly engage with the scene’s nihilistic world view. This suggests that there is still a healthy interest in No Wave music, but that it remains frequently misunderstood and misrepresented. Scott Crary’s 2004 documentary Kill Your Idols was made before all these books, and it also attempts to explain the music of No Wave whilst looking at its influence on musicians of the mid-noughties.
No Wave, for anyone lucky enough to avoid my drunken rantings, was a scene based in New York in the late 70s and early 80s. Driven by the nihilistic anger that inspired punk but contemptuous of a scene which they saw as musically conservative recycling of Chuck Berry riffs, a bunch of disparate artists and down-and-outs dispensed with such niceties as musical training, chords and conventional song structures to produce untamed and raw music which they felt did justice to their feelings of anger and alienation. Though chaotic and unmelodic, this music was highly inventive, original and bristling with invention and passion, often because the practitioners strove to make music that was unprecedented and also had to overcome the barrier of having literally no musical training whatsoever. Whilst The Clash and The Sex Pistols boasted about being unable to play despite clearly having respectable enough musical chops, the No Wave bands had often genuinely never picked up their instruments before deciding to make music. As a result, the music made by bands such as DNA, Mars, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and James Chance and the Contortions among others sounds unlike any music produced by anyone before or since. Most of the bands lasted for only a short amount of time, preferring not so much to burn out as to explode in a violent blast of inspiration and energy rather then staying around to turn into everything that they opposed. However No Wave’s use of untutored guitar noise gave birth to bands such as Sonic Youth and Swans who redefined the way the guitar was used in rock music.
The first 30 minutes of Kill Your Idols is stunning, and is worth seeing for any No Wave fan for the archive footage of live performances. Martin Rev (Suicide), Lydia Lunch, Jim Sclavunos (both Teenage Jesus and the Jerks), Arto Lindsay (DNA) and Glenn Branca all talk about their lives and their music, with Lydia on her usual good form. However, then the film cuts to 2002 to compare No Wave to the (then) current New York music scene. In a series of acutely embarrassing and occasionally sickening interviews, the class of 2002 are shown up for the shallow poseurs they are. Particularly cringe-worthy is Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who comes across as an utterly vacuous valley girl (replete with “Like, y’kneaow”s and all – for the edited highlights, plus some of LL’s putdowns thrown in for good measure, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhAK2flDdXA ), whilst the execrable A.R.E. Weapons are so shallow, stupid, sexist and unpleasant that it makes you profoundly glad that nobody’s heard of them since 2002. Seeing the documentary some four years after it came out only makes many of the modern bands sound more myopic and idiotic, considering what happened to their careers afterwards. The documentary is trying to show up the young pretenders for how vacuous, vain, idiotic and unimaginative they are compared to the No Wave musicians, but surely this is a moot point. As a result, time is spent on a number of modern bands who don’t deserve it, whilst No Wave pioneers such as Mars and James Chance and the Contortions are mentioned only in the passing. In the subsequent showdown between the No Wavers and the new groups, the old groups come off infinitely better. Lydia Lunch is particularly scathing, and looking at the evidence it’s impossible not to agree with her. The tone is not of old fogeys upset by being deposed but of innovative and driven artists thoroughly disappointed with the blatant careerism and the lack of imagination on display. Of the new bands, only Gogol Bordello (whose music I do not know) comes off well – he is clearly an intelligent guy with a deep and sincere passion for the music he makes, and is just as upset at the lack of imagination displayed by today’s guitar bands.
Despite burning out well over 20 years ago, No Wave still holds a large appeal for people such as me who weren’t around at the time. Watching the first part of this film brought me back to all the reasons why No Wave has this strange draw for me: the passion and intensity of the music, the raw, no-nonsense world view of the musicians, the sheer inventiveness and originality of approach, and above all the shocking alien-ness of the music itself. However, the times and the place that inspired this music – 1970s New York – are gone. The specific tensions that fuelled the scene have changed greatly as well, as has the musical landscape. Although Kill Your Idols does provoke thought about the disparity between No Wave and the current music scene in New York, other then geography it presents no sensible reason why we should compare the two in the first place. The division between the No Wavers and the modern bands is inevitable as they ultimately share so little common ground, both sonically and idealistically. I would have liked to see the film go into more detail about No Wave – the film would have benefited greatly from interviews with Mars and James Chance and the Contortions, as well as other members of DNA, and there were loads of No Wave bands untouched – and what made it so special. It would have been interesting to compare No Wave to the Mutant Disco movement that followed it, with 99 Records, Liquid Liquid, ESG and the like. Mutant Disco was musically very different from No Wave – particularly in its embrace of dance music and black culture – but was influenced by many of the same issues and ideas, and a comparison between the two would have made more sense then the comparison in the film. It would also be nice to hear from some more bands that were more obviously influenced by No Wave then the pale post-punk/garage rock revivalists who appeared in the film. Sonic Youth, Swans and Foetus – bands who came around shortly after No Wave and were influenced by its sound and approach – all appear in the documentary and are interesting and insightful on the original No Wave scene, so why not, say, UT, The Birthday Party, Einsturzende Neubauten or Fire Engines? Having said that, the first 30 minutes of Kill Your Idols are excellent, and Lydia Lunch and Arto Lindsay in particular are wonderful throughout. As a huge No Wave fan, though, it’s hard not to feel a little short-changed by the end product.
No Wave was more important then its flash-in-the-pan duration might suggest. The fact that to this day the music has lost none of its visceral punch is a testament to the strength and individuality of its creators’ visions, and it stands as a stellar example of triumph of imagination and passion over adversity. Perhaps one of the reasons that No Wave holds such fascination in today’s derivative, reissue-repackage culture is that its contradictory and divisive nature along with its uncompromising sonic extremism means that it can’t be easily pinned down, reprocessed and revived to be sold again to a new generation. The music of No Wave, the intriguing characters that made the music and the things that drove and shaped their particular artistic outlook are worthy of a fascinating book and/or documentary, but sadly this has not yet been made.
posted by Jonathan Thornton at 11:48 pm
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