Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Biography
Lydia Lunch’s first band, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, played short, fierce, terrifying songs that were among the purest expressions of punk nihilism. Writer, guitarist, singer, actress and photographer Lunch was born June 2, 1959 in Rochester, New York. In 1976 she moved to NYC’s East Village: “Inspired by the manic rantings of Lester Bangs in Creem magazine, the Velvet Underground’s sarcastic wit, the glamour of the New York Dolls’ first album, and the poetic scat of Horses, by Patti Smith, I snuck out my bedroom window, jumped on a Greyhound, and crash-landed in a bigger ghetto than the one I had just escaped from,” Lunch wrote in 2007. In Manhattan she befriended Suicide, James Chance, and the Dead Boys, whose Stiv Bators confessed his lust for her/threatened to punch her in “I Need Lunch.” Lunch and Chance formed the Scabs in 1976 with guitarist Jody Harris, who later joined the Contortions, and Japanese bassist Reck, boyfriend of DNA’s Ikue Mori. After Harris left, the band found Bradly Field, who played a single drum and single cymbal, and became Teenage Jesus & the Jerks.
The original lineup played its first show in June 1977 at one of CBGB’s Monday night audition shows. This lineup’s only record was the Pre 12-inch (1979 ZE), with “The Closet,” “Less Of Me” and “My Eyes,” released after Chance had already gone on to eternal fame with the Contortions. Reck and his friend Chico Hige also played in the Contortions briefly before returning to Japan, where they formed Friction. Mirielle Cervenka’s husband Gordon Stevenson replaced Reck on bass, and the resulting trio—Lunch, Field, Stevenson—recorded TJ&TJ’s first release, “Orphans” b/w “Less Of Me” (1978 Lust/Unlust), produced by Voidoids guitarist Robert Quine. “Orphans” is just as original and frightening a vision as Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop,” only much shorter.
Along with DNA, Mars and the Contortions, Teenage Jesus was one of four No Wave bands represented on Brian Eno’s compilation No New York (1978 Antilles), which includes TJ&TJ’s “Burning Rubber,” “The Closet,” “Red Alert” and “I Woke Up Dreaming.” That year, Lunch formed Beirut Slump, which coexisted with Teenage Jesus through 1979. Jim Sclavunos replaced Stevenson on Teenage Jesus’s second single, “Baby Doll” b/w “Freud In Flop” and “Race Mixing” (1979 Lust/Unlust), again produced by Robert Quine. A self-titled pink 12-inch (1979 Lust/Unlust) collected the contents of both singles and added live versions of “Burning Rubber” and “Red Alert.” “Nothing more deathly shrill has ever been recorded,” Lester Bangs wrote in the Village Voice. Lunch broke up the band in 1979 and formed 8-Eyed Spy. Sclavunos went on to play in numerous other great NYC bands, including Sonic Youth. Bradly Field played in the Contortions briefly after Teenage Jesus broke up. He died in the early 1990s.
Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Beirut Slump and 8-Eyed Spy each got a side of Lunch’s retrospective double-LP Hysterie (1987 Widowspeak). The ten Teenage Jesus songs on the first side represented most of the band’s recordings, though the Everything CD (1995 Atavistic) added “My Eyes” and a second version of “Red Alert.” (Atavistic also reissued most of Lunch’s catalog on CD and issued a Mars CD compilation the following year.) Lunch’s label released Live at Max’s Kansas City, 1977 (2006 Widowspeak), a live set played by the Lunch/Reck/Field lineup that includes the otherwise unavailable “Popularity Is So Boring” and “No Morality.” Shut Up And Bleed (2008 Atavistic) collected Teenage Jesus and Beirut Slump’s recordings on a CD and included two previously unreleased live tracks from a 1978 show.
Teenage Jesus & the Jerks played two reunion sets at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory on June 13, 2008 to celebrate the publication of Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980 (2008 Abrams). Jim Sclavunos played the drum and Thurston Moore played bass. This lineup also performed at the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival that December. TJ&TJ played a short final tour in October 2009 with Algis Kizys on bass, stopping in Montréal, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
