Slightly shelfworn copies.
Celebrating nearly two decades as a confrontationalist, Lydia Lunch
has been a multimedia cultural terrorist, using music, film and books to
powerthrust her vision into closed minds and stifled hearts. A writer since
childhood, she initially chose a then-fertile realm of music, birthing the guerilla
screech of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks in 1977 at the age of sixteen. Her
diverse musical forays range from her recently reissued 1980 melancholy
cabaret album Queen of Siam through her collaborations with Clint Ruin a.k.a.
Foetus on the percussive psycho sexual mantra Stinkfist. She worked with
Rowland S. Howard and members of the Birthday Party to create the mesmer-
zing Honeymoon in Red album, and joined energies with Rowland again in
1991 to consummate Shotgun Wedding, a sensual, sweat-drenched odyssey
recorded in Memphis and performed in Australia and Europe. With director
Richard Kern, Lydia realized her personal vision of the roadmap of sexual
violence and desire in the films The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, she
starred in Beth B's Thanatopsis, shown at numerous film festivals. A book of
poetry by Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka, Adulterers Anonymous was
published in 1982 by Grove Press.
In 1984 Lydia founded WIDOWSPEAKPRODUCTIONS as an
organ for her own work and that of
sympatico creative renegades, initially
releasing The Uncensored Lydia Lunch,
her first penetration into what has be-
come her most potent and direct me-
dium: the spoken word. Last year saw
the release of the triple CD boxed set
Crimes Against Nature, which include
her earlier recordings Oral Fixation and
Conspiracy of Women as well as new
material, and is accompanied by the
text of her piece The Right to Revolt. A
video documentation of Lydia's spoken word piece The Gun Is Loaded is
available through Mystic Fire Video, and three live spoken performances are
included on Malicious Intent, recently released by Film Threat Video. With
unflinching self-awareness and unwavering strength Lydia Lunch continues to
confront the cycles of abuse and
chronic apathy infesting American
society. Her words are a riveting
catharsis as her voice beckons to
us to go beyond fear and into the
fury of burning knowledge, under-
standing and the power to claim
one's self, life, joy and anguish.
