In the 94 minutes it takes to watch Blank City, director Celine Danhier’s 2009 No Wave documentary, one could convulse through the entirety of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks’ studio discography multiple times. Led by singer/guitarist Lydia Lunch, the short-lived, NYC-based Jerks cultivated a visceral severity that redeemed its dearth of material. Lunch's caterwaul sounded dangerous and vulnerable, and she sang as though choking words free — wounded, defiant, and quaking with a restrained sense of vengeance made all the more impressive by Lunch’s youth during this period. The band, meanwhile, was the rock’n’roll equivalent of an active blender full of gravel.
Compiling recordings from six shows — five in NYC and one in Toronto — Live 1977-1979 presents a convincing argument that stage Jerks might have been superior to studio Jerks. For these sets, Lunch and drummer Bradly Field were the linchpins in a lineup that at times included James Chance of the Contortions on saxophone and future Sonic Youth drummer Jim Sclavunos on bass. On Live, they traded in the intimate miserablism of their singles for something even uglier: a volley of abrupt, interrogative blurts. In the face of audience indifference—crowd chatterers at the January 17, 1979 Max’s Kansas City and November 4, 1978 CBGB’s gigs deserve footnote credit alongside Live mastering engineer Weasel Walter —the Jerks went for broke, urgent, persistent, and stridently staccato. “Orphans” surfaces here twice in virulent form, with Lunch’s serrated guitars kiting and spiralling around Field’s brute thwomp. The band doubled down on the already confrontational fury of “The Closet” by lurching forth in a glowering lockstep, every spat syllable hitting like a fist on a locked door.
Within and beyond the context of “The Closet,” “the size of this room feels like jail” stands as a revelatory lyric. With songs often clocking in at around 75 seconds and its non-chronological tracklist, Live can feel like a veritable blizzard of Jerks, as insular as the scene surrounding the band. Concurrently, Lunch was playing with Beirut Slump as the Jerks approached a late 1979 implosion; solo, collaborative, theater, and literary projects exploded in myriad directions shortly thereafter. The beast that incubated Lunch’s burgeoning voice could never hope to contain it.
