Before #MeToo, before Riot Grrl, there was Lydia Lunch.A central figure in the No Wave scene of the seventiesas founder of the seminal Teenage Jesus & The JerksLunch has pursued a fourdecadelong career turning the substance of her life into unapologetic, stark, and beautiful art. From the eighties onward, Lunch became a lone voice publicly calling out the patriarchal aggression and day-to-day violence enacted by the powerfuland never gave a good goddamn whether you wanted to hear it or not. Refusing to be silenced, she took to stages the world over, fearlessly speaking the truth, whether of her own life with its legacy of parental abuse, her wild times owning the streets of New York City, or the world she saw around her.Seeing no boundaries between creative mediums, Lydia has enacted her vision through music, spoken word, film, theatre, and more. Released as an accompaniment to Beth Bs documentary The War Is Never Over, this book is the first comprehensive overview of Lunchs creative campaign of resistance, a celebration of pleasure as the ultimate act of rebellion. Across these pages, Lunch and her numerous collaboratorsincluding Thurston Moore, Jim Sclavunos, Kid Congo Powers, Bob Bert, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, and Vivienne Dickrecount life at the front line of the musical extremes of the seventies and eighties underground, the wild times, the disciplined productivity, life lived as a defender of the voiceless, and an unapologetic force of righteous fury.
